97 The idea of returning from Hades implies a return from death
109f The mourning swan... Cf. the theme of the swansong. Cf. 692ff. 113 'The phantom of a dream': cf. ski!s onar in Pindar Pythian 8. 131f 'their father's spirit flashing from their eyes': beautiful rendition!
145f Herakles' hoped-for return from Hades is equated with a return from death, with resurrection; see 297, where this theme becomes even more overt; also 427ff.
150 Herakles as the aristos man: I note that he is regularly described in this drama as the best of all humans, not only of the 'Greeks' (also at 183, 209). See also the note on 1306.
160 The description of the bow as 'a coward's weapon' is relevant to the Odysseus theme in the
Odyssey
203 s"zein to s"ma 'save the body'... This expression seems traditional: if so, it may support the argument of some linguists that s"ma 'body' is derived from s"zein 'save'. By metonymy, the process of saving may extend to the organism that is destined to be saved.
270 The use of kleos in the wording of the chorus seems to refer to the name of Herakles; similarly in the wording of Megara at 288 and 290. Compare the notes on 1334 and 1369.
297 See at 145f above. Cf. the theme of Herakles' wrestling with Thanatos in Euripides Alcestis. 342ff Note the god-hero antagonism as expressed by Amphitryon. His claim that he was superior to Zeus in aret# brings out the meaning of 'striving' in aret# (as a nomen actionis derived from arnumai; cf. E.D. Francis).
350 The hero Linos is 'wilted [phthitos] in his beauty', but Apollo sings 'him'. By implication, the song of Linos is therefore unwilting. Compare the kleos of Achilles in Iliad IX 413, which is aphthiton or 'unwilting'.
In the words of the chorus, the narration of the Labors of Herakles is a song of praise (eulogia). Note humnos (/ humneîn) at 355.
The catalogue of Herakles' Labors is introduced with the word ponoi. The wording is crucial in light of the fact that the drama sets up the horrific slaughter of Herakles' children as his 'last ponos'.
425ff As the choral song starts a new antistrophe here, the catalogue of Labors has already reached nine, by my count. Now, in this antistrophe, the climactic 'last of his ponoi' is announced at 427, and this ponos is the bringing of Cerberus out of Hades into the light of the world. As we will see later, however, this ponos is in fact not the last one, in terms of the drama. See also already at 357. On the idea of going into Hades as dying and of coming out of Hades as resurrection, see the notes at 145f.
456ff Megara's sad words here, addressing her children and telling them how she had brought them up, is typical of the wording of women's laments.
485ff The pathos of Megara's words here again is typical of women's laments: which one of you will I embrace last? Note too the metaphor about the honeybee collecting honey much as a woman who sings laments [gooi] is compressing and thus 'condensing' her tears. A metaphor of intensification.
494f 'shade ... dream': see the note at 113.
518 When Megara sees Herakles as he returns from Hades, she asks herself: 'What sort of dream do I see so anxiously?' Note the premonition. Note the emotion of FEAR.
524 Herakles describes his return from Hades as 'reascending to the light'. There is inherent symbolism of resurrection here. On the word asmenos here (also at 621, 725), see the book of
Douglas Frame, The Myth of Return (1978).
567ff Herakles announces his intention of ripping off the head of Lykos and feeding it to the dogs. Note the brutality / bestiality of his urge.
575 Herakles seems ready to give up the credit for all his previous Labors if he cannot avenge his sons and wife.
581 Herakles will now 'labor' to save / avenge his nearest and dearest.
588ff Note the anachronistic description of Lykos as a turannos who tries to ally himself with the 'poor'.
597 Herakles says that he had premonitions that some ponos was threatening his nearest and dearest.
619 The 'rescuing' (komizein implies 'bring back to light and life') of Theseus from the Throne of Lethe is presented as an additional deed of Herakles in Hades, besides capturing Cerberus. This additional deed meant a 'delay' for Herakles, which meant that he almost did not arrive in time to rescue his family from Lykos.
627 Herakles to his wife: 'tremble no more'. Note the emotion of FEAR.
659ff The chorus sings that those who display great striving or aret# in this life deserve to 'come back to the light of the sun again' after they die, so as to live a second life. They sing: how unfair of the gods, not to let such men have a second life! This dramatized attitude reveals a poetically- created misunderstanding of what 'really' happens to heroes after they die, how they are resurrected to a state of immortalization. The problem with Herakles is that he did not 'really' die when he went to Hades to get Cerberus. If he had really died, he would already be a cult hero, eligible for immortalization. He is behaving like a cult hero when he returns to Thebes, but he has not yet 'earned' it, so to speak. Similarly with Oedipus in the Oedipus Tyrannos. He behaves like a cult hero when he is king of Thebes, but he has not yet earned it. Oedipus earns that status finally when he dies, as we see in the Oedipus at Colonus. See also the notes on 1291 and 1300. 673ff The invocation of the Kharites along with the Muses evokes the primal song of the Wedding of Cadmus and his bride, Harmonia, as described in Theognis.
678f 'as an old man I sing the song of Memory [Mn#mosun#]'... This song is the wedding song of Cadmus and Harmonia, sung by the goddesses of Memory, the Muses, along with the 'Graces' or Kharites.
680f 'the victory song of Herakles I sing'... This song is the kallinikos of Herakles (see also 180ff and 582) , the equivalent of the first epinician song ever sung ('epinician' is a victory song celebrating the victory of an athlete at an athletic event, as at the Olympics). According to one myth, the first victory song of Herakles celebrated his victory in the wrestling match with the river-god Achel!ios; in another version, it celebrated his victories at the Olympic Games (the very first victories at the very first games).
687ff 'the Delian maidens'... These were apparently 'local Muses' at Delos, the island of Apollo. They are described here as making humnos (687).
691ff 'paeans at your gates'... A pai!n 'paean' is a victory-song sung in worship of Apollo to mark his victory over a plague or any other misfortune that threatens humanity.
692ff 'I will sing like a swan'... Cf. the swansong theme at 109f above.
696ff 'Surpassing all in his striving [aret#], the noble son of Zeus, with great toil has made life tranquil for mortals, having destroyed the horrible beasts'. Note that the Labors of Herakles benefit mankind in inverse proportion. What is anxiety for the hero converts into tranquility for humankind. (See also the note on 851 below.) Compare the words of Bob Kostas, commentator at the Barcelona Olympics, in describing Herakles as the benefactor of humankind.
780 He who violates what is lawful 'shatters the black chariot of prosperity [olbos]'. Is the color black proleptic here?
788 The song of the chorus is coextensive with a victory song celebrating the labor [ag"n] of Herakles.
798ff The ambiguity of the identity of Herakles' true father - is it Zeus or Amphitryon? - is matched here the ambiguity of Herakles' true moment of glory.
805f 'Time has shown the brilliant strength of Herakles'.
815ff As Lyssa enters the dramatic space, we may ask whether the same actor who had been assigned to Lykos, now dead, has now been assigned to Lyssa. The Greek name Lykos is from the noun lykos, meaning 'wolf'. The Greek name Lyssa is the divine personification of the noun lyssa, derived from lykos and meaning 'rabies' or 'wolfish rage'.
830 Iris, messenger of the gods, says that Herakles has now finished the Labors (that is, those that had been assigned to him by his inferior cousin, Eurystheus). His Labors are called athloi at 827. Iris says that Hera could not hurt Herakles directly while he was performing these Labors. 840 Note the reference of Iris, messenger of the gods, to the 'rage [kholos] of Hera'. There are three basic categories of ANGER that heroes can experience in Homeric and dramatic poetry:
m#nis - an emotion so powerful that it becomes coextensive with the combined forces of nature in the cosmos, so that the hero's anger becomes a cosmic sanction: see Leonard Muellner, The Anger of Achilles: M#nis in Greek Epic (Ithaca: Cornell UP 1996).
kholos - an open-ended chemical chain-reaction; it can be visualized as yellow bile; since Hera nursed Thetis who nursed Achilles, the bile of Hera is already flowing in the veins of Achilles before he ever even has his quarrel with Agamemnon: see Joan V. O'Brien, The Transformation of Hera: A Study of Ritual, Hero, and the Goddess in the Iliad (Lanham MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1993), especially ch. 4 ("Hera's Iliadic Venom").
kotos - a time-bomb that ticks away until it explodes at exactly the right moment in the plot of the narrative, which is coextensive with the plotting of the angry hero who is nursing this emotion for its well-timed explosion as a theatrical climax for all to see and to sing about forever. The most celebrated kotos scene in Greek literature is the killing of the suitors by Odysseus in the Odyssey. Thomas V. Walsh published a book on kholos and kotos: Fighting Words and Feuding Words: Anger and the Homeric Poems (Lanham MD: Lexington Books, 2005).
Here I have summarized the contexts in which these words for 'anger' are different from each other. But there are also contexts where they overlap dramatically. In the Iliad, Achilles experiences all three variations on the theme of anger.
851 Herakles is described as a civilizing hero by virtue of his having defeated monsters on land and sea. See also the note on 696ff above.
861ff The violence that possesses Herakles is equated in the words of lyssa with the cosmic violence of earthquakes and storms. Just as Herakles' mind and body become shaken up, so also, by metonymy, the palace collapses in an earthquake. By metonymy, the storm within Herakles is coextensive with a cosmic storm. See the note on 905ff.
865 Lussa refers to her own wolfish rage, lyssa. See also 879. Also 1024.
866ff Note the symptoms of Herakles' warp spasm: 'he shakes his locks, and rolls ... his distorted Gorgon eyes, his breathing is not balanced; like a bull ... he roars'; he 'howls like dogs rushing on the hunt'.
871 'I will dance you even more quickly and will play the flute [reed] of terror'. The 'wolfish rage' of the warp spasm induced by lyssa will make Herakles perform a sinister song-and-dance: it will 'dance him'. Note the emotion of FEAR: phobos 'terror'. Here we see a negative Bacchic possession and song in myth, as opposed to the positive Bacchic possession and song in ritual (that is, the possession of devotees who participate in a properly conducted ritual. (Compare the Bacchae of Euripides, where we find the negative possession of the elite women of Thebes in the myth of the drama vs. the positive possession of the foreign women of Asia [= the chorus] in the ritual of the chorus.) This sinister Bacchic music of 871ff is like the Saint Vitus dance in medieval ritual traditions.
879 lussa... See also 865 and 888. 885 Note the usage of daim"n. 888 lussa... See also 865 and 879.
892f 'Blood will be poured for a libation, not the wine the wine of Dionysus'. The blood becomes sacramental in terms of hero-cult.
905f 'The wild storm shakes the house, the roof is falling in'. Again, by metonymy, the storm within Herakles is coextensive with a cosmic storm. See the note on 861ff.
917f The at# or 'ruin' of the children of Herakles and of Herakles himself can be linked with the metaphors of windstorms.
934 Herakles is literally foaming at the mouth while he is possessed by the 'wolfish rage', lyssa, of lyssa.
959f When Herakles wrestles with the phantom of nothingness, the ancient Greek song culture would surely be reminded of conventional pictures of Herakles wrestling with Death incarnate, Thanatos. Compare Euripides Alcestis. Herakles is staging his own drama of madness. He rides on his war-chariot, he eats at a banquet, and so on; all these actions are familiar from countless Herakles narratives. But here, the substance and even the props of this mad drama add up to nothingness.
966ff In this part of the Messenger's narrative, an essential question is raised: was it Herakles' fury in the killing of lykos that extended into the fury that led to the killing of his own family? This essential question operates on the metonymy of blood: the blood spilled in the killing of the enemy spills over, as it were, into the killing of Herakles' sons and wife.
970ff The killings of the three sons corresponds to the killings in (1) hunting (2) warfare (3) sacrifice [of animals]
1015 The reference to the horrific scene of the slaughter of Herakles' wife and sons as an athlos
makes this scene equivalent to a Labor.
1022 The description of Procne's murder of her own son as a 'sacrifice to the Muses' is relevant to the transformation of Procne into a nightingale - a songbird who symbolizes the singer of songs, the protégé of the Muses.
1071 The chorus vicariously sings the emotion of Amphitryon: FEAR.
1072ff Amphitryon fears not so much for himself but for Herakles. But the emotion is in any case FEAR.
1089ff As Herakles 'comes to', the symptoms of the warp spasm start to fade: but now he is conscious of these symptoms for the first time.
1119 Note again the reference to a negative Bacchic experience: a 'bad trip', as it were.
1135 The question is, who is the gods is responsible, aitios? In Iliad XIX, such a question can be answered by Agamemnon in terms of at#.
1210 Variations on a theme: here it is a lion's rage, not a wolf's.
1229ff PITY.
1263 'whoever Zeus may be': note the "agnosticism" of Herakles here.
1270 Note the negative and irreligious description by Herakles of his own Labors (as if they were not ritual), preceded by his childhood deeds, also viewed in a sinister light.
1275 Note the pleonasm of a thousand labors, ponoi.
1280 The horrific killing of his sons is for Herakles 'this last bloody labor [ponos]'. See also 1353.
1284 Herakles refers to his own at#.
1291 Herakles was 'once blessed': see the note on 695ff.
1300 Herakles was once olbios: see the notes on 695ff and on 1291. 1306 On Herakles as 'the noblest man in Greece': see the note on 150.
1315ff On the questionable things that gods do... 'unless the stories of the singers [aoidoi] are false'.
1319 In poetry, it is said that the gods actually 'err' (hamartanein).
1325 Theseus will give a 'home' to Herakles in Athens. Compare Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus. 1329 Theseus will cede to Herakles the temen# (plural of temenos 'sacred space') that had been allotted to him.
1333 The city of Athens will worship Herakles after he dies: the city will thus 'bring him
back' (an-agein) every time they sacrifice to him, making him a recipient of tim# 'honor' (that is, cult honor).
1334 The kleos of Herakles will extend from him to Theseus, and, by further metonymy, to all of Athens. Compare the notes on 270, 1369.
1345f By contrast to what Theseus says at 1315ff (on which see the note), Herakles says that the gods cannot be accused of questionable things. So the poets must be wrong after all: 'The god, who is indeed a god, needs nothing: these are the wretched stories of the bards [aoidoi]'.
1353 Note again the pleonasm of a thousand labors, ponoi. See also 1275.
1369 Again, Herakles explains himself in terms of kleos. Compare the notes on 270 and 1334. 1410 Theseus understands that Herakles is suddenly not the man he used to be. If Herakles has lost his mn#m# 'memory' of his Labors, then he cannot act like himself. He might even start lamenting like a woman. Compare Euripides Hippolytus, where we will hear Theseus himself lamenting like a woman, singing in dochmiac rhythms.
1415 Herakles retorts to Theseus: what were you like, when you were sitting on the Throne of Lethe? (Note that l#th# means non-remembering.)
1416 The word l#ma 'will' (by extension, we may say 'courage') here implies that Theseus had lost all his will-power when he was sitting on the throne of Lethe.
1419 Herakles tells his father: 'entomb the children!' The ritual of entombment is key to the concept of hero-cult.
1420 Conceivably, we may interpret the Greek as 'I will have *you* brought from Thebes to Athens. {I agree, to the extent that we probably cannot read 'I will have *them* [= the children of Herakles] brought from Thebes to Athens'. Diggle rejects (without due justification, in my mind) the whole line, on the grounds that the Thebans' in Euripides' time would surely have claimed that Amphitryon's grave was in Thebes. I would object: how can we be sure that there weren't Athenian counter-claims?
§1. This effort is a continuation of two earlier books. One of these, The Best of the Achaeans, 1 centered on the role of oral tradition in early Greek achievements of poetic artistry and precision of expression, with Homer in the forefront. The task was difficult, in that I was challenging two influential stances that remain fashionable among experts in Greek literature. One of these can be described as an eagerness to explain whatever we admire in Homer as something that must transcend any oral traditions. This is to ignore, I argued, the communicative power of tradition itself: in seeking to discover the genius of invention in the surviving examples of early Greek epic, we run the risk of underrating the continuum of oral tradition from which these examples had emerged. 2 To say this much is not to go so far as to say das Volk dichtet: it is a romantic notion to make generalized claims about folk creativity--claims that in fact blur the observable dynamics of oral tradition within society. 3 It is just as romantic, however, for latter-day critics to attribute the evidence of artistry in Homeric poetry to a genius who is emancipated from oral tradition. Such an attitude is reminiscent of Chateaubriand's notion of "mother-geniuses" (génies mères), as dissected by M. M. Bakhtin. 4
§2. The other influential stance that I challenged in Best of the Achaeans is a general reluctance to recognize artistic values that belonged only to the ancient Greeks and no longer to us. This attitude presumes that we are the heirs to everything of theirs that qualifies as artistic and sophisticated, and whatever fails to match our own criteria of these qualities is more "primitive" and therefore less sophisticated. I am reminded of "God's library," as Voltaire pictures it (Temple du goût, 1732), where the Muses must busy themselves with revising and abridging the existing great books.
§3. Such an attitude encourages the rejection of any interpretation that recognizes precision and subtlety in early Greek poetics. One critic, after disagreeing in detail with various points that I made about allusions in early Greek literature, decided to call a halt after reading the first three of my twenty chapters; he questioned whether he should even have made the effort of going that far into the book since "I felt sure (and I believe many would agree with me) that so sophisticated a technique of allusions is quite alien to the early epic and would hardly be found even in Hellenistic poetry." 1 I cling to the hope of persuading such critics with my present effort, in which I propose to widen the scope of inquiry. 2 Whereas The Best of the Achaeans concerned primarily the epic tradition, this book is an attempt to confront, at least in broad outlines, the full range of poetic and song-making traditions in early Greek civilization. Without such a confrontation, I now fear, my efforts in the previous books may be permanently misunderstood by some. Pindar's Homer provides the background for The Best of the Achaeans.
§4. In widening the scope, I shift the focus from epic to lyric, as represented primarily by the compositions of Alcman, Stesichorus, Alcaeus, Sappho, Ibycus, Anacreon, Simonides, Bacchylides, and Pindar. 1 The conventional dating of these figures covers a period stretching roughly from 650 to 450 B.C., 2 and hereafter I refer to this period as the age of Archaic Greek lyric. The task becomes even more difficult, in face of yet another influential line of thought: I am challenging the tenaciously fashionable notion, which takes shape in many variations, that Archaic Greek lyric represents the rise of individual innovation over collective tradition. It can be said straightaway that such a notion lacks the perspectives of social anthropology. Beyond that, it
would be premature at this point to enter into the controversy, which would engulf the reader in a bibliographical quagmire. Instead this notion is challenged by a variety of arguments, both explicit and implicit, that extend throughout this book.
§5. Which brings me to mention the other of the two earlier books that the present work continues, Comparative Studies in Greek and Indic Meter. 1 The basic thesis was that the meter known as the dactylic hexameter of Greek epic originated from lyric meters and that these lyric meters have an ancient heritage that can at least be partially recovered through the comparative method of Indo-European linguistics. 2 This is not to say that lyric is necessarily older than epic or that epic did not influence lyric as well as the other way around. Rather the point is simply that Greek lyric represents a tradition--or various traditions--in its own right, and that the form of Greek epic can be explained as a differentiation of various forms that we find in Greek lyric. This thesis, however, raises many questions about the very concepts of lyric and epic, and it is to these questions that I now turn. 3
§6. As the work proceeds, the definition of lyric will progressively broaden, to the point that lyric becomes, for all practical purposes, the basis for defining epic, rather than the other way around. This point is reflected in the subtitle: The Lyric Possession of an Epic Past. I chose the word possession because the preoccupation of Greek poetry with the application of the past to the here and now is in itself an exercise of political power. 1 Moreover, there is a side connotation of the poet's "possession," or inspiration, by the spirits of the heroic past. 2 In using the word this way, I have in mind the celebrated passage retelling the ecstatic "seizure" of the composer in Diderot's Le neveu de Rameau--a seizure that activates a panorama of musical, poetic, and dramatic performance.
§7. Of all the poets of Archaic lyric, I choose Pindar as the centerpiece. Along with his near- contemporary, Bacchylides, Pindar is not only the latest but also the last in the canon of lyric poets as transmitted by the Alexandrian editors. The last securely datable poem of Pindar, Pythian8, was composed for performance in 446 B.C. (for Bacchylides, the last datable compositions are Odes 6 and 7, performed in 452 B.C.).
§8. There are two reasons for my focus on Pindar. One concerns the specific form--or, better, forms--of his lyric poetry, specifically its metrical forms, and the relationship of these forms to the form of epic. The other reason relates to the content of this poetry, in particular, what it says both explicitly and implicitly about the connections between epic and lyric.
§9. Which brings me to a point of principle. Throughout I shall pay close attention to the relationship between poetic form and content. This relationship reveals the tradition that shapes both the poet and the poetry, and for me it is the poetic tradition itself that serves as the primary empirical evidence at my disposal. For others, however, what the poet says about anything counts as raw data, serving as the basis for a "scientific" reconstruction of the poet and the poet's world, as also for any educated second-guessing about the poet's reasons for saying what is said in the poetry. The second-guessing can then lead to various opinions about what we are or are not permitted to believe about the poet's testimony--all in accordance with our own privileged sense of verisimilitude. It is as if the poet's words existed in a vacuum, just waiting to be discovered as
direct information about the past, for the exclusive use of future generations. I prefer instead to treat the poetic tradition itself as the primary evidence, as manifested mainly in the language of the surviving texts.
§10. Treating the actual language of poetic tradition as my primary evidence, I must refer, and refer often, to the perspectives of linguistics. I hope to do so, however, without encumbering the reader with an overabundance of technicalities. The few explicit linguistics concepts that do occur in this book are fundamental, and it makes sense to prepare the reader for two of them immediately.
§11. One of these concepts of linguistics is the distinction between synchronic and diachronic. By synchronic I mean the workings of a system as it exists at a given time and place; by diachronic, the transformations of this system through time. 1 To avoid confusion, I choose to use these terms consistently from the standpoint of an outsider who is thinking about a given system, not from the standpoint of an insider who is thinking within that system. The diachronic perspective, as we see throughout this book, is essential for understanding the relationship of form and content in terms of such categories as theme, formula, and meter. 2 I should warn at the outset, however, that the diachronic perspective cannot suffice for the description, the classification, of a system as it exists at a given time and place. For that, the synchronic perspective is essential.
§12. The second of the two basic concepts of linguistics that I use throughout this book is the distinction, from a synchronic perspective, between the marked and unmarked members of any opposition within the system of language. These terms are defined as follows by Roman Jakobson: "The general meaning of a marked category states the presence of a certain (whether positive or negative) property A; the general meaning of the corresponding unmarked category states nothing about the presence of A." 1 The unmarked category is the general category, which can include the marked category, whereas the reverse situation cannot hold. For example, in an opposition of the English words long and short, the unmarked member of the opposition is long because it can be used not only as the opposite of short ("I am reading a long book, not a short one") but also as the general category ("how long is this book?"). In an opposition of interesting and boring, the unmarked member is interesting: if we say "A is more interesting than B," we do not necessarily mean that both A and B are interesting or that B is boring, whereas "A is more boring than B" presupposes that both A and B are boring. To ask a question like "how interesting is this?" does not commit the questioner, unlike "how boring is this?" Further, in an opposition of day and night, the unmarked member is day, which serves not only as the opposite of night ("it is daytime, not nighttime") but also as the general category ("there are seven days in the week"). 2 To ask "how short?" is to presuppose shortness, whereas "how long?" does not presuppose either shortness or length. Thus the marked member, as in the case of short, is defined in terms of the unmarked member, in this case, long--and not the other way around.
§13. Where the marked member is a semantic subcategory of the unmarked member, we may be witnessing the reflex of an older situation where the form of the marked member had once been assigned the function currently held by the form of the unmarked member. Such a pattern of semantic evolution is known in linguistic theory as Kurylowicz's fourth law of analogy: when
two forms come into competiton for one function, the newer form may take over that function while the older form may become relegated to a subcategory of its earlier function. 1
§14. The unmarked member is inclusive, in that the marked member can be an aspect of the unmarked. It can be exclusive, however, if it negates the marked member, as when we say "that is not short, it is long." The negation of the marked by the unmarked has been called the minus interpretation of the unmarked (for example, "long, not short"), as distinct from the zero interpretation (for example, "long"); the assertion of the marked member is the plus interpretation (for example, "short," or "short, not long"). 1 The term plus interpretation designates not "positive" but "marked, either negatively or positively."
§15. The zero interpretation of the unmarked member includes, as an overarching principle, both the minus interpretation of the unmarked member and the plus interpretation of the marked member. The opposition of long and short is a matter of length. Further, the opposition of unmarked order and marked disorder is a matter of overall order. I cite a particularly interesting example from Greek metrics, an Archaic eight-syllable metrical unit known as the choriambic dimeter:
This unit consists of a "disordered" first half, four syllables that display a wide variety of possible combinations of long (_) and short (o) quantities, such as , o, _o , _o_o, o , o o,
_o_o, 2 followed by an "ordered" second half, four syllables that rigidly follow the pattern _oo_. There is a principle of order even in the disorder of the first half, as we can see from a constraint that escapes notice at first sight. The constraint is this: the first half does not allow just any possible combination of longs and shorts. One pattern in particular, _oo_, is avoided in the disordered first half, and this pattern _oo_ is precisely the ordered pattern of the second half. 3 In other words it is a matter of overarching order that the first half be disorder as opposed to the order of the second half. The first half is the plus-interpretation of disorder, the second half is the minus interpretation of order, while the two halves together comprise the zero interpretation of order. 4 As we shall see later, such an arrangement on the level of form is typical of the thought patterns of myth making on the level of content: in the stories of myth, the opposition of disorder and order, of discord and concord, serves to achieve an overall concept of order, concord. 5 More specifically the opposition of social division and integration serves to achieve an overall concept of integration. 6 Further, the opposition of alien and native serves to achieve an overall concept of native. 7
§16. The distinction of marked-unmarked can be further applied in a variety of contexts, starting
in Chapter 1 with an extended discussion of song and poetry as distinct from "everyday" language. I apply it even here with the intent of challenging a common misconception about a term that is central to the whole book, oral poetry. The descriptive term oral in oral poetry has come to have an overly narrow meaning, restricted by our own cultural preconceptions about writing and reading. We feel the need to define oral in terms of written: if something is oral, we tend to assume a conflict with the notion of written. From the general standpoint of social anthropology,
however, it is written that has to be defined in terms of oral. Written is not something that is not oral; rather it is something in addition to being oral, and that additional something varies from society to society. 1 It is dangerous to universalize the phenomenon of literacy. 2 To restate the problem in terms of the distinction between marked and unmarked: if we juxtapose oral and written, it is written that functions as the marked member of the opposition, while oral is unmarked. The definition of written is predicated on the given of oral.
§17. In this book we have ample opportunity to consider the many variations of interaction between two fundamental aspects of oral traditions: composition and performance. Already at this point, however, I call attention to a general tendency in contemporary thinking to undervalue the aspect of performance by overvaluing the aspect of composition. In seeking to put the act of performance into a balanced perspective, I find it useful to bring into play J. L. Austin's notion of a performative utterance or speech-act, where the antithesis of word and action is neutralized, in that the word is the action. 1 I invoke also Barbara Johnson's application of Austin's notion of speech-act to poetry-- an application that Austin resisted--and her insistence on the self-referential quality of the performative: "The performative, then, acts like a 'shifter' in that it takes on meaning only by referring to the instance of its utterance." 2 Johnson adds her own translation of Emile Benveniste's formulation: "An utterance is performative insofar as it names the act performed.... The utterance is the act; the utterer performs the act by naming it." 3
§18. If indeed performance "takes on meaning only by referring to the instance of its utterance," then this instance, this occasion, must be the basis for the intent of the utterance, for its rhetoric. 1 If, further, the occasion should ever be lost or removed, then the intent of the utterance is destabilized. We may say that the very notion of genre serves as compensation for the lost occasion. 2
§19. I take it, then, that questions of meaning in the composition of a song or poem cannot be settled in terms of the composition alone: we must keep in mind what the composition says about its performance or potential performance, and what that says about whoever is the composer, whoever is the performer. 1 Only this way can we begin to do justice to questions of authorship and even of authority. 2
§20. What makes words authoritative is the value that the given society attaches to their performance. And the authoritativeness of speech is a central issue in this book. The notion of authoritative speech, as we shall see, is conveyed in Greek by such key words as ainos. 1
§21. Bringing to a close this brief review of technical elements in the book, I take this opportunity to stress my awareness that there is no one method, no one theory, that could ever suffice for comprehending the totality of any piece of Greek literature, or of any literature. This is no excuse, however, for being hostile to theory, a stance that is perennially fashionable among Classicists. I agree with Eagleton that "hostility to theory usually means an opposition to other people's theories and an oblivion of one's own." 1
§22. In the end the critic can do no better than to discover and then apply the criteria of those who create, or better, re-create, the tradition. I take to heart the reaction of Elroy Bundy to the imperative of phuê 'nature' in the poetry of Pindar: 1
§23. Pindar's phua [phuê] has nothing to do with the natural, unschooled, unconscious genius of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but denotes schooling by experience in the truth of words and actions in a living tradition; the [negative concept of] "learning" he speaks of...is mere rote imitation of things not understood. You must not, he means, apply systems of method but elicit your method from the thing to be investigated; do not, armed with a detached system, go in search of a subject, but, having chosen a subject, refusing to bury it under an avalanche of terms, allow it to reveal the unity in its manifold as you "draw together the strands of many matters in brief."
§24. The choice of subject in this book is clear. As the title says, the central concern is not Pindar, but Pindar's Homer. What interests me primarily is the relationship of Pindar's tradition to other lyric traditions and to the epic tradition of Homer. A major task that I have set for myself is to seek whatever the epic of Homer really means to Pindar as a master of his own medium of poetry, which is lyric; the search must engage Pindar's own words, which I hold to be the prime evidence for the independent lyric tradition that lives on through his art. In searching for a unified vision of what Homer means to Pindar, I hope to achieve an insight into a broader literary question, that is, what epic means to lyric. 1 Since the unified vision that is sought--what Bundy calls the unity to be revealed--is complex, a variety of strategies in presentation is needed, and that variety makes it necessary to offer here, for the sake of clarity, an outline of the chapters that follow.
§25. To begin, Chapter 1 examines the criteria for differentiating oral poetry and song in early Greek society, as exemplified by the epic of Homer and and the lyric of Pindar, respectively. The aim is to set up the concept of lyric poetry or lyric as a default category for those types of song that are not poetry, in a stricter sense of the word. Conversely it is argued that the meters known to us as the hexameter, the elegiac distich, and the iambic trimeter are the formal markers, in the Classical period, of poetry in this stricter sense, that is, of verse that is not sung. In contrast lyric typifies what is sung, what is potentially danced and potentially accompanied by aulos 'reed' or kitharâ 'lyre'. It is also argued that just as song becomes differentiated into a dichotomy of poetry and song, so also poetry becomes further differentiated into a dichotomy of prose and poetry. In the process of arriving at an understanding of all these differentiations, the meanings of the key words mûthos 'myth' and mîmêsis 'mimesis' are reassessed, while another key word, ainos, is assigned a working definition, 'speech-act'. 1
§26. With reference to the Appendix, Chapter 1 goes on to argue that the three prime meters of poetry in the Classical period, however distinct the medium of poetry may have become from the medium of song, can nevertheless be derived from the attested meters of song. The two major categories of meters that comprise the song-making traditions of Pindar, the so-called Aeolic and dactylo-epitrite, are shown to contain the building blocks of the iambic trimeter, the elegiac distich, and even the hexameter. In this sense it can even be said that Pindar's inherited meters are the parents of Homer's hexameter, though the parent in this case has experienced a longer evolution, culminating with Pindar, than the child, culminating with Homer.
§27. Chapter 2 investigates the general characteristics of oral poetry, as established by the cross
cultural perspective of field work in living traditions, and compares these with the specific characteristics of oral poetry in the social context of early Greece. Whereas the two factors of composition and performance are essential in all oral poetry, with varying degrees of recomposition in performance depending on the form of poetry and on the given phase of its evolution, the early Greek evidence calls for a third factor to be taken into account, the factor of diffusion. The diffusion of early Greek poetry, as exemplified primarily by Homer, is analyzed in terms of two emerging social patterns in early Greece, culminating in the institution of the polis 'city-state' and in the correlative impulse of Panhellenism. These patterns destabilize the concept of mûthos 'myth' and promote an alternative truth value, the privileged concept of alêtheia 'truth'. Also, the factors of diffusion and recomposition in performance have a profound effect on the very concept of authorship.
§28. Chapter 3 shifts attention to the characteristics of oral song making, as distinct from nonlyric "poetry" in the stricter sense of the word. The striking diversity of melodic patterns in early Greek traditions of song making is examined in terms of chronologically successive but overlapping criteria, deduced from both the internal evidence of the songs and the available external evidence. These criteria are reflected in the technical words nomos, harmoniâ, tonos, and genos. The progressive systematization reflected by these words is correlated with the progressive canonization of melodic patterns, a reflex, it is claimed, of Panhellenization in song-making traditions. The trend of Panhellenization also accounts for the emergence of a Classical canon of nine lyric poets, corresponding to the earlier canons of nonlyric poets. In the forefront of the "lyric nine" is Pindar.
§29. Chapter 4 offers an introduction to the medium of Pindar, with Olympian1 as the centerpiece. This composition of Pindar's affords a premier illustration of the victory ode, or epinician, the only lyric genre to survive from Pindar's vast lyric repertoire as a near-complete corpus. The choice of Olympian1 as illustration is specially suited for the book since the central myth of this ode, the story of Pelops, is connected with the ritual dimension of the Olympic Games, the premier athletic festival of the ancient Greek world. It is argued that Pindar's presentation of the Pelops myth, including his explicit rejection of some details inherited from past versions of the narrative, reflects not his private invention but rather his public acceptance of the narrative in its then-current version, as formalized in the mythological and ritual dimensions of a most complex institution, the Olympics.
§30. Chapter 5 connects the ritual dimension of athletics with the ritual dimension of the epinician itself, as presented in Pindar's own words. The efforts of the poet, in glorifying the occasion of the athletic event, are presented by the song as a ritual speech-act that serves as compensation for the efforts culminating in the athlete's victory, which in turn serve as compensation for the primordial efforts or experiences of heroes in the heroic age, as glorified by Homer. All these efforts, of poets, athletes, and heroes, are treated by the poetry as ordeals, a ritual concept conveyed by words like agôn, shared by Pindar and Homer.
§31. This topic of a ritual ideology linking athletes, heroes, and poets sets the stage for Chapter 6, an extensive survey of the relationship between Pindaric song and Homeric poetry. While Homer's medium of epic poetry glorifies heroes, Pindar's medium of lyric song glorifies simultaneously the heroes of the past and the athletes of the present. By collapsing the distinction between hero and athlete, the epinician of Pindar becomes a genuine occasion of prestige for the
contemporary figure who is being glorified, and this poetic glorification is correlated with the realities of wealth, power, and prestige in the here and now. These three realities of wealth, power, and prestige ultimately preserve the identities of Pindar's patrons. Conversely the identity of Pindar is a function of his authority, which is simultaneously the authority of the epinician, to confer prestige. The authority of the epinician, as a form of authoritative speech, is conveyed by the word ainos. 1 It is this authority that guarantees the authorship of Pindar.
§32. Chapter 7 concentrates on three different occasions when the world of heroes merges with the world of the here and now through the authority of the ainos. The three occasions correspond to three Pindaric epinicians: Pythian8, Isthmian8, and Pythian 6. Here are three different compositions enhancing in three different ways the prestige of real people whose prestige or kleos 'glorification' depends on an ideological merger between the kleos of Pindar's ainos and the kleos of Homer's epic, the world of heroes.
§33. Chapter 8, resuming the discussion in Chapter 1, takes up the subject of prose, to be explained as one further stage of differentiation in types of speech-act. This time, the argument goes, poetry becomes further differentiated into a dichotomy of prose and poetry, just as song had earlier become differentiated into a dichotomy of poetry and song. The prime example of early Greek prose is the discourse of Herodotus, whose language makes it implicit that he is a logios 'master of speech', a description that is pertinent to the dichotomy, made explicit in Pindar's language, between logios 'master of speech' and aoidos 'master of song'. The prose of Herodotus, like the poetry and song of the ainos, is a speech-act of authority. Such authority is parallel to that of Solon, a historical figure who becomes part of the canonical Seven Sages tradition. The dramatized words addressed by Solon to Croesus the Tyrant in Book I of Herodotus are tantamount to an ainos contextualized by the narrative frame of the Histories.
§34. The very word historiâ 'inquiry, history', used by Herodotean discourse in referring to itself, is traced in Chapter 9 to the traditions of juridical prose, especially in the context of international (that is, inter-polis) arbitration. These traditions of juridical prose are shown to parallel those of sacred juridical poetry, as exemplified by Hesiod. There are parallels between the moral message of such discourse and the moral message of the ainos, as exemplified by the poetry of Theognis and the song making of Pindar. Herodotean prose reveals its affinities with the ainos of poetry and song in its deployment of the word sêmainô 'indicate', derivative of sêma 'sign, tomb of a hero'.
§35. In Chapter 10 the parallelism between modes of discourse in Pindar and Herodotus is explored further, with the theme of Croesus the Tyrant as a test case. Special attention is given to what is traditionally left unsaid in such a theme, reflecting as it does the diplomatic stance of the ainos, where implicit warning is an aspect of explicit praise. It becomes clear that the theme of Croesus the Tyrant is pertinent to the actual occasion of epinicians, to the here and now of Pindar's contemporaries who commissioned him to compose songs to enhance their prestige. Since the diplomatic format of the ainos allows implicit warning in the context of explicit praise, the very trappings of a tyrant can be acknowledged as powerfully attractive, without any diminution of the moral impact in the overall message. Tyranny has its charms. It also becomes clear that the figure of the tyrant, overtly alien to Hellenic ways, is intended by the ainos as a latent reflection of what is native. The explicit other is the implicit self. This theme of "alien is
native," which has its origins in the straightforward ethnocentric tendency of appropriating what is foreign as a form of self-reassurance for the community, can thus be turned into a form of warning: if what you want to find from the outside is already available on the inside, then perhaps whatever you want to prevent from the outside has already emerged from within. This moral message is relentlessly persistent in the prose narrative of Herodotus, as if in an ainos.
§36. Chapter 11 shows that the parallelism between the messages in the prose of Herodotus and the lyric poetry of Pindar can best be observed in situations where Herodotus quotes or paraphrases poetry, particularly the nonlyric poetry of oracular utterances. Similar patterns of quoting or paraphrasing poetry can be found in the Lives of the Seven Sages tradition, as typified by the Life of Solon tradition. In the Herodotean sequences of prose and poetry, the train of thought matches the train of thought in Pindaric sequences of uninterrupted lyric poetry. In other words the framing of poetry by prose in Herodotus matches the continuum of lyric poetry in Pindar. Thus the logios 'master of speech' conveys ainos indirectly by framing poetry while the aoidos 'master of song' conveys it directly. This chapter brings to a close the comparison, ongoing since Chapter 9, of Pindar and Herodotus. The final point of emphasis is the sheer variety of poetic traditions, both nonlyric and lyric, that is quoted or cited by Herodotus. For Herodotus, the general category of poetry can accommodate even the Fables of Aesop and the Seven Sages tradition. What makes Herodotus a particularly rich resource for understanding the fullest possible range of fifth-century traditions in poetry and song is that he makes the themes of poetry and song a part of his own repertoire of composition and even of organization.
§37. Chapter 12 takes another look at the actual authority of the epinician in the larger context of the social function of the khoros 'song-and-dance ensemble, chorus' in the polis. It is argued that the chorus is the ultimate mimesis of authority in early Greek society, and that the very concept of authorship is ultimately defined by choral authority. In this light the argument is repeated that Archaic Greek poetry is the result of a differentiation of monodic song, which in turn had become differentiated from choral song and dance.
§38. Chapter 13 confronts the major historical phenomenon that stands between us and the vast repertoire of poetic traditions available to Herodotus and exemplified by Pindar. That phenomenon is the evolution of Athenian State Theater, pioneered by tyrants and perfected by the democracy. State Theater appropriated the repertoire of older poetic traditions and transformed it, in a vast and ongoing synthesis described by Plato as "theatrocracy." It is argued that the evolution of democratic poetics in Athenian State Theater is analogous, albeit on a much more complex level, to the evolution of aristocratic poetics in the choral medium of Pindar and even in the nonchoral medium of a figure like Archilochus. As the focus shifts to the later phases of the democracy in Athens, it becomes clear that the old-fashioned repertoire represented by the likes of Pindar could still survive in the context of monodic reperformances at symposia. Also the Classics of the old masters were still being taught in private schools. Nevertheless, the domain of public choral performance had become the primary domain of State Theater. The poets of State Theater, such as Aristophanes, could still express nostalgia for the more aristocratic choral medium of Pindar and even borrow from it, either directly or in parody, but the audiences at Athens were ultimately theirs, not Pindar's. Yet the lyric poetry of Pindar survived, because it became a textbook for those inner circles that wanted to perpetuate an old-fashioned and aristocratic choral medium of composition and performance. Pindar's actual medium of performance ultimately did not survive, but his words did, thanks to another kind of medium,
what I have just described as the textbook. Pindar's aristocratic medium of performance, even down to its last attested phases of extinction, was ever redolent of potential or real tyrants, the sort of social circles that had indeed once upon a time reshaped this medium by dint of their authority in the glory days of Pindar's prime.
§39. This point leads finally to Chapter 14, a retrospective summary of the relationship between the lyric heritage of Pindaric song and the epic heritage of Homeric poetry. For the Pindaric tradition, it is clear that Homer is the representative of all epic, not just the Iliad and Odyssey. For Pindar, the epic repertoire of Homer can be freely generated from his own inherited lyric repertoire, much as we can derive the Homeric hexameter from the inherited building-blocks of Pindar's meters. Whatever the merits of Homer, he is always held up as a foil for Pindar's own artistry.
§40. In ending my summary of the book on this particular note, which sets the tone for beginning the exposition in detail, I can do no better than quote Pindar himself on the tales of heroes told by Homer:
kai tauta men palaioteroi | hodon amaxiton heuron: hepomai de kai autos echôn meletan: | to de par podi naos helissomenon aiei kumatôn | legetai panti malista donein | thumon. hekonti d' egô nôtôi methepôn didumon achthos | angelos eban
All these things are a highway [amaxiton] which the men of old time [palaioteroi] discovered, and I follow it also, with premeditation [meletê]. But on a ship, they say, the wave that ever rolls nearest the keel [to...par podi] most concerns every man's heart. Gladly have I taken on my back a twofold burden [didumon akhthos] and come a messenger [angelos]. 1
Pindar is following in the path of epic with his own epinician themes. An expert in the art of
Pindar writes about this passage: 2
The word palaioteroi refers primarily to the epic poets; the word amaxiton 'highway' points to the expansiveness and, in both senses, popularity of epic; the word meletê 'premeditation' refers to his own craft or training ground; to...par podi '[the wave] nearest the keel' represents the here and now of the epinician occasion in opposition to the heroic past; the didumon akhthos 'twofold burden' is the double duty of praising the victor and praising the community at large; 3 and the word angelos refers to his own role as lyric "messenger."
All of which "draws together the strands of many matters in brief."
Notes
§1n1. N 1979.
§1n2. Two most important studies of oral tradition in epic poetry: Parry [1971] and Lord 1960.
§1n3. On this subject, I recommend the balanced judgment of Bausinger 1980.
§1n4. Bakhtin [1984b] 123-124.
§3n1. Solmsen 1981.83. Cf. Griffin 1984.134, where he refers to "some scholars" who "are now finding in the epics meanings of great subtlety which have been undetected for three millennia."
§3n2. In the case of Professor Solmsen, it gives me a sense of permanent loss that he died before this book was finished.
§4n1. I take note here of a convention in spelling. Greek authors whose names have survived in our inherited Classical canon will be spelled in Latin: thus Ibycus and Stesichorus, not Ibykos and Stesikhoros. Or in anglicized Latin: thus Pindar and Homer, not Pindaros and Homeros. The same goes for figures whose names are normally pronounced according to the Latin spelling, such as Croesus and Phoenix, not Kroisos and Phoinix. Otherwise, Greek names will be spelled in a modified transliteration of the Greek alphabet: thus Peisistratos and Polykrates, not Pisistratus and Polycrates. I regret that this convention frustrates the eternal reciprocity of fame promised by Ibycus to the tyrant Polykrates, as discussed in Ch.6.
§4n2. Cf. Kirkwood 1974.3.
§5n1. N 1974.
§5n2. Cf. Ch.1§38n1. Unlike most other attempts at tracing the history of the epic hexameter, my approach takes into account the phraseological as well as the metrical heritage: cf. Ritoók 1987.4, 6-7 (with an important reference at p. 6n17 to Monroe 1972.35). A central element of my argument is the noun + adjective combination kleos 'fame' [kleos] + aphthiton
'unfailing' [aphthiton], as attested in Iliad IX 413, the antiquity of which has recently been questioned by a variety of critics. For an effective answer to some of these questions, see Risch 1987, especially p. 4, where he points out a crucial oversight on the part of most experts who have expressed their views on this subject. See also Edwards 1988. Further discussion at Ch. 8§46n3.
§5n3. For other views on such questions, cf. Gentili and Giannini 1977.30n64, with reference to Peabody 1975.
§6n1. Cf. Ch.6§52 and following.
§11n1. For a particularly accessible discussion of these concepts, with essential bibliography, see Ducrot and Todorov 1979.137-144. In the realm of metrics, the dichotomy of synchrony and diachrony corresponds to what West 1982.64 distinguishes as definition and etymology.
§11n2. On the diachronic hierarchy of theme (in the sense of "a traditional unit of composition on the level of meaning") over formula (in the sense of ''a traditional unit of composition on the level
of wording") over meter (in the sense of ''a traditional unit of composition on the level of rhythm"), see N 1976 and the useful commentary of Cantilena 1982.41-45, 55-56. In the present work I have tried to answer some interesting points raised by Cantilena, pp. 42-43n30.
§12n1. Jakobson (1957) 1984.47; also Jakobson 1939. I omit the final segment of Jakobson's definition, "the general meaning of the corresponding unmarked category states nothing about the presence of A, and is used chiefly, but not exclusively, to indicate the absence of A," in light of the discussion by Comrie 1976.122 and n2 (thanks to H. Pelliccia). For further updating on the semantic applications of the terms marked and unmarked, with bibliography, I recommend Waugh 1982.
§12n2. For these and similar examples, see Waugh, pp. 307-308; also Ducrot and Todorov 1979.112-114. For a discussion of right-left as unmarked-marked categories, with useful bibliography, see Markey 1982.
§13n1. To quote his own words: "Quand à la suite d'une transformation morphologique une forme subit la différentiation, la forme nouvelle correspond à sa fonction primaire (de fondation), la forme ancienne est réservée pour la fonction secondaire (fondée)" (Kurylowicz [1966] 169). By older form I mean simply the form that is already assigned to a given function, whereas by newer form I mean the form that is about to be assigned. As an example, I cite English quick, cognate of Latin uîuos 'alive': quick was ousted from the sphere of meaning 'living, alive', becoming semantically specialized in the sense of 'lively' and, eventually, 'quick' (the older meaning is still evident in such fossils as the quick and the dead, or bite the nails to the quick). Kurylowicz's fourth law is pertinent to the following formulation of Bakhtin [1984] 410: "The object that has been destroyed remains in the world but in a new form of being in time and space; it becomes the 'other side' of the new object that has taken its place." There are of course patterns of development that may be described as alternatives to Kurylowicz's fourth law. For one, there will be situations where the competition between newer and older forms leads to the ousting of the older form by the newer form altogether. Or else the newer and older forms may achieve coexistence in a suppletive relationship (as in Latin ferô/ ferre / tulî / lâtus, where the first two principal parts are "older," while the second two are "newer"; similarly in tollô, tollere, sustulî, sublâtus) or as morphophonemic variants (on which see Householder and Nagy 1972.758).
§14n1. For a brief history of the varying terminology used for these concepts, see Waugh, p. 303.
§15n1. Further details about this unit at Appendix §10n3. {FORMAT: _ = longum, o = breve, x
= breve over longum.}
§15n2. Poultney 1979.139. Cf. Itsumi 1982.60-61 (who does not cite Poultney).
§15n3. Further details in N 1974.37-38. Other patterns that tend to be avoided in the first half are o_o_ and o_ (also oo and oo ): Poultney, p. 139. These other patterns, as we shall see in the Appendix, are actually related to _oo_, which is the primary pattern to be excluded from the disordered first half. Itsumi 1982.60 has found two exceptional cases of choriambic dimeter with the pattern _oo_ in the first half; both occur in the choral lyrics of Euripides (Orestes 839 and Iphigeneia in Tauris 435). Given that Itsumi has collected some 400 attestations of the choriambic dimeter in the corpus of Euripides (p. 61), and that he can point to only two examples where the
pattern _oo_ occurs in the first half, I find that his own statistical findings reinforce my observation that the pattern _oo_ is traditionally avoided in the first half of the choriambic dimeter. Moreover, Itsumi himself stresses that Euripides is in many respects an innovator in his use of the choriambic dimeter (e.g., p. 72). Since he can cite no exceptions to the pattern of avoiding _oo_ in the first half of choriambic dimeter in Archaic Greek metrics and a strikingly low percentage of exceptions in the more innovative metrics of Euripides, I fail to see the validity of his disagreement (p. 60) with the formulation offered in N 1974.37, where I say that "the opening of the choriambic dimeter must be free, and therefore it is not allowed to be a choriamb itself." Also, it is misleading for Itsumi to say that the first half of choriambic dimeter "should not be regarded as a separate component" since it "does not appear in isolation" (p. 69). A comparative analysis of the available metrical evidence, as in the discussion at N, pp. 37-38, is not predicated on the notion that the first half of choriambic dimeter is a "separate component." It is a component, yes, but not a separate component.
§15n4. This interpretation differs from the approach of Itsumi 1982 to the choriambic dimeter. He assumes that rhythmical freedom in the first half of the choriambic dimeter can be posited only if we find every possible combination of long and short quantities there. No such assumption is necessary since the freedom of the first half is already assured by the simple fact of variability in its rhythmical patterns, as opposed to the invariability of the patterns in the second half. Even if the third of the first four syllables in attested choriambic dimeters is regularly long (Itsumi, p. 60), the variety of patterns in the first, second, and fourth syllables still constitutes a sector of variability in the entire first half of choriambic dimeter, as opposed to a sector of invariability in the second half. There is a symmetry in the opposition between a variable opening half and an invariable closing half. I recommend a close reading of Allen 1973.106, with its enhanced perspective of comparative evidence on the topic of interaction between rhythmically flexible openings and rigid closings in metrical units, as a counterweight to the limitations imposed by Itsumi's strictly descriptivist interpretations of available metrical data. On the general tendency of maintaining a tension between ideal and actual patterns at the beginning of the line and of solving this tension at the end of the line, see Allen, p. 110. Cf. also Appendix §11. Moreover, the notion that an initial pattern of xx_o in choriambic dimeter precedes the pattern xx_x historically (Itsumi,
p. 71) seems to me counterintuitive from the standpoint of comparative metrics. I also disagree with the notion that the choriambic dimeter may have been "created" by way of changes in the glyconic (ibid.); cf. Appendix §10.
§15n7. Cf. Ch.10
§16n1. For a crucial discussion from the standpoint of ancient Greek society, see Svenbro 1987 (1988); cf. also Detienne 1988.
§16n2. A common pitfall is the failure to observe the drastic changes in the very notion of literacy that were occasioned by two historical events: the diffusion of the technology of printing and the Reformation. See Ong 1982.117-138; also Ong 1986.168-169. Cf. also Zwettler 1978.24.
§17n1. Austin 1962. Cf. also Searle 1979.
§17n2. Johnson 1980.56. On the term shifter, referring to forms where the referent can be determined only from the standpoint of the interlocutors, see Jakobson 1957. For an application of speech-act theory to Archaic Greek poetics: Martin 1989.
§17n3. Ibid. Benveniste 1966.274.
§18n1. For a working definition of occasion in terms of ritual and myth in small-scale societies, see Ch.1§27.
§18n2. On the Hellenistic concept of genre as a form that re-creates the lost occasion, see Ch. 12§47n3.
§19n1. Cf. Bauman 1977.
§19n2. More at Ch.2, Ch.12.
§21n1. Eagleton 1983.viii
§22n1. Bundy 1972.90n113.
§24n1. For exemplary works on Homeric references in Pindar, where the emphasis is not so much on the independence of Pindar's lyric tradition as on the independence of Pindar himself as an individual poet, see, for example, Race 1986.58-62 and Pelliccia 1987. Cf. also Nisetich 1989; at pp. 1-5 he offers a survey of works that address the question of Homer's influence on Pindar,
Fitch 1924, Young 1968, Stoneman 1981. I object, however, to the remark in Nisetich, pp. 4-5: "The transformation of Arctinus' Leuce into Pindar's Island of the Blest necessarily escapes notice if we insist on treating the one as if it were the equivalent of the other." As a case in point he refers to N 1979.167, 207, among other discussions. This is to misconstrue what was being analyzed in those pages. I was not treating one myth as if it were the "equivalent" of another: rather, I was comparing variant myths that are cognate with each other. To argue that given
variants are cognates is a far cry from treating one myth as if it were the equivalent of another and failing to notice differences. The very concept of variation, of multiformity in myth making, requires the recognition of differences as well as similarities between traditional patterns. The existence of multiforms in myth, however, leads to serious methodological difficulties. I cite N, pp. 42-43, for example, where I discuss the pitfalls of trying to establish an "Ur-form" on the basis of multiforms in a given tradition. To assume that variation results merely from multiple instances of personal artistic creation, as implied for example by Nisetich's reference to "Arctinus' Leuce," is to risk the slighting of tradition itself as a vital component of the creative process in Archaic Greek poetry. I fail to see why Nisetich thinks that anyone would have a problem with the idea of "transformation" in comparing one version with another. The real problem is: to what extent is tradition involved in such transformation? My book seeks answers.
§40n1. The translation of Pindar here, as also elsewhere, is based primarily on the work of Lattimore 1976, though I have attempted several adjustments. I offer special thanks to W. H. Race for helping me with many of these adjustments.
§40n2. W. H. Race per litteras 7/5/1988.
§40n3. Cf. Bundy [1986] 82. Alternatively, as T. K. Hubbard suggests to me, the "twofold burden" may be the praising of both the epic past and the epinician present.
§1. The theory of oral poetry as set forth by Milman Parry and Albert Lord resists application to Archaic Greek poetry only if oral poetry is defined too narrowly by the opponents of the theory-- and if the surviving poetry of Archaic Greece is treated too broadly as a general example of oral poetry. In what follows, I attempt not only to sketch a concept of oral poetry that is broad enough to accommodate the various forms of ancient Greek poetry but also to redefine these forms in terms of specific sub-types of oral poetry. 1
§2. The most secure basis for inquiry into the varieties of oral poetry is that of social anthropology. 1 From the vantage point of social anthropologists, various forms of song, poetry, and prose have functioned and continue to function in various ways in various societies without the aid of--in most cases without the existence of--writing. 2 From this vantage point we should not even be talking about oral poetry, for example, as distinct from poetry but rather about written poetry as possibly distinct from poetry: in other words, written poetry is the marked member of the opposition, and the poetry that we call oral is the unmarked. 3
§3. From the vantage point of our own times, however, poetry is by definition written poetry, and what we need to do first is to broaden our concept of poetry. Aside from questions of oral poetry and written poetry, the very word poetry becomes a source of confusion, in that it excludes dimensions normally included in the word song.
§4. The semantic differentiation between poetry and song affects the nomenclature of constituent elements common to these two differently perceived media: for example, whereas poetry is said to have meter, song has rhythm. This conventional distinction has a long history. There are traces attested in the scholarship of the fourth century B.C., where proponents of a rhythmical approach to poetry had an ongoing argument with proponents of a metrical approach. 1 The argument continues to this day, with the "metricians" emphasizing the patterns of alternating long and short
syllables in the text as it is composed, and the "rhythmicians," the patterns of rhythm in the song as it is performed. In their argumentation the rhythmicians tend to define poetry in terms of song while the metricians tend to define song in terms of poetry. 2 My position is closer to that of the rhythmicians, to the extent that the affinities between song and poetry in ancient Greece can be viewed in terms of an evolution of various kinds of song into something differentiated from song--let us call it poetry--so that song and poetry can then coexist as alternative forms of expression. This point is elaborated as the discussion proceeds.
§5. Another point to be elaborated concerns Archaic Greek poetry and song in general, which I define for the moment as all attested poetry and song from Homer to Pindar: throughout this book, I argue against the need to assume that the medium of writing was necessary for the medium of composition or for the medium of performance and reperformance. 1
§6. Let us begin the extended discussion by considering the level of poetry, proceeding from there to the level of song. My premise stems from the observation of Albert Lord, based primarily on ethnographic field work in South Slavic traditions, that composition and performance in oral poetry are aspects of the same process, in that each performance is an act of recomposition. 1 Suffice it for now to add that so long as the traditions of oral poetry are alive in a given society, a written record cannot by itself affect a composition or a performance, and that it cannot stop the process of recomposition in performance. 2
§7. The basic forms of ancient Greek poetry are traditionally classified in terms of metrical types:
dactylic hexameter (Homeric epic and hymns, 1 Hesiodic wisdom- and catalogue-poetry) 2
elegiac distich = dactylic hexameter + "pentameter" (as in Archilochus, Callinus, Mimnermus, Tyrtaeus, Theognis, Solon, Xenophanes, and so on)
iambic trimeter (as in Archilochus, Hipponax, Semonides, Solon, and so on; also as in fifth-century Athenian tragedy and comedy).
§8. In each of these metrical types of Greek poetry, I propose that the format of performance was recitative as opposed to melodic. This is not to say that such forms of poetry had no prescribed patterning in pitch. But patterns of pitch in poetry were formally and functionally distinct from the patterns of pitch that we, on the basis of our own cultural conditioning, recognize as melody in song. On the level of form, the difference is not as drastic as suggested by the contrast of monotone with song. I find the term recitative more suitable than monotone, to the extent that it does not necessarily convey the absence of melody. I use the term recitation to indicate either the absence or the reduction of melody. The contrast between not-sung (or recitative) and sung (or melodic) is attested most clearly in fifth-centry Athenian tragedy, where the iambic trimeter of dialogue was "spoken" by actors while a wide variety of other meters were sung and danced by a khoros 'chorus', to the accompaniment of an aulos 'reed'. 1 It bears emphasis that khoros 'chorus' in Greek is a group that sings and dances, to the accompaniment of wind or string instruments, and that, in Greek traditions, the concept of song is fundamentally connected with the concept of the chorus. 2
§9. In the claim just made for the iambic trimeter of Athenian tragedy, the argumentation is
relatively secure. What follows, however, is a matter of controversy. I am proposing that an absence or at least a reduction of melody--and an absence of instrumental accompaniment and dance--eventually developed not only in the iambic trimeter of dialogue in Athenian drama but also in the iambic trimeter of the old iambic poets (Archilochus, Hipponax, Semonides, Solon, and so on), in the elegiac distich of the old elegiac poets (Archilochus, Callinus, Mimnermus, Tyrtaeus, Theognis, Solon, Xenophanes, and so on), and in the dactylic hexameter of Homer and Hesiod. This proposition may at first seem startling, in view of such internal testimony as Homer's bidding his Muse to sing the anger of Achilles (Iliad I 1) or Archilochus' boasting that he knows how to 'lead a choral performance' (verb exarkhô) of a dithyramb (F 120 W). 1 The significance of this evidence, however, is not what it may first appear, and we must examine it more closely. To begin, the internal evidence of Homeric and Hesiodic diction tells us that the word aeidô 'sing' (as in Iliad I 1) is a functional synonym, in contexts where the medium refers to its own performance, of the word e(n)nepô 'narrate, recite' (as in Odyssey i 1), which does not explicitly designate singing. 2 For some, the functional synonymity of aeidô 'sing' and e(n)nepô 'narrate, recite' is proof that the narrative format must be song--that the Homeric (and presumably Hesiodic) poems were sung and accompanied on the lyre. 3 For others, however, the equating of a word that refers to strategies of narrating Homeric and Hesiodic poetry with a word that refers to the format of singing to the accompaniment of a lyre proves only that such poetry had such a format in some phase of its evolution. 4 Self-references in Archaic Greek poetry may be diachronically valid without being synchronically true. 5 This phenomenon may be designated as diachronic skewing.
§10. For example, the epic poetry of Homer refers to epic poetry as a medium that was performed in the context of an evening's feast. Yet we know that the two epic poems of Homer, by virtue of their sheer length alone, defy this context. 1 If we look for the earliest historical evidence, we see that the actually attested context for performing the Iliad and Odyssey was already in the sixth century not simply the informal occasion of an evening's feast but rather the formal occasion of a festival of Panhellenic repute, such as the Panathenaia in Athens. 2 The performers at such festivals were rhapsôidoi 'rhapsodes'. 3 In Plato's Ion the rhapsode Ion is dramatized as just having arrived at Athens in order to compete in the rhapsodic contest of the Panathenaia (Ion 530ab). That the rhapsodes who performed at such festivals were in competition with each other is evident also from the reference in Herodotus (5.67.1) to agônes 'contests' (agônizesthai) in the public performance of "Homer's words" by rhapsôidoi 'rhapsodes' in the city-state of Sikyon, which were banned under the reign of the tyrant Kleisthenes. 4
§11. In the case of Homeric poetry, the earliest phases of rhapsodic transmission are associated with the Homêridai, a corporation of rhapsodes who traced themselves to an ancestor called Homêros (Pindar Nemean2.1; Plato Phaedrus 252b; Strabo 14.1.33-35 C 645; Contest of Homer and Hesiod, p. 226.13-15 Allen). 1 The basic testimony is most clearly set forth in the scholia to Pindar (Nemean2.1c, III 29.9-18 Drachmann), while the equation of the Homeridai with rhapsodes is specified in the actual text of Pindar (Nemean2.1-3).
§12. The scholia to Pindar (again Nemean2.1c, III 29.9-18 Drachmann) also specify that
rhapsodes such as Kynaithos of Chios, credited with the final form of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, could no longer trace themselves to Homer. In other words the tradition continued by Kynaithos is here being discredited by the sources as no longer authorized by the Homeridai. This Kynaithos is said (ibid.) to have been the first rhapsode to recite Homeric poetry at Syracuse, in the 69th Olympiad (504/1 B.C.), according to Hippostratus (FGH 568 F 5). By implication, Kynaithos was the first recorded winner in a seasonally recurring festival at Syracuse that featured a competition of rhapsodes. 1 As other possible examples of Homeric transmission not authorized by the Homeridai, I cite the traditions about the introduction of Homeric poetry to Sparta by Lycurgus the Lawgiver: he is said to have received the tradition not from the Homêridai of Chios but from the Kreôphûleioi (Kreophyleioi) of Samos, who traced themselves back to an ancestor called Kreophylos of Samos (Plutarch Life of Lycurgus 4). 2
§13. The ancient sources make it explicit that the rhapsodes, in performing Homeric poetry at the Panathenaia, were constrained by law to take turns in narrating the poetry in its proper sequence ("Plato" Hipparchus 228b and Diogenes Laertius 1.57). 1 In other words, even if the size of either the Iliad or the Odyssey ultimately defied performance by any one person at any one sitting, the monumental proportions of these compositions could evolve in a social context where the sequence of performance, and thereby the sequence of narrative, could be regulated, as in the case of the Panathenaia. 2
§14. From this rapid survey of rhapsodic traditions in the performance of Homeric poetry, I conclude that the model of simultaneous composition and performance by an oral poet at a feast had evolved organically into a quite different model, with the continuity of composed narrative achieved through a continuum of performance by rhapsodes who take turns at occasions like a Panhellenic festival. 1 The point that I am making about the context of Homeric performance applies also to the medium of performance: just as the Homeric testimony about the performance of epic by singers at feasts belies the synchronic reality of the performance of epic by rhapsodes at Panhellenic festivals, so also the Homeric testimony about the singer's singing to the accompaniment of the lyre belies the synchronic reality of the rhapsode's reciting without any accompaniment at all. On the basis of available evidence, it appears that rhapsodes did not sing the compositions that they performed but rather recited them without the accompaniment of the lyre. 2 So also with Hesiodic poetry: the internal testimony of the composition represents a theogony that is simultaneously sung and danced by the local Muses of Helikon (Theogony3-4, 8), 3 and yet we know that the Theogony, as also the other Hesiodic compositions, was in fact recited by rhapsodes. 4 This is not to say that hexameter could not be sung in the Archaic period: 5 only that hexameter evolved into poetry as distinct from song, and that its fundamental form of rendition, as poetry, was recitation. 6
§15. Similarly with old iambic and elegiac poetry we see that the internal testimony refers to choral singing and dancing to the accompaniment of the lyre (as in Theognis791; cf. 776-779), 1 or singing to both the lyre and the aulos 'reed' (531-534, 759-764), 2 or singing to the aulos alone (825-830, 943-944, 1055-1058, 1065-1068). 3 But in fact the external evidence points in another
direction, namely, that the attested traditional format of performing the iambic trimeter and the elegiac distich in the Classical period and beyond was simply recitative. The crucial passage is Aristotle Poetics 1447b9-23, 4 about which it has been said that "it is our earliest explicit testimony about the mode of performance of elegiac." 5 This is not to say that elegiac distich and iambic trimeter had not in earlier stages been compatible with instrumental (and vocal) melody. In the case of elegiac we can cite not only the internal evidence of references to the aulos but even the possible external evidence of testimony in Pausanias and elsewhere for such earlier stages. 6
§16. The fact remains that the professional performers of old iambic and elegiac poetry were not singers but rhapsodes. 1 The crucial passages in this regard are Plato Ion 531a, 532a, with references to rhapsodic performance of the poetry of Archilochus, and Athenaeus 620cd, 632d, a difficult set of references to which we shall return presently. The notion of rhapsôidos 'rhapsode' can refer to amateur performances as well, as in Plato Timaeus 21b1-7, a passage that describes how the young Critias took part in "rhapsodic" contests in performing the poetry of Solon and others. 2
§17. All this is not to say that the references made in Archaic iambic or elegiac poetry to choral performance or instrumental accompaniment are diachronically wrong: as I have been arguing, they are in fact diachronically correct, 1 and it is not without reason that even the performance of a rhapsode is from a traditional point of view an act of "singing" (e.g., Plato Ion 535b). 2 Still, such references are synchronically inaccurate, becoming a source of confusion.
§18. In one particular case, the testimony of Athenaeus 620cd, 632d, 1 we must make a special effort to sort out the chronologically diverse strata of information. For example, Athenaeus 620c quotes Clearchus (F 92 Wehrli) as saying that one 'Simonides of Zakynthos used to perform, rhapsode-style, the compositions of Archilochus in theaters, while seated on a stool [diphros]' (ta Archilochou, phêsin, Simônidês ho Zakunthios en tois theatrois epi diphrou kathêmenos errapsôidei). 2 Also, there is a report of a rhapsode called Mnasion who performed the iambic poetry of Semonides (Athenaeus ibid.) 3 and of a rhapsode called Kleomenes who performed the Katharmoi of Empedocles at the Olympics (Dicaearchus F 87 Wehrli, by way of Athenaeus ibid. and Diogenes Laertius 8.63). 4 Similarly we read at Athenaeus 632d that the poetry of Xenophanes, Solon, Theognis, and the like was composed without melody (cf. also Aristoxenus F 92 Wehrli, with commentary). But we also read at Athenaeus 620c (= Chamaeleon F 28 Wehrli) that the poems of Homer, Hesiod, and Archilochus could be sung melodically. This statement follows up on the immediately preceding discussion, at Athenaeus 620b, of Homêristai. These Homêristai seem to be distinct from the rhapsôidoi, 5 and they represent the innovative practice of taking passages that were traditionally recited and setting these passages to music (cf. the references to Homer at Athenaeus 632d; there is also a similar reference to Hesiod in Plutarch Sympotic Questions 736e). Such activity was characteristic of the post-Classical era, 6 about which it has been said: "So great is the ascendancy of song over speech that, in the [Hellenistic] revivals of tragic and comic texts of the 5th and 4th centuries B.C., it even takes over
the parts composed in iambic trimeters, intended originally for simple recitation." 7
§19. Once such a phase is reached, where traditionally recited pieces of poetry are being set to music, it becomes easy to confuse and reinterpret the diachrony of various sung and recited meters that are obviously related to each other. For example, apparently on the basis of parallelisms in meter and diction between Homer and Terpander, a representative of Archaic lyric who was credited with the composition of songs sung to the lyre, 1 Heraclides Ponticus is cited as saying that Terpander set his own poems and those of Homer to music (F 157 Wehrli in "Plutarch" On Music 1132c). So also Stesichorus is described as having set what are described as his epê, loosely to be translated as hexameters, to music ("Plutarch" On Music 1132c). As we see later, this hexameter of Stesichorus is cognate with, but not identical to, the Homeric hexameter. 2 Further, Archilochus is credited with the invention of the parakatalogê, that is, a delivery characterized by reduced rather than full melody, with the accompaniment of a musical instrument ("Plutarch" On Music 1141a). 3 In "Aristotle" Problems 19.6, the parakatalogê is described as a form of delivery that explicitly contrasts with song. 4 Archilochus is generally credited with 'introducing the practice of having some iambics spoken with instrumental accompaniment and others sung with it' (eti de tôn iambeiôn to ta men legesthai para tên krousin, ta de aidesthai, Archilochon phasi katadeixai "Plutarch" On Music 1141b).
§20. The reported distinctions, with reference to the "inventions" of Archilochus, between iambics that are sung as well as instrumentally accompanied and those that are not sung, that is, with reduced melody, though instrumentally accompanied, are valuable in revealing an intermediate stage in what I argue is an evolution from sung to spoken forms in the Archaic period. The claim that Archilochus was the actual inventor of the sung and the intermediate forms can be discounted as readily as the parallel claim that he invented the iambic trimeter (see On Music 1140f). What is essential is that these "inventions" are then correlated with historically attested innovations that start with the late fifth century, such as those of Crexus, in setting iambic meters to music (On Music 1141b); Crexus was a contemporary of Timotheus and Philoxenus (1135c). 1 In the post-Classical period, when poetry is being set to music--that is, the period starting with the likes of Crexus, Timotheus, and Philoxenus--we see that the archaic forms of song, as also of reduced song, like parakatalogê, are being treated as if they too were such "innovations". 2
§21. We can be satisfied with the diachronic correctness of ancient Greek poetry's references to itself as song by noting that such self-references are traditional, not innovative. The traditional phrases in Homeric poetry and elsewhere about the subject of singing and song have an Indo- European ancestry. 1 Even the word rhapsôidos 'rhapsode', designating the professional reciter of poetry, is built on a concept of artistic self-reference ('he who stitches together the song') that is likewise of Indo-European provenience. 2 The institutional reality of formal competition among rhapsodes, immortalized for us in Plato's dialogue Ion (530a), 3 seems to be a direct heritage of formal competition among singers, as reflected directly in passages like Homeric Hymn6.19-20 4 and indirectly in the numerous myths about such competitions. 5 There is enough evidence, then,
to conclude that what the rhapsodes recited was directly descended from what earlier singers had sung. 6
§22. There is no compelling reason to believe that the medium of writing had anything to do with the traditions of the rhapsodes. 1 In fact there is positive evidence that their mnemonic techniques were independent of writing. The textual tradition of Homeric poetry as we have it stems from Hellenistic Alexandria, where the practice of accentual notation was invented. This textual tradition bears witness to certain archaic patterns of Homeric accentuation that were no longer current in the everyday Greek language--patterns that can now be verified through the application of Indo-European linguistics. 2 This comparative evidence leads to the conclusion that these patterns were preserved through norms of recitation inherited by the rhapsodes; the factor of writing seems to be ruled out, since a textual tradition for the notation of accents was evidently lacking before Alexandrian times. 3 Even in such matters of minute detail, we may infer that the oral tradition of the rhapsodes was inherited--albeit in an ossified or crystalized phase--from the oral tradition of the singers who came before them. 4
§23. Up to this point, I have used the term oral tradition only in a broad sense--to the extent that the medium of writing is not to be taken as a prerequisite for either composition or transmission. As we approach the subject of oral poetry in particular, I am for the moment more interested in the applicability of the term poetry, as distinct from song, to the oral traditions of ancient Greece. We have seen that a differentiation seems to have taken place, which can be represented in the following diachronic scheme: 1
basis derivation SONG song types
vs.
poetry
vs. SPEECH
By SPEECH I mean everyday or unmarked language, and by SONG I mean special or marked
language that is set off from SPEECH on the formal level of phonology, morphology, syntax, or any combination of these three. 2 From a functional point of view, SONG would be any speech- act that is considered set apart from plain or everyday speech from the standpoint of a given society. 3
§24. The perception of plain or everyday SPEECH is a variable abstraction that depends on the concrete realization of whatever special speech, or SONG, is set apart for a special context. In small-scale societies, the setting apart would normally happen in terms of myth and ritual.
§25. I use the word ritual here not in terms of our own cultural preconceptions but in terms of the broadest possible anthropological perspective. 1 For the moment, I invoke the working definition of ritual offered by Walter Burkert: "Ritual, in its outward aspect, is a programme of
demonstrative acts to be performed in set sequence and often at a set place and time--sacred insofar as every omission or deviation arouses deep anxiety and calls forth sanctions. As communication and social imprinting, ritual establishes and secures the solidarity of the closed group." 2 The insistence of ritual on a set order of things should not be misunderstood to mean that all rituals are static and that all aspects of rituals are rigid. Even when a given society deems a given ritual to be static and never changing, it may in fact be dynamic and ever changing, responding to the ever changing structure of the society that it articulates. Also, even within the strict framework of a given ritual, the various rigid patterns that conform to an ideology of unchangeability may be combined with various flexible patterns that conform to the needs of the here and now. Such is the case with the festivals of Greek city-states.
§26. As for myth, it can be defined for the moment as "a traditional narrative that is used as a designation of reality. Myth is applied narrative. Myth describes a meaningful and important reality that applies to the aggregate, going beyond the individual." 1
§27. In small-scale societies--rather than complex ones--we can observe most clearly the symbiosis of ritual and myth, how neither is to be derived from the other, and how the language of ritual and myth is marked, let us call it SONG, while everyday language, SPEECH, is unmarked. To repeat, the perception of plain or everyday speech is a variable abstraction that depends on the concrete realization of whatever special speech is set apart for a special context, let us call it occasion. In small-scale societies, the setting apart is normally a matter of ritual and myth, and the idea of ritual includes not only such basic activities as sacrifice and prayer but also such diverse occasions as meeting, eating and drinking, courtship, hunting, gathering, farming, building, and traveling. 1 The marked speech-acts associated with the special occasions of ritual and myth are what we are calling SONG. Internal criteria for marked speech-acts can be expected to vary from society to society: what may be marked in one may be unmarked or everyday in another. A striking example is the Bahutu convention of singing one kind of song while paddling upstream, another while paddling downstream. 2 There are potential differentiations of marked and unmarked categories within everyday language as well.
§28. Marked speech-acts could be a matter of denial as well as affirmation or reinforcement, as in the case of the Greek word an-ain-omai 'deny', opposed to an unattested *ain-omai 'affirm'. The form *ain-omai conveys that the thing affirmed is a social contract, in the broadest sense, as we can see from the derivative of *ain-omai, ainos, in the sense of 'legislative decision or resolution'. 1 In other words ainos is authoritative speech: it is an affirmation, a marked speech-act, made by and for a marked social group. 2
§29. In complex societies--and the situation in Archaic Greece can already be described as such-- the pervasiveness of myth and ritual, as well as their connectedness with each other, may be considerably weakened. Still, the marking of speech, that is, the turning of unmarked SPEECH into marked SONG, may persist as the basic way to convey meaning in the context of ritual and myth. There is a reflex of this pattern in the usage of the Greek verb muô, which means 'I have my mouth closed' or 'I have my eyes closed' in everyday situations, 1 but 'I say in a special way' or 'I see in a special way' in marked situations of ritual. The latter meaning is evident in the
derivatives mustês 'one who is initiated' and mustêrion 'that into which one is initiated, mystery [Latin mysterium]'. 2 So also the word mûthos 'myth', it has been argued, is a derivative of the same root from which muô is derived; 3 its special meaning seems to be 'special speech' as opposed to everyday speech. 4 For an illustration of the semantics underlying the usage of these Greek words, I cite Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus 1641-1644: the visualization and the verbalization of whatever it was that finally happened to Oedipus in the precinct of the Eumenides at Colonus are restricted, in that the precise location of his corpse is a sacred secret (1545-1546, 1761-1763). 5 Only Theseus, by virtue of being the proto-priest by hindsight for the Athenians of the here and now, is to witness what happened, which is called the drômena (1644). 6 Here the visualization and the verbalization of the myth, what happened to Oedipus, is restricted to the sacred context of ritual, controlled by the heritage of priestly authority from Theseus. 7
§30. From an anthropological standpoint, myth is indeed special speech in that it is a given society's way of affirming its own reality through narrative. 1 In Homeric diction, we see that the ancestor of our word myth, Greek mûthos, actually designates speech-acts, such as formal boasts, threats, laments, invectives, prophecies, prayers, and so on. 2 Let us for the moment take as a given, then, that the function of marked speech is to convey meaning in the context of ritual and myth.
§31. In most societies, not only the smaller-scale but the more complex as well, the pattern of opposition between marked and unmarked speech takes the form of an opposition between SONG and SPEECH respectively, with the "singing" of SONG being marked by a wide variety of patterns resulting from constraints on available features of SPEECH in the given language. From the standpoint of our own cultural preconceptions, singing is a patterning of both melody (stylized tone or intonation) 1 and rhythm (stylized duration and/or intensity). 2 From a cross cultural survey of a variety of societies, however, it is evident that singing may also be equated with many other available types of stylized phonological patterning, such as isosyllabism, rhyme, assonance, and alliteration, and that the patterning of SONG extends to the levels of morphology and syntax as well. 3 Moreover, there is a potential reinforcement of SONG with motor activity, as minimal as muscular tension 4 or as maximal as corresponding movement of the body in the form of dance. 5 With reference to dance, from this point onward, I argue that the activity of dancing to the words of SONG is primary, while dancing without the subtext, as it were, of SONG is secondary. 6
§32. This topic brings us to yet another type of markedness, yet another level of reinforcement for SONG, instrumental music. I also argue that instrumental accompaniment of the words of SONG is primary, while instrumental solo is secondary. 1 In the case of instrumental music, there can even come about a transition from marking speech as special to imitating special speech. 2 In making these arguments, my central point remains that the essential characteristic of SONG is the simple fact of its actual markedness or distinctness from everyday SPEECH.
§33. Let us pursue the argument with a tentative formulation on the level of phonology, considering the elements of rhythm and melody, prime constituents of our notion of singing. From the standpoint of the Greek language, what potentially sets SONG apart from SPEECH is a differentiation in patterns of duration / intensity (eventually rhythm) and pitch (eventually melody). 1 In a later stage of development what sets song apart from poetry is a further differentiation on the level of pitch (melody), so that song is plus melody while poetry is minus melody or reduced melody. The notion of plus melody is in line with such terms as lyric poetry or melic poetry, applicable to the medium of the main figure of this book, the poet Pindar.
§34. My view of poetry as something derived from SONG and differentiated from song runs counter to the view of metricians for whom song is poetry set to music. According to this second of two possible lines of thought, music would be extrinsic to language. This other view, however, runs counter to the experience of field work in ethnomusicology, a discipline that has built a strong case against the fallacy of treating music as a "universal language." 1 Our own cultural prejudices in favor of such a concept can be traced to medieval Europe, where the eventual dissociation of language and music was already under way. 2 Toward the end of the fourteenth century, Eustache Deschamps already made a distinction between the "natural music" of language and the "artificial music" of traditional melodies. 3 But it is clear in this case that the association of language and music is primary. For example, a study of attested traditions of Provençal singing has shown that only with the eventual divorce of melody from "text" can melody take on the characteristics that we, from the standpoint of our own cultural preconceptions, can recognize as music. 4 With the advent of polyphony, the motet can triumph over its libretto; but before that, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the melodic traditions were still bound to phraseological traditions of song. 5 From the standpoint of medieval poetics, recognition as one good at melodies merely required a good vocal register; 6 a singer could be good at producing melodies and still be bad at producing words--and therefore a bad singer. 7
§35. Of the two terms, lyric and melic, the first is the more elusive in that it tends to be applied in contemporary academic usage to practically all Archaic Greek poetry except Homer and Hesiod. For my purposes, however, lyric is still the more useful term since it is more general. As such, lyric is suitable for distinguishing the general notion of song from the more specific one of poetry, which is restricted to the recitative medium of epic, elegiac, and iambic trimeter. From here on I use the word lyric as a parallel to song, excluding the elegiac and the iambic trimeter. In current usage such exclusion is generally not observed. It is instructive to notice, however, one particular constraint even in current usage against the application of the term lyric: we cannot say that the iambic trimeter of Athenian tragedy and comedy is lyric for the simple reason that it is patently recited as opposed to sung. As for what is sung, we call that lyric by way of opposition to what is recited. Thus the opposition of lyric meters and iambic trimeter in Athenian drama is that of song and poetry. We may note the dictum of Aristotle to the effect that iambic trimeter approximates, more closely than any other meter, everyday speech in real life (Poetics 1449a22-27; cf. Rhetoric 1408b33). Thus the opposition of song and poetry in tragedy not only recapitulates diachronically an earlier opposition of SONG and SPEECH: it also imitates synchronically the actual opposition of SONG and SPEECH in "real life."
§36. Whereas the iambic trimeter of tragedy regularly imitates SPEECH, the dactylic hexameter of epic occasionally imitates SONG, whenever Homeric poetry "quotes" a speech-act like a song of lament. 1 Thus the dactylic hexameter of epic, unlike the iambic trimeter of drama, is not used as a contrast to song; rather it can be used as an imitation of song. This distinction between these two kinds of poetry helps explain Aristotle's perception that the rhythms of dactylic hexameter, unlike those of iambic trimeter, are not close to those of everyday speech (Poetics 1449a27-28). In any case, the art of imitating SPEECH, as achieved in the medium of the iambic trimeter, can be measured by its realistic effects: the more the realism, the greater the artifice. 2
§37. Undifferentiated SONG as opposed to SPEECH can be imagined as having had features that ranged all the way from what we see in differentiated song to what we see in poetry. Thus, for example, SONG in any given society may or may not require melody. In other words what counts as poetry for us may in another given society count as song if there are no melodic prerequisites. In this light, I cite a particularly useful formulation by Dan Ben-Amos, based on a wide cross cultural variety of ethnographic data:
The existence or absence of metric substructure in a message is the quality first recognized in any communicative event and hence serves as the primary and most inclusive attribute for the categorization of oral tradition. Consequently, prose [= what I have been calling SPEECH] and poetry [= what I have been calling SONG] constitute a binary set in which the metric substructure is the crucial attribute that differentiates between these two major divisions. It serves as the definitive feature that polarizes any verbal communication and does not provide any possible intermediary positions. A message is either rhythmic or not. However, within the category of poetry [in my sense of SONG], speakers may be able to perceive several patterns of verbal metrical redundancy which they would recognize as qualitatively different genres. 1
§38. This statement, useful as it is, can be made more precise with reference to the term metric
substructure. First, I turn to the cross cultural linguistic evidence assembled by W. S. Allen, showing that all phraseology has built-in rhythm. 1 In line with this thinking, I would argue that the inherited words of SONG contain the rhythm, from a diachronic point of view. In an earlier work on Greek and Indic metrics, I had put it this way:
At first, the reasoning goes, traditional phraseology simply contains built-in rhythms. Later, the factor of tradition leads to the preference of phrases with some rhythms over phrases with other rhythms. Still later, the preferred rhythms have their own dynamics and become regulators of any incoming non-traditional phraseology. By becoming a viable structure in its own right, meter may evolve independently of traditional phraseology. Recent metrical developments may even obliterate aspects of the selfsame traditional phraseology that had engendered them, if these aspects no longer match the meter. 2
Such a formulation, to be sure, presupposes that the traditional phraseology of SONG, generating
fixed rhythmical patterns, is itself already regulated by principles of phonological, morphological, and syntactical parallelism and repetition that serve to differentiate SONG from SPEECH. 3
§39. Granted, a factor like rhythm may become stylized to the point that it can become transferred from the words of song, in the forms of dance and instrumental music. 1 I am arguing, however, that patterns of convergence and parallelism between the rhythm in the words of SONG and the rhythm in the forms of dance and instrumental music are primary, while patterns of divergence and contrast are secondary. In any case the perception of rhythm depends ultimately on the innate human capacity for language. 2 In that sense the very process of dance is related to the inner rhythms of language. The linguistic factor of stress, which seems to be the basis of rhythm in languages like Greek, is psychologically perceived in terms of body movement. 3 We may compare the discussion in Plato Laws 653e-654a (also Laws 665a), where the combination of rhythmic and melodic idiom is synthetically visualized as khoreiâ 'choral song and dance'. 4 I am proposing that the phraseology of SONG tends to stylize and regularize its own built-in rhythms, and that these regularizations result diachronically in what we call meter. 5
§40. Similarly, I also propose that the phraseology of SONG can stylize and regularize its own built-in tones or intonations, resulting diachronically in what we call melody. 1 If we combine the two proposals, we get a scheme where both rhythm and melody in SONG could be viewed as regularized outgrowths of SPEECH that serve eventually to distinguish SONG from SPEECH. In terms of this composite scheme, I am now ready to substitute rhythm or melody or both for metric substructure in the formulation of Ben-Amos. The result is a formulation that is not alien to ethnomusicology. On the general topic of the connections discovered by ethnomusicologists between music (what I have been calling SONG) and language, I cite a general theory, built on a broad cross cultural sampling of ethnographic data, offered by Bruno Nettl:
My own theory is based on the assumption that an undifferentiated method of communication existed in remote times, one which was neither speech nor music [= SONG] but which possessed the three features that they hold in common: pitch, stress [which I reinterpret in the specialized sense of intensity], and duration.... There must have been a long, gradual stage of differentiation and specialization in culture, during which the two [= language and "music"] became distinct.... This theory, then, postulates three stages in the development of music: (1) undifferentiated communication, (2) differentiation between language and music, and (3) differentiation between various musical styles. The last stage is, of course, the only one for which we have any data at all, and even that...is fairly recent. 2
§41. In this connection, consider the earlier theories of Curt Sachs, 1 postulating three kinds of origins for melodic traditions: "logogenic" (from language), "pathogenic" (from motion), and "melogenic" (from "music"). On the basis of what we have noted about the relationship of language and motor activity, the category "pathogenic" is unnecessary. As for the category "melogenic," it may be useful for describing historically attested situations where a given melodic tradition has lost or at least outgrown its "logogenic" moorings, and where such a tradition is then recombined with or superimposed on originally unrelated phraseology. 2 Still, I would offer a formulation for melody that parallels what I have offered for rhythm: that the primary situation is that of convergence and parallelism between the patterns of tone or intonation or both in the
words of SONG on the one hand and the patterns of melody, dance, and instrumental accompaniment on the other hand. 3 I would also argue, conversely, that the secondary pattern is that of divergence and contrast. 4
§42. It should be stressed, however, that contrastive patterns between dance or instrumental accompaniment on the one hand and song on the other, even if they are diachronically secondary, are even more effective than parallel patterns in marking off the language of SONG from the language of SPEECH. Intensified contrast in form further marks what is already marked in function. We should expect partial contrast, for example, in the patterns of melody in the song and of tone or intonation in the words of the song, or in the patterns of ictus in the verse and of stress (duration and intensity) in the words of the verse, or in the patterns of the colon in the stanza and of the clause or phrase in the words of the stanza, and so on. 1
§43. In light of these arguments, supported by the insights of ethnomusicologists, I offer a broadened outline of possible developments, with special reference to the development of Greek music. Whereas SONG may or may not have required melody, song must be plus melody as opposed to poetry, which is minus melody or reduced melody. Whereas SONG may or may not have required dance and instrumental accompaniment, given forms of song may be plus dance or plus instrumental accompaniment or plus both.
§44. Let us pursue further the point, made earlier, to the effect that the parallelisms between patterns of dance or instrumental accompaniment and patterns of rhythm or melody in SONG are diachronically primary and that the contrasts between them are secondary. 1 If indeed SONG is marked SPEECH, then such elements as dance and instrumental accompaniment can be viewed as ramifications of SONG that can in turn be further differentiated as either parallel to the SONG or contrasting with it or, even further, parting with it altogether, as in forms of dance or instrumental music that exist independent of SONG. This is not to say something altogether naive and pseudo- historical, such as "in the beginning there was song, which was both danced and instrumentally accompanied." Rather it is to speak of the linguistic foundations of singing, dancing, and instrumental accompaniment. It is to speak of diachronic potential: SONG, as a marked form of language, is structurally capable of generating differentiated subforms such as dance and instrumental music. From a diachronic point of view, then, dance and instrumental music are optional realizations of the stylized speech act. From the standpoint of traditions with song, dance, and instrumental accompaniment surviving together, analogous forms with any of these consituents missing are liable to be viewed as the result of a tearing away of that constituent from a unified whole, as we read in Plato Laws 669d-670a. In this connection, we may follow the formulation of A. M. Dale, who makes use of Milton's concept of Voice and Verse as uniting to form Song: "For the Greek lyric poet Voice and Verse were not a pair of sirens; Verse was merely the incomplete record of a single creation, Song." 2
§45. To set up language as the diachronic foundation of dance and instrumental music is in line with A. M. Dale's view that "song, with its dance, was a function of the words themselves when they were alive--that is, in performance." 1 More fundamentally, it is in line with Aristotle's view that the basis of musical rhythm is the syllable (Metaphysics 1087b33 and following). 2 Still, the
fundamental function of dance and instrumental music, whether their patterns are parallel or contrastive with the patterns of language that they accompany, is to mark special speech as opposed to everyday speech, that is, SONG as opposed to SPEECH. 3 An ideal example is Athenian drama, in which the dancing and instrumental accompaniment further distances the words sung in the lyric meters by the khoros 'chorus' from the words recited in the iambic trimeter by the actors.
§46. Let us examine more closely the medium of the chorus, as attested in Athenian drama, in which song, dance, and instrumental accompaniment survive together. To repeat, analogous forms that happen to lack any of these consituents are viewed as a tearing away of that constituent from a unified whole (Plato Laws 669d- 670a). Wherever song has the capacity of being danced, as in the case of Greek choral lyric, dancing to the song is dancing to its rhythms and melodies on the level of form and to its words on the level of content. In Greek, this correspondence is mîmêsis or mimesis, which can best be translated as 'reenactment' or 'impersonation'. 1
§47. In general the noun mîmêsis, as well as the corresponding verb mîmeisthai, designates the reenactment, through ritual, of the events of myth (e.g., Lysias 6.51). 1 In the case of a highly stylized ritual complex like Athenian drama, the act of reenactment, mîmeisthai, is equivalent to acting out the role of a mythical figure (e.g., Aristophanes Women at the Thesmophoria850). 2 The acting out can take place on the level of speech alone or else on the level of speech combined with bodily movement, that is, dance: hence the force of pros 'corresponding to' in the expression pros ta pathea autou 'corresponding to his sufferings [= pathos plural]' at Herodotus 5.67.5, describing the singing and dancing by tragikoi khoroi 'tragic choruses', at Sikyon in the time of the tyrant Kleisthenes, in reenactment of the pathea 'sufferings' of the hero Adrastos. 3
§48. While the fundamental meaning inherent in mîmêsis is that of reenacting the events of myth in ritual, 1 by extension mîmêsis can also designate the present reenacting of previous reenactments. This narrowed view of reenactment, where the focus is on the the present reenactment of a previous reenactment without considering the whole chain of reenactments extending from the past into the future, corresponds to the more specialized and episodic notion of imitation. In that the newest instance of reenacting has as its model, cumulatively, all the older instances of performing the myth as well as the "original" instance of the myth, mîmêsis is a current imitation of earlier reenactments. This is the sense of mîmêsis in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo163, where a choral group called the Deliades are described as being able to 'imitate',' mîmeisthai, the voices and musical sounds of a wide variety of Ionians who are described as assembling for a festival on the island of Delos (162-164). 2
§49. The sense of wonder about the mîmêsis performed by the Deliades concerns the accuracy or exactness of their re- enactment: everyone will say, when they hear the sound of their own voices reenacted by the Deliades, that they are hearing their own way of speaking (Hymn to
Apollo163-164). 1 This line of thought corresponds to the celebrated description of mîmêsis in the Poetics of Aristotle as the mental process of identifying the representing 'this' with the represented 'that': houtos ekeinos 'this is that' (1448b17). 2 In the performance of the Deliades, the represented 'that' is not only whatever the visiting Ionians have sung before. Whatever they have
sung before is simply the latest in an ongoing series of previous reenactments, ultimately reenacting a given myth. So also with the formulation of mîmêsis by Aristotle (again Poetics 1448b17): the represented 'that' identified with the representing 'this' can be perceived not only as the previous experience but also as the sum total of previous experiences. 'This', then, is particular, the experience in the here and now, whereas 'that' is potentially universal, a cumulative synthesis of all previous experience. Aristotle goes on to say that the mental process whereby 'this' is being identified with 'that', by way of mîmêsis, is a source of pleasure (Poetics 1448b11, 13, 18). This pleasure is not incompatible with an anthropological understanding of ritual: "Fixed rhythm and fixed pitch are conducive to the performance of joint social activity. Indeed, those who resist yielding to this constraining influence are likely to suffer from a marked unpleasant restlessness. In comparison, the experience of constraint of a peculiar kind acting upon the collaborator induces in him, when he yields to it, the pleasure of self-surrender. 3
§50. Such a formula of equating the particular 'this' with the universal 'that', as implied by the use of the verb mîmeisthai in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo and as explicitly linked with the concept of mîmêsis in the Poetics of Aristotle, is a fundamental expression of assent in many languages: besides the many attestations in Greek (e.g., tout' ekein' 'this is that' = 'yes' in Aristophanes Lysistrata240), there is a particularly striking example in the Latin combination hoc illud 'this is that', which is the ancestor of the French oui 'yes' (and of the Southern French oc, as in Languedoc). Such a yes can serve as the amen of a participant in a given ritual, who assents to the realities of myth as reenacted in the context of ritual. 1
§51. From the standpoint of ritual, then, the activity of the chorus in an institution like Athenian drama, where, song, dance, and instrumental accompaniment can function as a unified whole, is a matter primarily of reenactment, insofar as the performers reenact the events of myth, and only secondarily of imitation, insofar as the performers at one given occasion imitate the performances of previous occasions.
§52. This is not to say, however, that reenactment is not imitation. All ritual reenactment is imitation, though of course not all imitation is ritual reenactment. Moreover, imitation is pertinent to the differentiation of SONG into song as opposed to poetry: we see a synchronic use of such a differentiation in Athenian drama, where the opposition between sung or lyric meters on one hand and the spoken iambic trimeter on the other hand imitates the real-life opposition of SONG on the one hand, with its ritual context, and SPEECH on the other, with its nonritual context. The imitation is effective: poetry actually seems closer than song to SPEECH in that it does not have the same degree of specialized patterning in melody. Nor is it correlated with dance or in most cases with instrumental accompaniment. 1
§53. And yet, if indeed poetry is to be derived from SONG, it is really one step further removed from SPEECH: to repeat the diachronic construct, song is specialized by retaining and refining melody from SONG, while poetry is specialized by losing or failing to develop the melody that is potential in SONG. 1 In terms of differentiation, some form of SONG had to lose melody, or fail to develop melody, so that poetry could be differentiated from song. In Athenian drama, this form was the iambic trimeter. From a diachronic point of view, however, this meter did not have to be the form that imitated SPEECH: we hear from Aristotle (Poetics 1449a21) that the trochaic
tetrameter catalectic had been the earlier format of spoken poetry as opposed to song. 2 But the conventions of Athenian tragedy seemed to allow only one meter to serve as the canonical format for imitating SPEECH at any one given time: 3 in attested tragedy, for example, the trochaic tetrameter catalectic is not isofunctional with the iambic trimeter--it is marked off from it by virtue of being associated with "scenes of heightened tension." 4 Moreover, there is evidence that the trochaic tetrameter catalectic was in certain situations delivered in a reduced melodic form known as parakatalogê. 5 There is no need to argue, however, that iambic trimeter could never be sung after having become the imitative format of SPEECH: there are sporadic traces, even in Athenian drama, of sung iambic trimeter 6 as also of sung dactylic hexameter 7 and sung elegiac distich. 8 Still, the appropriate way to imitate the single format of SPEECH with the multiple formats of SONG is to contrast a single spoken meter with the plurality of sung meters. If Aristotle Poetics 1449a21 is right in saying that the trochaic tetrameter catalectic used to be the medium for imitating SPEECH, then I am ready to posit a stage where even iambic trimeter, like the trochaic tetrameter catalectic, used to be delivered in the format of parakatalogê, and where this type of modified melodic delivery used to be the only approximation of SPEECH. 9 Then another stage of differentiation could have led to the iambic trimeter of Classical tragedy, with its non-melodic delivery, while trochaic tetrameter catalectic persisted with a modified melodic delivery. At such a stage of differentiation, only iambic trimeter could imitate SPEECH, whereas the trochaic tetrameter catalectic would be imitating something that is now more than just SPEECH.
§54. At another stage further removed, the appropriate way to imitate the single format of SPEECH with the multiple formats of SONG would be to contrast a non-metrical form with the plurality of metrical forms. The nonmetrical form would be prose:
basis derivation further derivation SONG song types
vs. vs.
SPEECH poetry poetry types vs. prose
I suggest that the opposition between recited meters on one hand and spoken prose on the other
hand once again imitates the real-life opposition of SONG vs. SPEECH. Again, the imitation is effective: prose seems closer than poetry to SPEECH in that it does not have the same degree of specialized patterning in rhythm. And yet, if indeed prose is predicated on poetry, as Herodotus implies in the first sentence of his Histories, 1 then prose is really one step further removed from SPEECH: to extend the diachronic construct, while song is specialized by retaining and refining melody from SONG, poetry is specialized by detaching melody from SONG, and prose is specialized by at least partially detaching rhythm from poetry. 2 Further, just as one form of poetry can coexist and interact with many forms of song in the medium of Athenian Drama, so also the form of prose coexists and interacts with forms of poetry in such forms of expression as represented by the Lives of the Seven Sages tradition and even by the Histories of Herodotus. 3
§55. Before proceeding any further in our consideration of the distinctions between song and poetry, we must confront a semantic problem occasioned by our own cultural preconceptions. Whereas the stylized rhythms of poetry are known to us as meter, we think of the stylized rhythms of song simply as rhythm. This mode of nomenclature is hardly appropriate to the traditions of Greek lyric, where song operates on principles of rhythm that are clearly cognate with the principles of meter in the recitative poetry of, say, Greek epic. In fact it is common practice to speak of the rhythms of Greek lyric in terms of meter.
§56. This much said, I should note that my theory about poetry as a differentiated derivative of SONG can be supported by the ancient Greek metrical evidence. To make this point, I offer in the Appendix a survey of two fundamental types of Greek lyric metrical patterns, the so-called Aeolic and dactylo-epitrite meters. All the attested lyric poetry of Pindar, with only a few exceptions, is composed in one or the other of these two kinds of meters. 1 In the Introduction, I singled out Pindar's compositions as the centerpiece for illustrating the traditions of lyric poetry, that is, song. In later chapters we see that the actual content of this poetry reaffirms both explicitly and implicitly the thematic connection between epic and lyric, which reflects on the formal connection between poetry and song. In the Appendix, finally, I present the case for arguing that these connections are verified by the form--or, better, forms--of lyric poetry.
§57. Specifically, I argue that the dactylic hexameter, the meter of epic, took shape from the phraseology of the two basic metrical systems inherited by Pindar, the Aeolic and the dactylo- epitrite (both surveyed at length in the Appendix). More generally, I also argue that the three major types of meter in Greek poetry, that is, dactylic hexameter, elegiac distich, and iambic trimeter, are differentiated equivalents of cognate types of meter found in Greek song, as in the inherited medium of Pindar. Whereas elegiac distich and iambic trimeter can be connected with dactylo-epitrite, dactylic hexameter is more easily explained in terms of both the Aeolic and the dactylo-epitrite heritage of Pindar. 1
§58. Further, it can be shown that the three basic meters of poetry, dactylic hexameter, elegiac distich, and iambic trimeter, are not only derived from SONG but also differentiated from the corresponding meters of song. To begin, we may note that the meters of Greek song are either strophic, built on the principle of the colon, the constitutive element of both the relatively simpler stanzas of monody and the more complex stanzas of the choral medium, or stichic, built on the principle of the verse. 1 Other available terms of description are asynartetic, where the divisions between cola are overt, and synartetic, where they are latent. 2
§59. The notion of asynartetic is compatible with that of parakatalogê, a category of song where both melody and dance become reduced or eliminated altogether. 1 Whereas both melody and dance are bound to a strophic framework, the category of parakatalogê is associated with an asynartetic or stichic framework. 2
§60. The stichic meters of lyric are a transitional point of differentiation from song, whereas total differentiation is achieved in the stichic meters of nonlyric, that is, of poetry proper. 1 The stichic rather than strophic meters of lyric are actually attested as usable for extended narrative of a type
parallel to epic, composed in the dactylic hexameter, which is the stichic meter of nonlyric par excellence. A worthy example is Sappho F 44 V, a poem with a heroic setting: it is composed in a stichic meter 2 that is clearly cognate with various strophic meters of Lesbian lyric poetry. 3 Such stichic meters of narrative lyric poetry, conventionally sung to the accompaniment of the lyre, are doubtless more closely related than is the spoken meter of hexameter to the format of the South Slavic guslar who sings to the accompaniment of the gusle. 4
§61. Let us reformulate in terms of the concepts just introduced. The fundamental argument in the Appendix is that the sequences of cola in the strophic meters of song are cognate with the verses in the stichic meters of poetry. Perhaps the clearest example is the case of the strophic sequences of Stesichorus, which are built from units such as the following: 1
x_o_ = ia
x_o_x = ia~
_o_ = ~ia
_o_x = ~ia~;
x_o_x_o_ = ia&IA
_o_x_o_ = ~ia&IA
x_oo_oo_ = pros
x_oo_oo
= pros~
B" m_oo_oo
= pros~
_oo_oo_ = \~pros
_oo_oo
= ~pros~
These shapes are not only prototypical of those found in, say, the so-called dactylo-epitrite meters of a Pindaric strophe: they are also identical with some of the major components in the meters of poetry, that is, in the dactylic hexameter (CB"), in the elegiac distich (CB"|CC), and in the iambic trimeter (bM). 2
§62. These meters of poetry are not only derived from SONG but also differentiated from the corresponding meters of song. As a finishing touch of differentiation between poetry and song, meters of song can avoid patterns that have been appropriated for poetry: thus, for example, the dactylo-epitrite metrical repertoire of Pindar's compositions contains the ingredients needed to generate equivalents of the dactylic hexameter, elegiac distich, and iambic trimeter, and yet it is precisely these patterns of spoken poetry that the lyric poetry of Pindar, let us call it song, consistently avoids. 1 It appears that the parent forms were covering their tracks. The poetic structure of the parent forms shades over, within that structure, those of its aspects that match various aspects that have become distinctive features of the respective daughter forms.
§63. With any differentiation of poetry from song through the loss of melody, there would have to come about a new structural strain in the oral tradition. Melody can be an important feature in the mnemonics of oral tradition in song, as we know from the studies of folklorists who
scrutinize the transmission and diffusion of song: melody helps recall the words. 1 We are reminded of the anecdote about the Athenians captured after the debacle at Syracuse who ingratiated themselves with their captors by singing passages from Euripides: these memorable passages were evidently parts from choral lyric, not iambic trimeter (as we see from the wording tôn melôn aisantes 'singing from his lyrics' in Plutarch Nicias 29.3). 2 In terms of a differentiation of oral SONG into oral poetry as opposed to oral song, 3 I offer this axiom: with the structural strain brought about by the loss of melody in poetry, there would come about, for the sake of mnemonic efficiency, a compensatory tightening up of rules in the poetic tradition. 4 This tightening up would entail an intensification of both phraseological and prosodic regularities, as we see in the formulas and meters of Homer, Hesiod, and the old elegiac and iambic poets. I also suggest that the concept of formula, stemming ultimately from Milman Parry's study of Homeric phraseology, applies primarily to such regularities stemming from the differentiation of oral poetry from oral song. In other words the formula is to be seen as characteristic primarily of oral poetry as opposed to song. In order to account for the distinct regularities of oral song as opposed to poetry, the concept of formula could be considerably broadened. 5
§64. For song, it seems most useful to distinguish three dimensions of regularity: phraseological, rhythmical, and melodic. These three dimensions correspond to the tripartion of melos 'lyric poetry' into logos, rhuthmos, and harmoniâ in Plato Republic 398d (cf. Aristotle Poetics 1447a21-23). The rhythmical dimension would be represented by meters and the melodic, by modes. 1 The process of oral composition in song, then, can be conceived as an interaction of phraseology, rhythms, and modes.
Notes
§1n1. An earlier version, with ad hoc application to the theories of Wolfgang Kullmann, was printed in Critical Exchange (16 [1984] 32-54), a periodical committed to the publication of tentative versions of work still in progress.
§2n1. For my methodology, a particularly influential work has been Jacopin 1981, with its balanced treatment of parole as well as langue. Cf. also Leach 1982, especially p. 5, with incisive comments on the impact of Jacopin's work.
§2n2. For a forceful presentation, with an emphasis on oral song and poetry, see Zumthor 1983. At p. 34 the author stresses that oral poetry is not poetry minus writing. As an introduction to the characteristics of oral poetry, the standard works remain and will surely remain Parry [1971] and Lord 1960. The intellectual and emotional resistance to the findings of Parry and Lord stems for the most part from various cultural preconceptions of our own times concerning "folk poetry"; for an illuminating historical account of such preconceptions, centering on the dichotomy of "Volkspoesie" and "Hochpoesie," see Bausinger 1980.41-55 ("Folklore und gesunkenes Kulturgut"). Cf. also Nettl 1965.13: songs can travel not only from "high" culture to "low," but also the other way around. In the case of German traditions the two-way travel between "art music" and "folk music" is particularly intense (Nettl, p. 69). As songs travel "up" and "down," there can be commensurate patterns of tightening or loosening, either way, in the built-in rules of
song making.
§4n1. Cf. Pöhlmann 1960.29-48, especially 29-32, 47-48; also Henderson and Wulstan 1973.48-49 on the different systems of notation used by the rhythmicians and metricians.
§4n2. Cf. Allen 1973.96-125, especially pp. 98-100.
§5n1. On the role of the written text as an alternative to performance, see the discussion in Ch.6, especially with reference to the work of Svenbro 1988. My argument that writing is not essential for either the composition or the performance of poetry and song in the Archaic period of Greece requires, already at this point, one major modification: a notable exception is the Archaic epigram, which does indeed require the medium of writing as an alternative to performance, though not for composition. As Alexiou 1974.13 and 106 argues, the epigram is a poetic form that compensates for emerging patterns of restriction against antiphonal types of lamentation performed in two choral subdivisions, where one subdivision took the role of the dead, engaging in a "dialogue" with another subdivision that took the role of the living; the medium of writing was necessitated as a substitute for actual performance, in the wake of social pressures, exerted within the new context of the emergent city- states, against ostentatious degrees of lamentation on the part of families with powerful ties to the older phases of the existing social system. Even in the case of the epigram, it can be argued that writing had no direct role in the actual composition of the poetry: it appears that the built-in mechanics of composition, which can be ascertained from the diction of the various attested epigrams, do not necessarily correspond to the various local patterns of spelling reflected by these epigrams. Two notable examples in Archaic epigrams are
(1) the spelling-out of elided vowels (e.g., CEG 13.4) and (2) the spelling of "movable n" in violation of the meter (e.g., CEG 288; cf. Kock 1910.22). For an internal cross reference to the genre of the epigram within Homeric poetry, cf. Iliad VII 89-90 and the commentary (with bibliography) of Gentili and Giannini 1977.22-25. As for the various other forms of song and poetry, which were not dependent on writing as their primary vehicle of expression, I agree with the general arguments of Herington 1985.41-57 (especially pp. 46-47) against presupposing the necessity of writing as an aid for the performance of songs in what he calls the "song culture" of the Archaic and Classical periods. I disagree, however, with his postulating the necessity of writing for the actual compositon of songs (especially p. 41).
§6n1. Cf. Lord 1960.13-29, 99-123; cf. Nettl 1983.247-258 on the concept of field work.
§6n2. Cf. also Ch.2§5, Ch.2§13, Ch.2§24n6, Ch.3§4; Ch.13§2, Ch.13§48 and following.
§7n1. For the moment, I shall include under the rubric "Homer" not only the Iliad and Odyssey but also the Homeric Hymns and the poems of the Epic Cycle, such as the Aithiopis and Destruction of Ilion attributed to Arctinus of Miletus (Proclus, p. 105.21-22 and p. 107.16-17 Allen, Suda s.v.), the Little Iliad attributed to Lesches of Mytilene (Proclus, p. 106.19-20; Phaenias F 33 Wehrli, in Clement Stromateis 1.131.6), and so on. I reserve for Ch.2§38 a discussion of the patterns of differentiation between Homeric and Cyclic Epic. As we see in that discussion, as also later in Ch.14, the patterns of attribution to Homer become progressively more
exclusive as we move forward in time, from the Archaic to the Classical period and beyond.
§7n2. I use the term wisdom poetry to encompass both the Theogony and the Works and Days.
§8n1. As the discussion proceeds, we shall see that some types of meter that are performed by the chorus are transitional between not-sung and sung, such as the so-called parakatalogê, with reduced rather than full melody (Ch.1§19) and with reduced dancing (Ch.1§53n9).
§8n2. Details in Ch.12, where I also reckon with various lines of argumentation that have been invoked to challenge the notion of an inherited correlation of song and dance in the khoros.
§9n1. The meter in which this utterance is composed is trochaic tetrameter catalectic, on which see Ch.1§54, Ch.1§53, Ch.1§53n2; also Ch.13§30. Also in the same meter is Archilochus F 121 W, where the description 'leading the choral performance' (again, verb exarkhô) applies to the choral leader of a paean. Further discussion of the concepts of dithyramb, paean, and choral performance (verb exarkhô) in Ch.3 and Ch.12. For more on Archilochus F 120 W, see N 1979.252n.
§9n2. Thus for example the aoidê 'song' of the Muses at Hesiod Theogony104 is in the context of the poet's bidding them to 'narrate' (espete: Theogony114) and to 'say' (eipate: Theogony115). On ennepô as 'recite', see N 1974.11n29.
§9n3. See for example West 1981, who makes this additional observation at p. 113: "We cannot make a distinction between two styles of performance, one characterized as aeidein, the other as enepein."
§9n4. Again, N 1974.11n29.
§9n5. I am using the terms diachronic and synchronic, on which see Intro. §11n1, not as synonyms for historical and current respectively. It is a mistake to equate diachronic with historical, as is often done. Diachrony refers to the potential for evolution in a structure. History is not restricted to phenomena that are structurally predictable.
§10n1. For further exploration of this subject, see N 1979.18-20. Note Kirk's (1962.281) comparison of the size of the Homeric compositions with the "leap from the largeish pot to the perfectly colossal one" in the evolution of monumental amphoras / craters during the Geometric Period. What interests me in this comparison is that the colossal size of a utensil defies its own utility (N, p. 20 §5n5).
§10n2. For a convenient collection of testimonia concerning the performance of Homeric poetry at the Panathenaia, see Allen 1924.226-227: Lycurgus Against Leokrates 102 (the law requires the performance of the poetry of Homer at the Panathenaia, to the exclusion of other poets), Isocrates Panegyricus 159, "Plato" Hipparchus 228b, Diogenes Laertius 1.57 (Life of Solon). Cf. also Hesychius s.v. Braurôniois. Herington 1985.139 calculates that the running time of the Oresteia trilogy of Aeschylus "could be more than a quarter of that of a full-length Homeric epic." He concludes: "These and similar figures seem often to be overlooked in discussions about the practicability of delivering the Homeric epics complete on any one occasion" (p. 269n58). A dynasty of tyrants in Athens, the Peisistratidai, played a major role both in the shaping of the Panathenaia and in making this festival the context for performance of epic (scholia to Aristides
Panathenaicus 3.123; "Plato" Hipparchus 228b). The involvement of the Peisistratidai in the institutionalization of Homeric performance at Athens has been explained in terms of a "Peisistratean Recension" (for an introduction to this concept, with bibliography, see [S.] West 1988.36-40). The present book develops an alternative explanation that does not require the textual notion of a "recension." For more on the Peisistratidai and their connection with the performance of Homeric poetry at the Panathenaia, see especially Ch.2§40n3, Ch.2§44n3, Ch. 2§49n5, Ch.6§28, Ch.6§53, Ch.6§83n3.
§10n3. For example, "Plato" Hipparchus 228b, concerning the rhapsôidoi 'rhapsodes' at the Panathenaia. It appears that some cities were later than others in instituting formal occasions for rhapsodic performance: see Maximus of Tyre 17.5a concerning the "latecomers" Sparta, Crete, and Cyrene (opse gar kai hê Spartê rhapsôidei, opse de kai hê Krêtê, opse de kai to Dôrikon en Libuêi genos).
§10n4. On agôn as 'contest' in poetry, see Homeric Hymn6.19-20 (cf. Ch.5§2n7). When Heraclitus (22 B 42 DK) says that Homer and Archilochus should be banned from agônes 'contests' in poetic performance, what is really being said is that rhapsôidoi 'rhapsodes' (as suggested by the playful use of rhapizesthai) should not be allowed to perform Homer and Archilochus. The expression homêreiôn epeôn 'Homer's words' in Herodotus 5.67.1 probably refers to the Seven against Thebes tradition, not to the Iliad or Odyssey; see Cingano 1985, whose argumentation meshes with a line of thought that pervades this book: that the patterns of attribution to Homer become increasingly less exclusive as we move further back in time.
§11n1. Cf. Brelich 1958.320-321. Elsewhere I have argued that the "signature" in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo172, where the speaker refers to himself as 'the blind man of Chios', is an idealized self-reference to Homer: see N 1979.5 and 8-9 (for a similar conclusion, from a different point of view, see Burkert 1979.57); the verb oikei 'he has an abode' (from noun oikos 'house, abode') at line 172 suggests that Homer, as ancestor of the Homeridai, had a hero cult at Chios (cf. N 1985.76-77, 81 §79n1). For other references to the Homeridai of Chios, see Acusilaus FGH 2 F 2, Hellanicus FGH 4 F 20 (both by way of Harpocration s.v.); Isocrates Helen 65; Plato Republic 599d, Ion 530c.
§12n1. For a defense of the reported date, 504/1 B.C., cf. West 1975, Burkert 1979, and Janko 1982.261-262n88; Burkert adduces, for comparison, a tripod with an epigram dedicated by Simonides on the occasion of his victory in a dithyrambic competition at Athens in 476 B.C. (Simonides EG 28). The relative lateness of the date here assigned to Kynaithos is puzzling to those who posit a relatively early date for Stesichorus, supposedly the earliest attested poet in the Hellenic West. But note the juxtaposition of Homer and Stesichorus in, for example, Simonides PMG 564 (Burkert 1979.56n16); also in Isocrates Helen 64-65. I interpret such references to imply the appropriateness of conventionally juxtaposing performances of Homeric and Stesichorean compositions at a given festival.
§12n2. Further details at Ch.2§42n2. Cf. Burkert 1972, who offers an analysis of myths that connect the transmission of Homeric poetry by the Kreophyleioi with the transmission of Homeric poetry by the Homeridai. This testimony about the reception of Homeric poetry at Sparta may be compared with the remark of Maximus of Tyre 17.5a, cited at Ch.1§10n3.
§13n1. This detail about taking turns is apparently not taken into account in the arguments of Schnapp-Gourbeillon 1982.720 against N 1979.18-20 (et passim).
§13n2. It remains to ask whether, in the case of the Panathenaia, the reported law about consecutive recitation (cf. also Ch.1§10) was a reinforcement or extension of something that might already have been a convention of, say, the Homeridai. Cf. also Lycurgus Against Leokrates 106-107 about a customary law at Sparta concerning the performance of the poetry of Tyrtaeus.
§14n1. Cf. Ch.1§10. I infer that the rhapsodes who took turns reciting within the sequence were in competition with each other. I cite again the reference in Herodotus (5.67.1) to agônes 'contests' (agônizesthai) in the public performance of "Homer's words" by rhapsôidoi 'rhapsodes' (cf. Ch.1§10n4). As H. Pelliccia suggests to me, the requirement for consecutive performance by rhapsodes has the effect of ensuring that competition does not result in the arbitrary selection, by ambitious rhapsodes, of the most popular sequences. [S.] West 1988.39-40 leaves room for the possibility that the division of the Iliad (and, by extension, of the Odyssey) into twenty-four "books" reflects traditional units of performance by rhapsodes at the Panathenaia. On the usage of rhapsôidiâ in the sense of a 'book' of the Iliad, see, e.g., Plutarch Apophthegmata 186e.
§14n2. The expression alura 'without lyre' in Plato Laws 810bc furnishes explicit testimony (cf. also Plato Ion 533b5-7). For testimonia about reciting rhapsodes holding a staff instead of a lyre, see West 1966.163-164 (though I disagree with his application of these testimonia to Hesiod Theogony30). The iconographic evidence of vase paintings showing rhapsodes either with a lyre or with a staff (West ibid.) can be viewed as another example of the phenomenon that I have called the diachronic skewing of perspective on an evolving institution (on which see Ch.1§9).
§14n3. See Ch.12 on the diachronic correctness of the description, in Hesiod Theogony3-4, 8, of
song and dance in the performance of the Muses.
§14n4. For testimonia on the rhapsodic recitation of Hesiodic poetry, see Plato Ion 531a, 532a, Laws 658d; also Ch.1§22n4. For an overview of the evolution from singer (aoidos) to reciter (rhapsôidos), see N 1982.43-49. Conversely, the concept of rhapsode can be retrojected all the way back to Homer and Hesiod, as when Plato refers to both as rhapsodes (Republic 600d).
§14n5. For example, the hexameters attributed to Terpander, which counted as a lyric form, were sung: "Plutarch" On Music 1132c (Heraclides Ponticus F 157 Wehrli) and the commentary of Barker 1984.208n18. On the lyric hexameters (and quasi-hexameters) attributed to the archaic figure called Terpander as a model for those of the post-Classical poet Timotheus (including his attested Persians): On Music 1132de and the commentary of Barker, p. 209n25.
§14n6. See, for example, Aristotle Poetics 1447a29-b8, 1448a11, 1449b29; Plato Laws
669d-670a. Cf. Else 1957.37-39.
§15n2. Cf. Ch.12§55n5.
§15n3. Ibid. See also Archilochus F 58.12 W, where we read aidôn hup' aulêtêros 'singing to the accompaniment of the aulos- player'; cf. Theognis533, 825. Note Hipponax F 153 W and Mimnermus T 5 GP, by way of "Plutarch" On Music 1134a: the author is discussing an unattested passage of Hipponax where the poet cross refers to Mimnermus as an aulos-player (cf. T 2 and T 4 GP); this cross reference leads the author to assert that in earlier times elegiac poetry was sung to the accompaniment of the aulos. See also the report in Pausanias 10.7.5-6 that at an early stage elegiac distichs were performed to the accompaniment of the aulos at the Pythian Games, and that this practice came to an end in 582 B.C. Also, the testimony of "Plutarch" On Music 1134a suggests the possibility that at an early stage elegiac distichs were performed to the accompaniment of the aulos at the Panathenaia. In the case of Pausanias, Bowie 1986.23 argues that the specification of elegeia 'elegiac distichs' may have resulted from a misunderstanding of the word elegoi in the Echembrotus epigram quoted by Pausanias (Echembrotus, p. 42 GP II).
§15n4. See the commentary of Else 1957.56-57, who integrates the evidence of this passage with that of Poetics 1459b32-1460a2 and Rhetoric 1409a7; cf. also Lucas 1968.61.
§15n5. Rosenmeyer 1968.218 (by "elegiac" he is referring to the metrically determined category of elegiac distich). Rosenmeyer's 1968 article (following Campbell 1964) concentrates on the elegiac distich because his purpose is to challenge the widespread view, encouraged by the internal testimony sketched in the preceding discussion, that elegiac distich was regularly accompanied by the aulos. As for iambic trimeter, it is more generally agreed that it was recited, not sung (cf., e.g., Gentili 1985.45-46).
§16n1. I suggest that the repertoire of rhapsodes would include such lengthy compositions in elegiac couplets as the Smyrneis of Mimnermus, on which see Bowie 1986.27-30.
§16n2. Cf. Brisson 1982.61.
§17n1. See Ch.1§15. This formulation expands on the positions taken by Campbell 1964 and Rosenmeyer 1968. It can also serve as a friendly amendment to Bowie 1986.27, with whose basic point about the compatibility of the aulos 'reed' and the elegiac distich I agree.
§17n2. On this point, see the survey by West 1981.114n8 on attestations of aeidô 'sing' as designating the performance of a rhapsode. Cf. also Timaeus 21b1-7, as cited immediately above. I agree with Campbell 1964.66 that the expression en ôidêi 'in song [ôidê]' in Plutarch Solon 8.2 (with reference to Solon F 1 W) refers to "formal recitation like that of a rhapsode." A similar point can be made about the use of âidô 'sing' in Philochorus FGH 328 F 216 (by way of Athenaeus 630f). These considerations affect the arguments of Bowie 1986.19n29.
§18n1. Cited at Ch.1§16.
§18n2. Cf. West 1981.125.
§18n3. For the reading "Semonides" instead of "Simonides," see West ibid.
§18n4. West 1981.125 dates these testimonia to the fourth century B.C., or the end of the fifth at
the earliest. On the setting for the performance of the rhapsode Kleomenes, we may compare the report that Dionysius I of Syracuse engaged rhapsodes to perform his poetry at Olympia (Diodorus Siculus 14.109).
§18n5. See the useful references of West 1970.919.
§18n6. As we see from a survey by Gentili 1979.26-31, with a focus on the performance of drama. Cf. also West 1986 on the hexameters of a newly-discovered inscription from Epidaurus, a fragment of a hymn that he dates "not later than the third century B.C." (p. 45; cf. p. 44n19). The melodic notations preserved in this inscription reflect, in West's opinion, a uniform instrumental cadence, hexameter after hexameter.
§18n7. Gentili, p. 26.
§19n3. Cf. the commentary of Barker 1984.212nn183, 185.
§19n4. Cf. Aristides Quintilianus, pp. 5.25-6.7 (ed. Winnington-Ingram) on the recitation of poetry as an intermediate category, to be placed between the categories of speech and song. See further at Ch.1§40n1. Cf. also Barker, p. 234n183.
§20n1. Cf. the comments of Barker, p. 52n20.
§20n2. For a similar line of thinking, note the report of Timomachus (FGH 754 F 1 in Athenaeus 638a), who says that one Stesandros was the first to set Homer to the lyre for a performance at Delphi; it is as if the medium of "Homer" had never been sung before, only spoken.
§21n1. Cf. N 1974.10n29 and 244-261.
§21n2. Durante 1976.177-179. The notion of rhapsôidos 'rhapsode' as 'he who stitches together the song' is made explicit in Pindar Nemean2.1-3. On the concept of oimê as a sort of textual "fil d' Ariane," see Svenbro 1976.45n135.
§21n3. Cf. also Herodotus 5.67.1, on which see also Ch.1§10n4. For further testimonia from inscriptions recording various contests of rhapsodes, see West 1981.114n13. Cf. also Brisson 1982.62-63, with a convenient summary of details, gleaned from the Ion of Plato, about the competition of rhapsodes at the Panathenaia.
§21n4. Quoted at Ch.2§47n3. Further details on this passage at Ch.5§2n7.
§21n5. For a survey of the institution of competition among singers, see Dunkel 1979; cf. N
1979.311 §2n6. For an example of a myth about such a competition, I cite the story of a contest between Arctinus of Miletus and Lesches of Mytilene, two of the poets of the Epic Cycle (Phaenias F 33 Wehrli, in Clement Stromateis 1.131.6). A more famous example is the Contest of Homer and Hesiod tradition (pp. 225-238 Allen); for bibliography, see Janko 1982.259-260n80;
cf. also Dunkel 1979.252-253. On the interrelationship of narrative structure between the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey on the one hand and the Epic Cycle on the other, see Ch.2§38.
§21n6. For further arguments, see N 1982.43-49.
§22n1. This is not to say that in historical times they could not have owned texts of what they recited (cf. Xenophon Memorabilia 4.2.10); in any case, it is clear that the rhapsodes recited from memory (Xenophon Symposium 3.6).
§22n2. N 1982.45 and 69, citing Wackernagel [1953] p. 1103; also West 1981.114n12.
§22n3. Ibid.
§22n4. Note also the bits of information adduced by Allen 1924.48 about the sunthutai Mousôn Hêsiodeiôn 'fellow-sacrificers to the Hesiodic Muses' (IG VII 1785; cf. also 4240), a corporation that "owned the land at Thespiae which contained the sacred spots": Allen offers the theory that this corporation was analogous to the Homêridai in that it seems to have exercised authority over the corpus of Hesiodic poetry. At p. 72 of Allen's book, we find a parallel, not adduced at p. 48, that can serve as a powerful additional argument in favor of Allen's theory: in Plutarch Banquet of the Seven Sages 149f-150a, there is mention of one Ardalos of Trozen, supposedly a contemporary of the Seven Sages and described as both an aulôidos 'aulos-singer' (aulos = 'reed') and a hiereus tôn Ardaleiôn Mousôn 'priest of the Ardalean Muses'. The cult of these "Ardalean Muses" had been supposedly established by the ancestor of this Ardalos, also called Ardalos of Trozen (Plutarch 150a), who is elsewhere reported to be the inventor of the aulos (Pausanias 2.31.3). This parallelism suggests that the 'fellow-sacrificers to the Hesiodic Muses' are rhapsôidoi who transmit the compositions of Hesiod, just as the 'priests of the Ardalean Muses' are aulôidoi who transmit the compositions of their ancestor Ardalos--and just as the Homêridai 'sons of Homer' transmit the compositions of their ancestor Homer.
§23n1. I print song types, not just song, to indicate the potential plurality of song types in opposition with any single given type of poetry. I elaborate on this point in what follows.
§23n2. On the distinction between unmarked and marked members of an opposition, see Intro.
§23n3. On the notion of speech-act, see Intro. §17.
§25n1. Cf. Leach 1982, especially pp. 5-6. For further elaboration, see Ch.4§3. Most Classicists of my generation tend to resist the very concept of ritual in the wake of the earlier excesses of the so-called Cambridge School: see, for example, Herington 1985.123-124. Herington's important contributions to our understanding of the earlier forms of Athenian tragedy could be further enhanced through a broader perspective of ritual. In this regard I find it helpful to cite the sketch offered by Seaford 1984.10-16. I agree with Seaford that his findings help confirm "the unfashionable view that the performance of tragedy originated in the practice of ritual" (p. 14).
§25n2. Burkert 1985.8.
§26n1. My translation, with slight modifications, of Burkert 1979b.29. For an illuminating
discussion of myth, especially useful to those who are unfamiliar with the perspectives of social anthropology, I cite Leach 1982.
§27n1. Cf. Leach, pp. 5-6.
§27n2. Nettl 1965.120.
§28n1. For example, SIG 672.15. Commentary and further discussion by Edmunds 1985.105.
§28n2. Further details at Ch.6§4.
§29n1. Chantraine DELG 728: from onomatopoeic mû, with the primary meaning of opening and closing the lips (cf. Aristophanes Knights 10: see Chantraine, p. 717).
§29n2. We may compare the semiotics of whispering, which may count as a form of not- speaking in everyday or unmarked situations and as a form of special speaking in marked situations of secrecy, sacredness, and the like.
§29n3. See Chantraine, pp. 718-717, with bibliography in support of the argument that mûthos 'myth' is likewise derived from onomatopoeic mû. Despite the morphological grounds for accepting this derivation, Chantraine expresses doubts on semantic grounds. I hope that my interpretation here helps dispel that doubt.
§29n4. For more on mûthos 'myth', see Ch.2§28 and following. "Surviving examples" in social institutions tend to reflect a general pattern in earlier stages but only a particular situation in later stages of attestation.
§29n5. For the belief that the corpse of the hero was a talisman of fertility for his native or adoptive community, see Ch.6§59. On the hero cult of Oedipus at Colonus as represented by the tragedy of that name, see Edmunds 1981, especially p. 223n8 (a reference that is accidentally omitted in N 1985.76-77).
§29n6. The participle drômena is from the verb draô, which means 'do, perform' within the the world of tragedy but also 'sacrifice, perform ritual' within the "real world," the outer world that frames the world of tragedy. See Ch.13§13. The participle drômena, as used outside of tragedy, designates 'ritual' (e.g., Pausanias 9.27.2, 9.30.12; cf. Burkert 1983.33n14). Inside tragedy, as here at Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus 1644, it bears the more inclusive and ambiguous sense of 'things that are done', 'things that are happening'.
§29n7. N 1982b. The key lines are in Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus 1641-1644.
§30n1. On the truth-value of myth: Leach 1982.2-7.
§30n2. Detailed demonstration in Martin 1989.12-42. On the concept of speech-act, see Intro.
§31n1. When differences in pitch have a lexical function (as in ancient Greek), it is a matter of tone; where they have a syntactical function (as in English), it is a matter of intonation: cf. Devine
and Stephens 1985.151.
§31n2. On duration and intensity as aspects of "stress," cf. Devine and Stephens, p. 152. Further discussion at Ch.1§33n1.
§31n3. See Guillén 1985.93-121, especially pp. 103-104, and Bright 1963.29. One feature of the fusion of experience in ritual, as Tambiah 1985.165 suggests, is "the hyper-regular surface structure of ritual language: the poetic devices such as rhyme, meter, assonance, and alliteration generate an overall quality of union and a blurring of grammatical boundaries." Cf. also Jakobson 1960.358.
§31n4. Note the following remark of Merriam 1964.119: "Some connection is made between pitch and muscle tension; the musician becomes accustomed to the muscle tension which he knows to be correct. One Basongye musician expressed this by saying that he chooses a pitch 'which does not make me sweat', and the same musician very logically noted that he comes to know the voices of the people with whom he sings and thus chooses a starting pitch 'in the middle' which he knows will suit all the voices."
§31n5. Cf. Allen 1973.100. The concept of dance should not be defined narrowly on the basis of our own cultural preconceptions. The categories of stylized bodily movement corresponding to our notion of dance vary from society to society. Cf. Royce 1977. Further details are at Ch. 1§39n3. On dance as an optional element in ballad performance, see Nettl 1965.56; for more details, with reference to Faroese culture, see Wylie and Margolin 1981.99, 115, 117. I note in particular the following description, p. 99:
At the village dancehall--or, before villages had dancehalls, in a house rented for the occasion-- men and women link arms to form a long, twisting circle. Anyone may join the circle at any point. They dance with a rhythmically shuffling, kicking step to the singing of the ballads. There is no instrumental accompaniment. A skipari (leader) sings the verses of a ballad, while the rest of the singers join in on the verses (if they know them) and on the refrain. When one ballad ends, the ring keeps moving round for a few moments until a new skipari starts up a new one.
§31n6. Cf. the ethnographic testimony discussed briefly by Merriam 1964.275.
§32n1. Cf. Herzog 1934, Schneider 1957.32-33, and especially Sultan 1988.396-397. Note too Bake 1957.196-197 on the Indic traditional teaching that vocal music is "pure" sound while instrumental music is a "manifestation" of sound. As Nettl 1965.51 points out, the limitations of the human voice (not to mention the limitations of the human ear), as contrasted with the relatively greater freedom of sound-range in musical instruments, lead to differences in the patterns of evolution for vocal and instrumental music. In this connection it is useful to ponder the discussion of Bright 1963.27. See in general the survey of the relationships between language and music in Nettl 1964.281-292. On the tendency of specialization and even professionalization in the social position of those who perform SONG with instrumental accompaniment and, by extension, of those who perform musical instruments, see Nettl 1965.50. On the development of instrumental solo playing on the aulos, so that the aulôidos 'he who sings to the accompaniment of the aulos [reed]' gives way to the aulêtês 'he who plays the aulos', see Pausanias 10.7.4, with the terminus
of 582 B.C. at the Pythian Games.
§32n2. Hence the notion of "talking instruments," as discussed by Stern 1957; cf. also Ong 1977b. On instrumental music as imitation of the "special speech" of bird song, see Merriam
1964.75. Conversely, at one step further removed, unusual vocal techniques like Alpine yodeling can be traced back to the imitation of instruments: cf. Nettl 1956.58.
§33n1. On "stress" in ancient Greek, which includes the phonological features of duration and intensity but not pitch, see the fundamental work of Allen 1973; for an updated defense of Allen's formulation, see Devine and Stephens 1985. From the standpoint of general phonetics, stress may be a matter of duration, intensity, and pitch. From a survey of typological evidence, Devine and Stephens, p. 152, point to "instances of languages in which intensity is independent of both pitch and duration (Japanese), languages in which intensity is independent of duration and combines with pitch as an exponent of stress (Estonian, Komi), and languages in which intensity combines with both pitch and duration as an exponent of stress (English)." When differences in pitch have a lexical function, as in ancient Greek, it is a matter of tone; where they have a syntactical function, as in English, it is a matter of intonation: see Ch.1§31n1. In ancient Greek, pitch is thus a matter of morphology as well as phonology. This is being taught today as the sum total of Greek accentuation. Allen's discovery, that ancient Greek also had a system of duration and intensity that was independent of its system of pitch, suggests that the two systems merged in Modern Greek, where the inherited patterns of pitch are correlated with both duration and intensity (Devine and Stephens, p. 146n83).
§34n1. Cf. Merriam 1964.10-11.
§34n2. See Zumthor 1972.100.
§34n3. Ibid..
§34n4. Zink 1972.24: "Quand le divorce entre le texte et la musique sera comsommé, la musique, paradoxalement, pourra prendre plus d'importance; elle sera développée pour elle-même et pour l
\'effet extérieur qu'elle produit, indépendamment des exigences internes du poème."
§34n5. Zink, pp. 17-24; especially p. 23n2.
§34n6. Examples in Zink, p. 23n1.
§34n7. Zink, p. 20n3.
§36n1. A prominent example is Iliad XXIV 723-776, where the narrative gives a direct quotation of three different laments, performed by three of Hektor's female next of kin on the occasion of the hero's funeral. At this funeral there are also professional aoidoi 'singers' (XXIV 720) who sing a more stylized kind of lament, called the thrênos (721), while the nonprofessional singers, next of kin to the deceased, are singing a less differentiated kind of lament, called the goos (XXIV 723, 747, 761). Correspondingly, at the funeral of Achilles, his next of kin, the Nereids, sing undifferentiated laments (Odyssey xxiv 58-59), while the Muses sing a differentiated thrênos (xxiv 60-61). Cf. N 1979.112.
§36n2. On the concept of imitation as a narrowed version of the concept of reenactment, see Ch. 1§48.
§37n1. Ben-Amos 1976.228. He quotes at this point Andrzejewski and Lewis 1964.46, who note, as an example: "the Somali classify their poems into various distinct types, each of which has its own specific name. It seems that their classification is mainly based on two prosodic factors: the type of tune to which the poem is chanted or sung, and the rhythmic pattern of the words." The formulation of Ben-Amos may be compared with that of Aristotle Poetics 1447b9-23, as discussed at Ch.1§15.
§38n1. Allen 1973.99-101, who prefers in the end not to use the word rhythm (p. 101). I continue to use it here in the sense of "a system that operates in terms of stress (duration or intensity or both)."
§38n2. N 1974.145. Parts of this statement are already quoted in Allen 1973.14, 258 (cf. also p.
13) with the bibliographical tag "Nagy 1970b," listed as "Monograph (unpub.) on Indo-European metrics" (Allen, p. 378). Without Allen's generous acknowledgment, the existence of an unpublished 1970 version of N 1974 would not be a matter of public record (in N 1979b.629n1 I list those to whom I had sent copies of this unpublished version).
§38n3. On the fundamental role of parallelisms and repetitions in differentiating what I am calling here SONG and SPEECH, see again Guillén 1985.93-121, especially pp. 103-104 with reference to the work of [Zcaron]irmunskij 1965 following Steinitz 1934.
§39n1. There is a particularly interesting example cited by Allen 1973.259n1: in the Luganda traditions of accompaniment, short syllables are regularly accompanied by one drumbeat and long syllables, by two drumbeats. See also Ong 1977b.
§39n2. Allen, pp. 99-101.
§39n3. I cite the formulation of Allen, p. 100 (where "stress" is intended to include the components of duration and intensity: cf. Ch.1§33n1): "Implicitly or explicitly underlying this identification of stress as the basis of rhythm is the conception of rhythm as movement, and of stress, in the production of audible linguistic phenomena, as the motor activity par excellence." Cf. Wylie and Margolin 1981.115, quoting from a 1906 description of Faroese ballad performance and dancing, where the dancers coordinate their voices and movements: "What, moreover, should be well looked after in the ballad singing is to 'get the word under the foot', as the old ones used to say. One gets the word under the foot when one stresses one word or syllable at the same time that one steps along with the foot."
§39n4. In light of this image I would translate skhêma as 'dance-figure' in Plato Laws 654e and 655a, despite the fact, noted by Barker 1984.142n60, that the usage of Plato does not restrict skhêma to the context of the dance. For the notion of skhêmata as 'dance-figures', postures and gestures that represent, see Barker 119n10 on Xenophon Symposium 2.15. With reference to skhêma as a pose that represents, D. Arnold draws my attention to the use of the verb ekhô, from which the noun skhêma is derived, in Herodotus 1.31.5: at the moment that the brothers Kleobis and Biton die after their ordeal in the service of the goddess Hera, it is said that en teleï
toutôi eschonto 'they were held fast in this sacred accomplishment' (the context is discussed further at Ch.8§46n2). The narrative goes on to say that this precise moment, with the pose of the brothers in perfect synchrony, is captured as if in a "freeze frame" by the people of Argos, who witnessed the event: they commission the making of eikones 'images' of the brothers, presumably in their completed pose, which they dedicate at Delphi (Herodotus ibid.).
§39n5. This formulation allows for the possibility that some rhythmical types, in the process of becoming purely metrical types, will have developed into a state of incompatibility with dance or instrumental accompaniment or both. On Aristotle Poetics 1448b21-22, where meters are described as moria 'parts' of rhythms, Hardison 1981.71n4 observes: "The passage simply asserts that meters share ('are parts of') certain forms derived from dance music ('the rhythms')." This observation is conditioned by Aristotle's description of a particular meter used for imitating speech, the trochaic tetrameter catalectic, as a rhythm originally associated with dance that later became displaced by another meter, the iambic trimeter, which was dissociated from dance: Poetics 1449a22-24, Rhetoric 1404a31-33. See further at Ch.1§53. Lucas 1978.86 emphasizes the fact that the scholia to Aristophanes Clouds1352 mention dancing to tetrameters. Aristotle's linking of the trochaic tetrameter catalectic with dance may well be extrapolated from such self- references as in Archilochus F 120 W, on which see Ch.1§9. See also Menander Dyskolos 879, with a reference to the accompaniment of iambic tetrameters catalectic by the aulos 'reed'.
§40n1. Cf. Ch.3§39, Ch.3§38n3. For a pioneering discussion of the relationship between pitch accentuation in the ancient Greek language and melodic patterns in ancient Greek song, see Allen 1973.231-234, especially p. 233, where he cites such testimony as that of Aristoxenus Harmonics 1.10 (and following) concerning the difference beween (1) the sunekhês 'continuous' pattern, with gradual shifts of tone in the accentual patterns of everyday speech and (2) the diastêmatikê 'intervallic' pattern, with stylized shifts of tone in song, by way of intervals. According to Aristoxenus (ibid.), the diastêmatikê pattern is singing, not speaking. Aristides Quintilianus, pp. 5.25-6.7 (ed. Winnington-Ingram), posits an intermediate pattern, between the sunekhês and the diastêmatikê, for the recitation of poetry. For similar evidence in Indic melodic traditions and elsewhere concerning the distinctions between tone, that is, pitch accent, and melody, see Allen, pp. 233-234. On zones of overlap and non-overlap in patterns of tone and melody, see Allen, p. 234. On the difference between tone and intonation, see Ch.1§33n1. I expect that languages with fixed patterns in tone would generate melodic traditions different from languages with patterns in intonation only. Cf. Ch.1§40n1.
§40n2. Nettl 1956.136. Cf. also Bright 1963, especially p. 27; also Merriam 1964.285. There are important elaborations in Nettl 1964.281-292; note in particular his analysis of the correlation between the pattern of strong word-initial accent in the Czech language and the pattern of stressed notes beginning musical phrases in Czech folk music, both vocal and instrumental (1964.283); also his observation that, in English folk songs, the melodic contour "tends to descend at the end of a section, phrase, sentence, or song," corresponding to intonational patterns in the language.
§41n1. Sachs 1937.181-203, 1943.30-43.
§41n2. Cf. Herskovits and Herskovits 1947 on Trinidad melodies: "But not all melodies are rephrasings of old ones. Sometimes a tune heard, a European tune, can be 'swung' into a desired rhythm, with perhaps a change of a few measures, or no change at all. In this case, the words to a
traditional song might be joined to the new melody, or a proverb might be used and to it added lines from older songs."
§41n3. Note the description of "logogenic" melodies: they are "narrow of range, using small intervals," whereas corresponding dances are "tight, controlled, expressed through narrow
steps" (Merriam 1964.253). See Bake 1957.200 on the Indic tradition of the bhâsikasvara 'speech tone', which has the narrowest pitch compass and is employed, according to tradition, in performing the words of the (White) Yajur Veda. Note too the following formulation: "The melodic line follows the text in every detail; the words prescribe the rhythm and the flow; there is one note to each syllable, pitch is independent of duration. One might say that the melody only supports the words" (Bake ibid.; cf. West 1981.115 and 116, who draws particular attention to the old three-pitch and four-pitch patterns).
§41n4. In the case of Balinese music lessons for the young, Merriam 1964.152 notes: "Those instruments which do not play the melody are ignored for the moment, for the melody must be learned first." On patterns of primary convergence and secondary divergence between SONG and SPEECH, cf. the bibliography assembled by Nettl 1964.290-291. Cf. also the discussion of the factor of "tension" in Allen 1973.110-112.
§42n1. Cf. Allen, p. 111: "One could envisage a form of which the pattern is determined by some prosodic feature x, such that there is another feature y whose distribution in the language is partially coincident with that of x. In such a situation one could speak of tension between x and y where the two factors failed to coincide in composition, and of 'concord' or 'harmony' where they coincided and so reinforced the metrical pattern; and such a 'counterpoint' between the patterns of the two features could arguably be manipulated by the poet for artistic ends."
§44n1. Cf. Ch.1§39 and following.
§44n2. Dale 1969.166.
§45n1. Dale 1969.168. For reinforcement of this view on the level of testimony about the actual performance of song, see Pratinas PMG 708 (in Athenaeus 617b-f) and Plato Republic 398d.
§45n2. Cf. also Plato Republic 400a and Cratylus 424c. See the comments on these and other passages by Pöhlmann 1960.30.
§45n3. On patterns of primary convergence and secondary divergence between SONG and SPEECH, I cite again Nettl 1964.281-292.
§46n1. Cf. Koller 1954 on the inherited concept of mîmêsis; for a balanced updating of Koller's synthesis, addressing the criticism of Else 1958, see Nehamas 1982. Following Halliwell 1986.110, I concede that the semantic range of mimesis was shifting, even before Plato, away from the notions of reenactment or impersonation, to accommodate such distinct notions as imitation or the reproduction of appearances. As I shall argue presently, however, such distinct notions are more limited in scope. For Plato's views on mimesis, see Halliwell, pp. 116-122 (also
53). As for Aristotle, Halliwell, p. 128, begins his account by mentioning as a possibility "that Aristotle's guiding notion of mimesis is implicitly that of enactment: poetry proper (which may
include some works in prose) does not describe, narrate or offer argument, but dramatises and embodies human speech and action."
§47n1. In the case of Lysias 6.51, mîmeisthai refers to the misuse rather than proper use of a priestly costume by Andocides; still, as Halliwell, p. 113, points out, Andocides is "acting out the part of a priest in full."
§47n2. Cf. Halliwell, p. 114, on the nuances of mimesis in Aristophanes Women at the Thesmophoria: "Aristophanes' parody involves, and deliberately confuses, both an ordinary usage of mimesis terms (for impersonation) and a newly developing application of the language of mimesis to the fictional status of dramatic poetry."
§47n3. Further discussion of this passage at Ch.13§12. Cf. the discussion of Royce 1977.73, including this interesting quotation from Boas 1944.14-15 concerning the dance traditions of the Kwakiutl: "In the Cannibal Dance, the women's War Dance, and some others, there is a fixed fundamental gesture like a basso ostinato that is broken at intervals by special gestures of pantomimic character which is descriptive of the text of the song."
§48n1. For the perspective of a social anthropologist on the reenactment of myth in ritual: Leach 1982.5-6.
§48n2. I single out the helpful commentary of Barker 1984.40n4, especially with respect to the reading krembaliastun at Hymn to Apollo 162, which he interprets as "the locally grown rhythmic form, since rhythm is what krembala were used to emphasize." Barker argues that this passage is "advertising the rhythmic and linguistic versatility of the Delian chorus, who might be asked to perform pieces from any of the literary and musical traditions of Ionia and the islands" (ibid.). Cf. Burkert 1987.54: "Contrary to what both others and I myself have written [Burkert 1985.110], I am inclined now to take this [= lines 162-165] as indicating mimetic elements in [the] performance of choral lyrics." Cf. also Bergren 1982.93.
§49n1. Cf. Aeschylus Libation-Bearers 564 and the commentary of Nehamas 1982.56-57. Cf. also Theognis 367-370, as discussed at Ch.12§70.
§49n2. On which see Sifakis 1986, especially p. 218.
§49n3. Tambiah 1985.123.
§50n1. I cite the description of an all-female ritual, as attested in an Ismaili community south of Mashhad in Eastern Iran, which entails the narration of a story as the central event of a ritual meal (Mills 1982). At crucial moments in the retelling of this story (described as a combination of Aarne-Thompson tale type 480, "The Kind and the Unkind Girls," and 510A, "Cinderella"), the girl who is the chief participant, to whom the story is primarily addressed, has ritual food spooned into her bowl by the widow who tells the story, to which the girl answers yes at each of these crucial moments (as recorded in Mills, pp. 185-186).
§52n1. Cf., for example, Dale 1968 on recitative anapaestic meters in drama.
§53n1. There are parallels in medieval traditions: poetic genres where melody is absent are
characterized by patterns of prosodic elaboration that seem to serve as compensation for the lost melodic component: see Zumthor 1972.99. On the old French distinction between dit and chant, see Zumthor, p. 406.
§53n2. On the use of the trochaic tetrameter catalectic as a medium of dialogue, that is, imitated speech, see Pickard-Cambridge 1968.158-160. This is not to say that this meter could not be sung, danced, or instrumentally accompanied: see Pickard-Cambridge, pp. 156-158.
§53n3. We may recall the primary nature of the opposition SONG and SPEECH, as discussed by Ben-Amos (quoted at Ch.1§37).
§53n4. West 1982.78, following Pickard-Cambridge, p. 159, who cites, for example, Sophocles
Oedipus at Colonus 887-890, Euripides Herakles 855-874.
§53n5. See Pickard-Cambridge 1968.158-160 (also Comotti 1979.21). It may be misleading to some that West 1982.77 uses recitative to translate parakatalogê. To repeat, I view parakatalogê as an intermediate stage between sung and spoken: the parakatalogê is described as a form of delivery that explicitly contrasts with song in "Aristotle" Problems 19.6. See Ch. 1§19.
§53n6. Dale 1968.86 and 208.
§53n7. Dale 1968.25-31. Cf. West 1982.98, 128 (especially n125).
§53n8. As in Euripides Andromache 103-116.
§53n9. In line with this argument it is crucial to note that parakatalogê is incompatible with dance, as Rossi 1978 has argued on the basis of Aristophanes Wasps1528-1537. To put it more accurately: parakatalogê is compatible only with a special kind of stylized dance, a mimesis of dance (in this sense, a mimesis of a mimesis), not with dance itself. That is to say, parakatalogê is one stage removed from dance, just as it is one stage removed from singing. Dance becomes reduced, just as melody, in a format of reduced song. Moreover, it may well be that the ritual content itself is correspondingly reduced.
§54n1. Full discussion in Ch.8.
§54n2. We may also adduce the prose of Gorgias (82 DK). For a parallel phenomenon in medieval traditions, where poetic compositions can be subjected to a conscious process of dérimage or "un-rhyming" into prose, see Zumthor 1972.99-100; also Kittay and Godzich 1987. In light of a distinctly juridical function associated with much of early medieval prose, and the fact that the form of an "un-rhymed" composition is perceived as conveying the content of a different level of truth-value from the "rhymed" (Zumthor, p. 98), it is interesting to compare the juridical dimension of early Greek prose authors like Herodotus, as discussed at Ch.9.
§54n3. On which see Ch.11§32. We find a parallel in the medieval genre of the chantefable, such as Aucassin et Nicolette, with alternating song (the melody of the laisses has been preserved) and prose: see Vance 1986.161-163. I note in particular the following summary: "Prose is unmarked speech 'at large', while verse is the marked speech of a social constituency with precise
boundaries" (Vance, p. 163). For the Chinese analogue known as chu-kung-tiao, see Chen 1976.
§56n1. For a convenient metrical overview, see the analysis of Snell in the SM edition of Pindaric fragments, pp. 162-174. In only one case, Pindar Olympian13, is there a coexistence of the two types within one composition (Aeolic modulating into dactylo-epitrite; cf. Bacchylides Epinician 3). For an exceptional case of a Pindaric song composed in neither Aeolic nor in dactylo-epitrite meters, I cite Olympian2, composed in Ionic meters.
§57n1. Cf. Appendix Appendix §2n1 and following.
§58n1. On the concept of colon, see Appendix Appendix §1. For stikhos in the sense of verse, cf. Aristophanes Frogs1239. On the concept of a distiction between the monodic and the choral medium, see Ch.3§5.
§58n2. Cf. West 1982.43. It is important, however, not to confuse synartetic with strophic and asynartetic with stichic, in that the category of asynartetic accommodates not only verse but also strophes where the colon is clearly delineated; conversely, the category of synartetic does not accommodate strophes where the colon is clearly delineated. Granted, there are cases where the direction of development is from asynartetic to synartetic (cf. Wilamowitz 1921.421). Still, it hardly follows that the constituents of the strophe are built from the constituents of the verse. As the discussion proceeds, it in fact becomes evident that the direction of development is the reverse: from colon to verse portion, not from verse portion to colon. In any case asynartetic is a category that is roughly half-way between strophic and stichic. Cf. Ch.13§27.
§59n1. Reduction of melody: Ch.1§19; reduction of dance: Ch.1§53n9.
§59n2. Cf. Rossi 1978 on Aristophanes Wasps1528-1537.
§60n1. On the Alexandrian poetic practice of generalizing units taken from the synartetic framework of strophic song into the stichic units of verse in poetry, see Rossi 1971.86. For later developments in the genres of the nomos and the dithurambos, where the principle of strophic responsion is abandoned, see Gentili 1985.35. As it is pointed out in "Aristotle" Problems 19.15, the abandonment of responsion entails greater freedom for experimentation in both the rhythms and the melodies.
§60n2. The meter in question is glyc@2da, on which see Appendix Appendix §3n5. All of Book II of the canonical Sapphic corpus was composed in this meter: Hephaestion 7.7, p. 23.14-17 Consbruch.
§60n3. For example, glyc@da in Sappho F 94 V, on which see Appendix Appendix §3n4.
§60n4. Cf. West 1973.188: "If there was epic or heroic balladry in (say) 1600 [B.C.], its characteristic verse was most likely the glyconic [= glyc], whose cognates are used in Sanskrit and Slavic epic." On the Middle High German evidence for melodic traditions of epic sung in strophic form, see Brunner 1970.160.
§61n1. Cf. Appendix Appendix §21 and following. For the metrical symbols, see Appendix
§61n2. See Appendix Appendix §21 and following.
§62n1. Cf. Rosenmeyer 1968.230. One apparent exception is Pindar Pythian9.4 , 12. Another is Pythian1.92 (_oo_oo_oo_|oo_oo| o| , on which see Gentili and Giannini 1977.17), where part of the sequence looks like a dactylic hexameter; it is not in fact a hexameter since there is no correspondence with the final word boundaries of hexameter. There is an analogous situation in Pindar Nemean9: at the beginning of each strophe is a unit _oo_oo oo_oo matching the hexameter in its initial and final word boundaries but clashing with the primary caesura patterns of hexameter.
§63n1. Cf. Klusen 1969.72-83, cited in an interesting discussion by Rösler 1980.104n176. As a counterweight to the notion of gesunkenes Kulturgut in Klusen's work, see Bausinger
1980.41-55.
§63n2. Cf. also Satyrus in Oxyrhynchus Papyri ix no. 1176 fr. 39 col. xix.
§63n3. On which see Ch.1§53.
§63n4. See, for example, Dale 1968.25-31, especially p. 29, on phraseological and prosodic irregularities in the sung varieties of dactylic hexameter--which are irregularities only from the standpoint of the regularities in the nonsung variety. Cf. West 1982.98, 128 (especially n125). See also Zumthor 1972.99 on a comparable situation in medieval European traditions: "Dans les genres non chantés, le perfectionnement des effets sonores semble une sorte de compensation de la perte de la mélodie." As for Zumthor's list (ibid.) of formal features that serve to differentiate poetry from song, I should emphasize that all these formal features are potentially present in song.
§63n5. See N 1979b.614-619.
§64n1. For more on the notion of mode, see Ch.3§1n1.
§1. I have been attempting both to distinguish poetry from song and to broaden the current concept of oral poetry in such a way as to include song. Since the conventional semantic range of our word poetry tends to exclude song, however, I prefer not to use the actual term oral poetry in this broader sense. Instead, I confine myself for now to the more narrow concept of oral poetry as distinct from oral song. But even this more narrow concept is not accurate enough to account for Homeric and Hesiodic poetry, or old elegiac and old iambic poetry. There is another characteristic of such poetic traditions that makes it a special kind of oral poetry. That characteristic is the phenomenon of Panhellenism.
§2. Panhellenism can be most readily defined in terms of the distinctively Greek institution of the polis or 'city-state', the importance of which for definining the concepts of Hellenism and even civilization can be most simply illustrated with Aristotle's dictum, ho anthrôpos phusei politikon zôion 'man is by nature an organism of the polis' (e.g., Politics 1253a2-3). With the polis 'city- state' as frame of reference, the phenomenon of Panhellenism can be summed up as follows. 1
§3. On the basis of archaeological and historical evidence, A. M. Snodgrass applies the concept of Panhellenism to the pattern of intensified intercommunication among the city-states of Hellas, starting in the eighth century B.C., as evidenced in particular by the following institutions: Olympic Games, Delphic Oracle, and Homeric poetry. 1 I have extended the concept as a hermeneutic model to help explain the nature of Homeric poetry, in that one can envisage as aspects of a single process the ongoing recomposition and diffusion of the Iliad and Odyssey. 2 I have further extended the concept to apply to Hesiodic poetry 3 and to Theognidean poetry. 4 Finally, as we see in Chapter 3, the concept can be extended still further to apply to lyric poetry in general, that is, to song.
§4. Essentially, the hermeneutic model of Panhellenism must be viewed as an evolutionary trend extending into the Classical period, not some fait accompli that can be accounted for solely in terms of, say, the eighth century. In other words the concept of Panhellenism as I use it here is a relative one. Thus various types of Archaic Greek poetry, such as the elegiac tradition preserved by Theognis, make their bid for Panhellenic status considerably later than Homeric and Hesiodic poetry. Still I see in such poetry as the Theognidea a parallel pattern of ongoing recomposition concomitant with Panhellenic diffusion. The most obvious reflex of this ongoing recomposition in diffusion is the ultimate crystalization of a body of poetry like the Theognidea, composed not in the native Doric dialect of a polis like Megara but in an accretive Ionic dialect that is for all practical purposes the same as we see in the poetry of Archilochus, Callinus, Mimnermus, Tyrtaeus, Solon, Xenophanes, and so on. 1
§5. From here on I refer to this process, described here as crystalization, simply as textual fixation. I apply this notion of textual fixation to oral traditions with an emphasis on gradual patterns of fixity in an ongoing process of recomposition in diffusion, and without presupposing that the actual composition of the "text" required the medium of writing. 1 In applying this notion I would stress the interconnected development of traditions alongside each other. 2
§6. By Panhellenic poetry, then, I mean those kinds of poetry and song that operated not simply on the basis of local traditions suited for local audiences. Rather, Panhellenic poetry would have been the product of an evolutionary synthesis of traditions, so that the tradition that it represents concentrates on traditions that tend to be common to most locales and peculiar to none. 1
§7. Such a synthetic tradition would require a narrower definition than suitable for the kind of oral poetry and song described by Albert Lord on the basis of his field work in the South Slavic oral traditions. The difference is that such a tradition is in the process of losing the immediacy of the performer-audience interaction expected in the context of ongoing recomposition in performance. The teleology of this loss is attested: in the historical period Homeric and Hesiodic as well as old
elegiac and iambic poetry is being performed verbatim by rhapsôidoi 'rhapsodes' at Panhellenic festivals. 1 In the same context of Panhellenic festivals, what we have been calling song or lyric poetry is being performed verbatim by kitharôidoi 'lyre singers' and aulôidoi 'reed singers'. 2 Each new performance is now aiming at a verbatim repetition--not at an act of recomposition. 3
§8. Earlier I argued that the rhapsodes were direct heirs to earlier traditions in oral poetry. 1 But we see that over a long period their role has become differentiated from that of the oral poet. Whereas the oral poet recomposes as he performs, the rhapsode simply performs. In contemplating the recitation of Homer by rhapsodes, I am reminded of the following description of the recitation of "historical" poetry in Rwanda society: "Unlike the amateur, who gesticulates with his body and his voice, the professional reciter adopts an attitude of remoteness, a delivery that is rapid and monotone. If the audience should react by laughing or by expressing its admiration for a passage that is particularly brilliant, he stops reciting and, with the greatest detachment, waits till silence has been reestablished." 2 Such a description need not rule out the potential for variation from performance to performance. Still, variation is counteracted by the ideology of fixity. To that extent we see at least the impetus toward the notion of textual fixation without writing. 3
§9. The differentiation of composer and performer is attested in many cultures, as illustrated most succinctly by the incipient semantic split of trobador as 'composer' and joglar as 'performer' in Old Provençal usage. 1 In this case there is still evidence for some overlap. 2 With Homeric poetry, in contrast, the notion of composer is drastically retrojected, from the standpoint of the performers themselves, to a protopoet whose poetry is reproduced by an unbroken succession of performers; Socrates can thus envisage the rhapsode Ion as the last in a chain of magnetized metal rings connected by the force of the original poet Homer (Plato Ion 533d-536d). More accurately we may say that Ion is the next to last in the chain with relation to his audience, who would be the last link from the standpoint of the performance (Ion 536a). The implication of Plato's construct is that the magnetic force of the poetic composition weakens with each successive performer. Ion then, by virtue of being the last or at least the latest reproducer of Homer, would also be the weakest.
§10. In contrast, during phases of a given tradition where both composition and performance can be "owned" by the same person at a given occasion, 1 the advantage of the immediate composer- performer, as conferred by the occasion at hand, can be conventionally contrasted with the relative disadvantage of his predecessors, who are at this point deprived of their own occasion. Such an attitude is expressed this way in one particular Eskimo song: "All songs have been exhausted. He picks up some of all and adds his own and makes a new song." 2 We may note the juxtaposition made by Ferdowsi, poet of the Shâhnâma, with his predecessor, Daqiqi: 'In transmitting, his [= Daqiqi's] words became weak. \| Ancient times were not renewed by him' (VI 136.18). 3 A variant reads: 'Now I will tell what he [Daqiqi] has told. \| For I am alive and he has become united with the dust' (same citation). 4 The poet is presenting himself as owning the composition on the grounds that he, not his predecessors, now has access to the occasion, which is stylized as a series of performances before assemblies: 'These stories, grown old, will be renewed by me in
§11. In the case of Plato's Ion, the myth-making retrojection of Homeric composition back to the strongest protopoet belies the evolutionary progression of a tradition where the aspect of recomposition gradually diminishes in the process of diffusion entailed by performance in an ever-widening circle of listeners. 1 The wider the diffusion, the deeper the tradition must reach within itself: the least common denominator is also the oldest, in that a synthesis of distinct but related traditions would tend to recover the oldest aspects of these traditions.
§12. A key to such Panhellenic synthesis is the ever-increasing social mobility of the poet or aoidos 'singer' by virtue of his being a dêmiourgos 'artisan in the community [dêmos]', as he is described in Odyssey xvii 381-385. 1 In Homeric poetry other professions besides the aoidos belong to this category of dêmiourgoi: the mantis 'seer', the iêtêr 'physician', the tektôn 'carpenter' (Odyssey, ibid.), and the kêrux 'herald' (Odyssey xix 135). 2 The dêmiourgoi are socially mobile, traveling from one dêmos to another. 3 For an example of a cognate institution, I cite the Old Irish áes cerd 'people of crafts [cerd]' the designation for artisans, including poets, who enjoyed a legal status even outside their own tuath 'tribe' as they traveled from one tuath to another. 4 Old Irish cerd 'craft' is cognate with Greek kerdos 'craft, craftiness; gain, advantage, profit'; the same Greek word, in the diction of poetry, can refer to the craft and the potential craftiness of poetry. 5
§13. Given the social mobility of the poet, who is teleologically evolving into the rhapsode, his cumulative exposure to multiform traditions in many places is analogous to the experience of an ethnographer who attempts to reconstruct back to a prototype the distinct but cognate versions of traditions in different but neighboring locales. What I am offering in effect is a hermeneutic model for explaining how the myth-making mind can become critical of variants in myth. I am arguing that such a faculty for criticism arises primarily from the factor of the poet's social mobility, which I offer as a substitute for what has been posited by others, namely, the factor of the poet's ability to write. 1
§14. A synthetic and critical tradition purports to represent a prototype of variant traditions, and the diachrony of its evolution thus becomes its own synchrony. Homeric synchrony, to take the clearest example, operates on the diachronically oldest recoverable aspects of its own traditions. 1
§15. The synthetic tradition, in order to survive, must prevail over the countless variant traditions from which it was constituted. And in order to prevail, the tradition must be performed. We turn to an observation of Claude Lévi-Strauss in his book on masks, where he confronts, perhaps more explicitly than elsewhere, the question of the relationships between localized myth-variants and localized ritual-variants, with particular reference to ritual objects such as masks: each performance of a myth, he notes, entails a re-creation of that myth, so that the latest version of the myth, in the context of its performance in the here and now, takes precedence over all previous versions. 1
§16. The latest performance is by necessity a crisis point for the traditions of myth, in that the latest performance determines what continues to be transmitted and what does not. There may be at any given time a multitude of latest performances by a multitude of performers in a multitude of places. Still, each latest performance is a crisis for what has been said in all previous performances, and the cumulative trends of latest performances determine what ultimately survives and what is lost. The crisis can be expected to deepen whenever the number of performances decreases or the occasions for them become progressively restricted. In any case each latest performance helps determine what is highlighted and what is shaded over, with the ever-present possibility that the shading will lapse, with the passage of time, into total darkness.
§17. In this evolutionary vision of change in oral traditions, I have deliberately used the imagery of light in order to bring home a point that is actually made by the poetic traditions of Greek myth making, although there the view is episodic, not evolutionary. As Marcel Detienne has documented in his survey of Archaic Greek poetics, the poetic power of mnêmosunê 'remembering' is traditionally associated with light, which is in conflict with the darkness of lêthê 'forgetting'. 1 What is illuminated or obscured by poetry is what is respectively preserved or lost in the tradition.
§18. The concept of lêthê 'forgetting', however, is not only negative. As Detienne points out, lêthê is not only the opposite of mnêmosunê 'remembering': it can also be an aspect of mnêmosunê. 1 For example, the goddess Mnêmosunê is described in the Theogony of Hesiod as giving birth to the Muses, divine personifications of the poet's power, so that they, through their poetry, may provide lêsmosunê 'forgetting' of sadnesses and of worries for humankind (53-55); whoever hears the Muses no longer memnêtai 'remembers' his own ills
(Theogony98-103). By implication the highlighting of the glory of poetry is achieved by shading
over anything that detracts from it. A bright light needs a background of darkness.
§19. Such a concept of mnêmosunê can be achieved only through an ever-present awareness of its opposite, lêthê. Without the obliteration of what need not be remembered, there cannot be memory--at least, from the standpoint of Archaic Greek poetics.
§20. Let us reformulate these thought patterns in terms of an opposition between unmarked and marked categories. 1 In an opposition of mnê- 'remember' vs. lêth- 'forget', mnê- would be the unmarked member and lêth-, the marked, in that lêth- can be included by mnê- as an aspect of mnê-. Besides the passage just considered from the Theogony, I cite another striking illustration, from a different source: in the ritual of incubation connected with the cult of Trophonios, the initiate drinks from the springs of both Lêthê and Mnêmosunê; this way the undesired mental state can be shaded over while the desired mental state is highlighted (Pausanias 9.39.8). 2
§21. To pursue the subject of these thought patterns even further, I cite an example of unmarked and marked opposition in the English language. In an opposition of the pronouns he and she, he is the unmarked member and she, the marked, in that she is included by he as the feminine aspect of being he. The masculine aspect of being he, by contrast, has to be achieved through an ever- present negation of the feminine. We may say something like: this is not a she, this is a he. Otherwise he does not, of and by itself, convey a masculine aspect. In generalizing statements, for
example, he can stand for both he and she, as in "everyone may interpret as he chooses." 1
§22. Where the unmarked member excludes the marked member through a negation of the marked, the unmarked member receives a minus interpretation; where the unmarked member includes the marked, it receives a zero interpretation. 1 The minus interpretation of the unmarked member is ever-present in the context of a given Archaic Greek poem's references to itself as absolute truth, conveyed by a specialized mnêmosunê 'remembering' that excludes lêthê instead of including it. These relationships can be visualized as a larger circle of mnêmosunê 'remembering' that includes an inner area of lêthê 'forgetting' surrounding a smaller circle of specialized mnêmosunê 'remembering' that excludes the outer area of lêthê 'forgetting'. The area of forgetting is visualized as the ongoing erasure of things not worth remembering, erasure by way of lêthê 'forgetting'; the smaller circle of remembering, within the larger circle, is highlighted by the area of darkness surrounding it, the area of forgetting. In fact, a special word in the diction of Archaic Greek poetry formalizes this specialized and exclusive kind of remembering: that word is the negation of lêthê 'forgetting', namely a-lêtheia, normally glossed in English as 'truth'. A comparable case of minus interpretation in English can be seen in the word unforgettable. The alêtheia 'truth' of the poet is the nonerasure of the poetic glory that is his to confer. 2 The same concept is evident in the periphrastic expression oude me/se/he lêthei 'it does not escape my/ your/his-her mind', which conventionally reinforces injunctions to be memnêmenos 'mindful, remembering'. 3
§23. Besides contrasting with negative thoughts about human ills, 1 in the periphrastic expression oude me/se/he lêthei 'it does not escape my/your/his-her mind', which conventionally reinforces injunctions to be memnêmenos 'mindful, remembering'. 2
§24. Besides contrasting with negative thoughts about human ills, 1 or erroneous thoughts that lead to injustice, 2 the alêtheia of Greek poetry tends to contrast with the divergence of local poetic versions in the overarching process of achieving a convergent version acceptable to all Hellenes. 3 This argument brings us back to the observation of Lévi-Strauss that the latest performance of myth is in principle an occasion for selecting from and thereby potentially erasing versions available from countless previous performances. 4 In what survives of Archaic Greek poetry--and now I am using the word poetry in the broadest sense--what we keep finding is the ultimate extension of this principle, to the point where the latest version becomes the last version, a canonization that brings to a final state of crystalization what had been becoming an ever-less fluid state of variation in performance. 5 I attribute this canonization not so much to the phenomenon of incipient literacy as to the broader social phenomenon of Panhellenization. 6 I reiterate that this phenomenon is relative from the standpoint of an outsider to the tradition, in that some compositions are more Panhellenic in scope than others. From the standpoint of the insider to the tradition, however, in the here and now of performance, the Panhellenic perspective is the absolutist perspective of alêtheia 'truth'. 7
§25. This notion of canonization, as I have just outlined it, 1 is analogous to a concept used by
scholars associated with the Museum housing the great library of Alexandria. 2 This concept is krisis, in the sense of separating, discriminating, judging (verb krînô) those works and those authors that are worthy of special recognition and those that are not. 3 The Alexandrian scholars who inherited the legacy of this process of separation, discrimination, judgment were the kritikoi 'critics', 4 while the Classical authors who were recognized as the survivors of this process of krisis were called the enkrithentes, 5 a term that corresponds to the Roman concept of the Classics, the classici, who are authors of the 'first class', primae classis. 6 The krisis of the enkrithentes, however, starts not with the Alexandrian scholars, nor even with the likes of Aristotle. 7 The crisis of this krisis happens to be already under way in the Archaic period. We must remind ourselves that songs and poetry were traditionally performed in a context of competition. 8 A striking example is the tradition of dramatic festivals at Athens, with the krisis 'judgment' of winners by kritai 'judges'. 9 But the criteria of the crisis are different. The very evolution of what we know as the Classics--as both a concept and a reality--was but an extension of the organic Panhellenization of oral traditions. In the Archaic period, I argue, the general principle that determines what is worthy of special recognition and what is not can be formulated as a question: what is Panhellenic, alêtheia, and what is not?
§26. For illustration, let us turn to the "Days" portion of the Works and Days of Hesiod, which begins with the following injunction:
êmata d' ek Diothen pephulagmenos eu kata moiran pephrademen dmôessi
Take care to mark the days 1 [of the month], which come from Zeus, giving each day its due, for the household-servants
The very first day of the month to be mentioned is a crisis point for the Panhellenic perspective, since it is the day when each polis is most idiosyncratic, with local traditions prevailing:
...triêkada mênos aristên
erga t' epopteuein êd' harmaliên dateasthai, eut' an alêtheiên laoi krinontes agôsin.
The thirtieth day of the month is best
for inspecting different kinds of work that have to be done and for apportioning food-supplies. This is the day that people spend by sorting out [= verb krînô] what is truth [alêtheia] and what is not.
A commentator on the Works and Days remarks: "Civil calendars often fell out of step with the moon..., and it was on the 30th that errors arose. Each month had to be allowed either 29 or 30 days, but the last day was called triâkas (or in Athens henê kai neâ [meaning 'the old and the new']) in either case, the preceding day (?) being omitted in a 'hollow' month. So it was always a question of when to have the 30th." 2 In other words each polis had its own traditions about the calendar. At the 30th, there is a crisis about arriving at a Panhellenic norm from the standpoint of each polis. This norm is conveyed here by the notion of alêtheia 'truth', which, I argue, is the criterion of Panhellenism. Then the poet embarks on a catalogue of those days of the month that share the highest degree of consensus in local traditions, with the catalogue proceeding in a descending order of consensus. The 30th may be a crisis point, varying from polis to polis, but the crisis leads to a shared Panhellenic perspective. The poet has blotted over the differences, simply noting that alêtheia 'truth' is being 'sorted out' [= is in a crisis: the verb is krînô] on the 30th. After the 30th it is possible to arrive at a fixed sequence of given days traditionally spent in given ways by all Hellenes. 3
§27. The poet now highlights this fixed sequence, which is the Panhellenic perspective. Zeus, the god who is the planner of the universe, is an appropriate symbol for the organizing principle that underlies the Panhellenic perspective. With Zeus the poet begins the catalogue, as he then proceeds to present a synthetic overview of the days of the month:
haide gar hêmerai eisi Dios para mêtioentos: prôton henê tetras te kai hebdomê hieron êmar têi gar Apollôna chrusaora geinato Lêtô ogdoatê t' enatê te. duô ge men êmata mênos exoch' aexomenoio brotêsia erga penesthai
...
en de tetartêi mênos agesth' eis oikon akoitin, oiônous krinas hoi ep' ergmati toutôi aristoi.
...
pauroi d' aute isasi triseinada mênos aristên arxasthai te pithou kai epi zugon aucheni theinai bousi kai hêmionoisi kai hippois ôkupodessin, nea <te> poluklêida thoên eis oinopa ponton eirumenai: pauroi de t' alêthea kiklêskousin. tetradi d' oige pithon--peri pantôn hieron êmar-- messêi. pauroi d' aute meteikada mênos aristên êous geinomenês: epi deiela d' esti chereiôn.
haide men hêmerai eisin epichthoniois meg' oneiar: hai d' allai metadoupioi, akêrioi, ou ti pherousai, allos d' alloiên ainei, pauroi de t' isasin:
...
...eudaimôn te kai olbios, hos tade panta eidôs ergazêtai anaitios athanatoisin, ornithas krinôn kai huperbasias aleeinôn
Hesiod Works and Days 769-774, 800-801, 814-824, 826-828,
For what I now tell you are the days of Zeus the Planner.
To begin with, the first, 1 the fourth, 2 and the seventh 3 are each a holy day (it was on the seventh that Leto gave birth to Apollo of the golden sword).
So too the eighth 4 and the ninth. 5 And yet, these two days of the waxing part of the month are particularly good for various kinds of work by mortals. 6
...
On the fourth of the month bring home your wedded wife,
having sorted out [verb krînô] the bird omens, 7 which are best for doing this. [...]
Further, few people know that the thrice-nine of the month is best for opening a wine jar and for putting yokes on the necks
of oxen, mules, and swift-footed horses,
or for hauling a swift ship with many oars down to the wine-colored sea. Few give it its true [alêthês] name. 8
Open your jar on the fourth. The fourth of the midmonth is the most holy of them all.
Again, few do it [=give it its true name]. 9 I mean the after-twenty [= the twenty-first], 10 which is best
when dawn comes. As evening approaches, it is less good. These, then, are the days, a great blessing for earth-bound men.
The others fall in between. There is no doom attached to them, and they bring nothing. Different people praise different days, 11 but few really know. 12
...
With respect to all of these days, fortunate and blissful is he who
knows all these things as he works the land, without being responsible to the immortals for any evil deed,
as he sorts out [= verb krînô] the bird omens, 13 and as he avoids any acts of transgression.
§28. For further illustration of the concept of alêtheia as a Panhellenic truth-value, I offer five additional passages. This truth-value is associated not just with poetry in the narrower sense but also with song, as in the lyric poetry of Pindar, and even with prose, as in the Histories of Herodotus. The five passages that follow, then, are selected from the widest possible range of Greek verbal art and range all the way from song to prose:
•
ê thaumata polla, kai pou ti kai brotôn | phatis huper ton alathê logon | dedaidalmenoi pseudesi poikilois exapatônti muthoi: Charis d', haper hapanta teuchei ta meilicha thnatois,
| epipheroisa timan kai apiston emêsato piston | emmenai to pollakis Pindar Olympian 1.28-32
Indeed there are many wondrous things. And the words that men tell, myths [mûthoi]
embellished by varied falsehoods, beyond wording that is true [alêthês], are deceptive. But Kharis, 1 which makes everything pleasurable for mortals, brings it about [= verb mêdomai], 2 by way of conferring honor [tîmê], that even the untrustworthy [apiston] oftentimes becomes trustworthy [piston].
§29. Here we see the juxtaposition of what purports to be a unique and true Panhellenic version with a plethora of false versions, described as mûthoi 'myths'. 1 The mûthoi 'myths' are the outer core, containing traditions that are apista 'untrustworthy', while alêtheia 'truth' is the inner core, containing traditions that are pista 'trustworthy'. In referring to itself, the alêtheia of Panhellenic poetics represents mûthoi as if they were additions to the kernel of truth as formulated by alêtheia. 2 I would argue, however, that mûthoi 'myths' stand for an undifferentiated outer core consisting of local myths, where various versions from various locales may potentially contradict each other, while alêtheia 'truth' stands for a differentiated inner core of exclusive Panhellenic myths that tend to avoid the conflicts of the local versions.
§30. If we symbolize the exclusive sort of mnêmosunê 'memory' (which excludes lêthê: so a- lêth-eia) in terms of a smaller circle surrounded by an area of lêthê within a larger circle of inclusive mnêmosunê (which includes lêthê), we may imagine an ongoing erasure of mûthoi by lêthê within the outer circle, resulting in a-lêtheia. Thus a-lêtheia 'truth' is 'un-forgettable'. It cannot be emphasized enough that such a model of Panhellenic tradition is dynamic, not static. Through time, the inner and outer circles, along with the area of lêthê between them, keep shifting.
§31. Myths that are epichoric, that is, local, are still bound to the rituals of their native locales, whereas the myths of Panhellenic discourse, in the process of excluding local variations, can become divorced from ritual. The word mûthos 'myth' is associated with the epichoric rather than Panhellenic phase of myth making; its remaining links with ritual can be seen even in its etymology, if indeed mûthos is to be derived from the verb muô in the sense of 'I say in a special way' or 'I see in a special way', where the special way is the marked procedure of ritual. 1 Local traditions in ritual, and the myths that go with them, seem to be unfit for Panhellenic discourse. Thus Hecataeus of Miletus, at the beginning of his discourse, dismisses the local tales of the Greeks as polloi te kai geloioi 'many and laughable [geloioi]', as distinct from the things that he has to say, which are alêthea 'true [alêthea]' (FGH 1 F 1). Pollux uses the same notion of 'laughable' (geloio-) in referring to such distinctly epichoric concepts as the herm or the evil eye (7.108). All of which helps account for the negative implications of mûthos in the discourse of figures like Pindar (again Olympian1.29; also Nemean7.23, 8.33) and Herodotus (2.23.1, 2.45.1). 2 Moreover, earlier versions that claim Panhellenic authority can be dismissed by later versions as mûthoi: for example, the authority for the mûthos that is discredited by Herodotus at 2.23.1 is his own predecessor, Hecataeus. 3
§32. All this is not to say that a local or epichoric version, as distinct from a Panhellenic version, can be equated with the version that is supported and promoted by the polis. As an institution, the polis mediates between the epichoric and the Panhellenic: although it contains what is epichoric, it
also promotes what is Panhellenic. 1 In the development from tribe to polis, certain older institutions, no longer compatible with any individual polis, coalesce to form Panhellenic institutions in which a variety of city-states may participate. A prime example is the institution of athletic games, which preserve aspects of tribal initiation patterns no longer suited to the ideologies of any Greek city-state. 2 Another case is the institution of poetry and song. The polis can best promote its prestige by promoting its own traditions in poetry and song on a Panhellenic scale. I have already cited the example of Theognis of Megara. 3 What is particular to Megara alone, grounded in Megara's own rituals and its own myths, tends to be shaded over; what is shared by Megara and by a wide variety of other city-states is highlighted. 4 Thus the polis is in such cases incompatible with mûthoi, in the narrow sense of "myths" that reflect the given city's diversity from other cities. For such reasons the implied concept of poliêtai 'people of the polis, citizens' is explicitly opposed by the neologism mûthiêtai 'people of mûthos' (Anacreon PMG 353). 5
•
idmen pseudea polla legein etumoisin homoia,
idmen d', eut' ethelômen, alêthea gêrusasthai
•
We know how to say many false things that look like genuine [etuma] things,
but we also, when we are willing, know how to announce things that are true [alêthea].
•
§33. These words are spoken to Hesiod by the Muses, who are conferring upon him his power as a poet. To 'announce things that are true [alêthea]' is a model for the evolution of a unique Panhellenic Theogony out of an untold number of local theogonies, which seem etuma 'genuine' but are here set apart as a plethora of falsehoods. 1
•
alla palaia gar | heudei charis, amnamones de brotoi, | ho ti mê sophias aôton akron |
klutais epeôn rhoaisin exikêtai zugen Pindar Isthmian 7.16-19
But the kharis [= pleasurable compensation, through song or poetry, for a deed deserving of glory] 2 of the past is asleep, and mortals are unaware [= negative of mnê-] of whatever does not attain 3 the cresting blossom of the art of songmaking by being wedded to the glory-bringing streams of sung words.
§34. The tradition that informs this song is realized only in the here and now of performance, which is visualized as blossoming from the irrigating waters of the tradition. 1 The 'kharis of the
past' is the cumulative response to all other potential realizations of the tradition, with the adjective palaio- 'of the past' implicitly contrasting the present performance. 2 In the diction of Pindar the present performance is conventionally described as neo- or nearo- 'new', which refers not to the novelty of a theme but to the ad hoc application of a myth to the here and now of those who attend and are the occasion of performance. 3
•
tên gar aoidên mallon epikleious' anthrôpoi
hê tis akouontessi neôtatê amphipelêtai
•
Men would most rather give glory [kleos] to that song
which is the newest to make the rounds among listeners.
•
§35. Telemachus says these words to his mother Penelope, who had tried to stop the singer Phemios from singing what is described as the nostos 'homecoming' of the Achaeans (i 326). 1 Here too, as in the diction of Pindar, the concept neo- 'new' refers to the appropriateness of the myth to the situation in the here and now. 2 In this case Odysseus is both a prime figure in the myth and about to become a prime figure in the here and now narrated by the poem. His nostos is literally in the making, which is precisely the subject of the singer. Naturally the Panhellenic Nostos of Odysseus in the Odyssey is one to end all nostoi. 3
•
tôn de allôn basileôn ou gar elegon oudemian ergôn apodexin, kat' ouden einai lamprotêtos, plên henos tou eschatou
About the other kings, they [= the Egyptian priests] had no public statement [apodeixis] to tell of their deeds [erga], since there was nothing distinguished [= literally 'bright'], except for the last [king].
§36. The word apodeixis 'public display' refers to the medium for performing what we see written in Herodotus. 1 Since this medium makes public the deeds of men, what men do is also apodeixis, in that their deeds are being publicly witnessed. 2 In this case the apodeixis of the priests--and of Herodotus in turn--erases the deeds of all kings except one. To put it in terms of the passage, the making public of a tradition by way of performance--or at least by way of a written record that simulates performance--highlights the deeds of an exceptional figure as it darkens over the deeds of other figures. 3
§37. In light of these illustrations, let us return to the notion of a single Panhellenic tradition as
opposed to a plethora of local traditions. It should be clear that this notion of Panhellenic is absolute only from the standpoint of insiders to the tradition at a given time and place, and that it is relative from the standpoint of outsiders, such as ourselves, who are merely looking in on the tradition. Each new performance can claim to be the definitive Panhellenic tradition. Moreover, the degree of Panhellenic synthesis in the content of a composition corresponds to the degree of diffusion in the performance of this composition. Because we are dealing with a relative concept, we may speak of the poetry of the Iliad and Odyssey, for example, as more Panhellenic than the poetry of the Epic Cycle. To put it conversely: a Cyclic poem like the Aithiopis, attributed to Arctinus of Miletus, is clearly less Panhellenic and more regional, focusing on the local traditions of Miletus. 1 Whereas both the Iliad and Odyssey refer to the immortalizing kleos 'glory' of Panhellenic epic that is to serve as compensation for the death of Achilles, 2 the Aithiopis is concerned rather with the personal immortalization of Achilles after death, on the island of Leuke (Aithiopis/Proclus, p. 106.12-15 Allen; Pindar Nemean4.49-50). This myth, as espoused by the Aithiopis, is anchored in local cult: Leuke is not only a mythical place of immortalization for Achilles but also the ritual place of his hero cult, localized in the territory of Olbia, daughter city of Miletus. 3 I have argued elsewhere that "the Cyclic epics are so different from the two Homeric epics not because they are more recent or more primitive but rather because they are more local in orientation and diffusion." 4
§38. To explain the superior prestige of the Homeric poems on the basis of their greater Panhellenic orientation and diffusion would also help account for the dependency of the whole Cycle on the narrative structure of the Iliad and Odyssey combined: the Cycle fills in the portions of the tale of Troy that had not already been told in its own way and on its own terms by the poetry of the Iliad and Odyssey. 1 In other words the text of the Epic Cycle is built around that of the Iliad and Odyssey. 2
§39. Clearly the poems of the Cycle, as also the Homeric Hymns, become fixed texts at various times that are all later than the textual fixation of the Iliad and Odyssey. 1 So we must assume either that poems like the Aithiopis, Little Iliad, and The Destruction of Ilion developed parallel to the Iliad and Odyssey or that they are derived from them. The latter alternative is an impossibility. The basic achievement of the "neoanalytic" approach as advocated by Wolfgang Kullmann and others is their cumulative demonstration that any given Homeric treatment of a given tradition may entail a refinement of that same tradition as attested in the Cycle. 2 In terms of my argument, such refinements are a reflex of further Panhellenization in Homeric poetry as distinct from other related poetry. And Such refinements cannot be accounted for merely by invoking the genius of a poet who stands out from among the rest.
§40. Paradoxically the textual fixation of the Homeric poems is older than that of the Cycle, in that the overall narrative of the Cycle is built around the Iliad and Odyssey, and yet the inherited themes of the Cycle appear consistently older than those of the Homeric poems. 1 I propose to account for this state of affairs by arguing that the Panhellenization of the Homeric tradition entailed a differentiation from older layers of Panhellenic epic tradition, and that these older layers were gradually sloughed off in the process of Homeric streamlining. Such an explanation would
account for not only the artistic superiority of the Iliad and Odyssey but also the thematic archaism of the Cycle. 2 The older layers represented by the Cycle kept developing alongside the emerging core of the Homeric tradition and, being the more local versions, had the relative freedom to develop for a longer time, albeit at a slower pace, toward a point of textual fixation that still seems like a case of arrested development in contrast with the ultimate Homeric form. 3
§41. This sloughing off of older layers could have been expressed in terms of myth as a break in genealogical continuity with the Homeridai, the descendants of Homer. 1 We earlier witnessed the explicit articulation of such a break in the case of Kynaithos the rhapsode: according to the scholia to Pindar (Nemean2.1c, III 29.9-18 Drachmann), Kynaithos of Chios, credited with the final form of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, could no longer trace himself to Homer. In other words the tradition continued by Kynaithos is here being discredited by the sources as no longer authorized by the Homeridai. 2
§42. Myth can provide for indirect as well as direct heirs to the Homeridai. According to one version Stasinus, reputedly the poet of the Cypria (e.g., scholia A to Iliad I 5), was not the author of that poem but instead received the Cypria as a dowry from his father-in-law, Homer (Tzetzes Chiliades 13.636-640; Pindar F 265 SM, in the fuller context of Aelian Varia Historia 9.15). According to another myth Homer had taught the composition called the Capture of Oikhalia to Kreophylos of Samos, founder of the corporation of rhapsodes known as the Kreophyleioi, as a gift in return for the hospitality of Kreophylos when Homer had traveled from Chios to Samos (Strabo 14.1.18 C638; cf. Callimachus Epigram 6 Pfeiffer). 1 From the standpoint of the Homeridai, the Kreophyleioi were left out of Homer's genealogy, perhaps because they were rivals. The rivalry would concern the basic question: who is the authoritative representative of the epic tradition in a given community? In Archaic Sparta, for example, it appears that the Kreophyleioi of Samos were more authoritative than the Homeridai of Chios: tradition has it that the introduction of Homeric poetry took place in Sparta by way of the Kreophyleioi of Samos (Aristotle F 611.10 Rose). 2
§43. Wherever a given succession of rhapsodes is left out of the direct genealogy of Homer, we can expect that they may have to relinquish the central repertory of the Homeridai and make do with what is left over. Such is the case, it seems, with the distinct repertories attributed to Arctinus of Miletus, Lesches of Mytilene, Stasinus of Cyprus, and the other poets of the Cycle. 1
§44. To judge by the repertory of the Cycle, what was indeed left over was already finite 1 in that the Panhellenism of the Cycle, however less developed than that of the Iliad and Odyssey still entails the preservation of a few variants at the expense of the extinction of many others. Just as the Iliad and Odyssey had prevailed over the Cycle, so also the Cycle had teleologically prevailed over countless other epic traditions. In terms of myth, however, as long as a given tradition can somehow survive after losing to another tradition, the loser can be presented as the winner: it is as if the surviving tradition, deprived of the repertory of the prevalent tradition, had won its own remaining repertory as a concession from the prevalent one. 2 Such is the case in the myth that tells of the contest between Arctinus of Miletus and Lesches of Mytilene, which is won by
Lesches (Phaenias F 33 Wehrli, in Clement Stromateis 1.131.6). 3
§45. A similar point may be made about the Contest of Homer and Hesiod tradition (Certamen, pp. 225-238 Allen). 1 Here Hesiod is represented as the victor on the basis of the specialization of Hesiodic poetry: telling of peacetime pursuits is deemed superior to telling of wartime ones (Certamen, p. 233.205-210 Allen). By implication, the telling of wartime pursuits is not open to Hesiod, whereas it is to Homer. The myth of this victory compensates for the fact that the poetry of Hesiod is relatively less Panhellenic than that of Homer. For example, we hear only of Homeric poetry, not of Hesiodic, in connection with reports about recitations that are privileged by law at the Panathenaia. 2
§46. This point about relative Panhellenism brings us back to the Epic Cycle. The story about the contest between Arctinus and Lesches, which Lesches wins (Phaenias F 33 Wehrli), may have a symbolic bearing on the interrelationship of narratives in the poetry attributed to Arctinus and Lesches. Both the Aithiopis and the Destruction of Ilion are attributed to Arctinus, whereas the Little Iliad is attributed to Lesches. On the basis of this story of a contest, combined with the fact that the story line of the Little Iliad of Lesches intervenes between that of the Aithiopis and that of the Destruction of Ilion, the two compositions attributed to Arctinus, it has been supposed that Arctinus, who "has the lion's share of the Cycle," had been "forced by Lesches' rising merits to yield him the [Little Iliad]." 1 This interpretation assumes that the story of a contest between Lesches and Arctinus is a historical fact, whereas I argue that it is a myth reflecting the historical relationship between the poetry attributed to these two figures. As we look at the narrative coverage of the Little Iliad as attributed to Lesches, this poet from the island of Lesbos, it seems at first to be an intrusion into the narrative of Arctinus of Miletus. But it would be more accurate to say that the narrative of Arctinus envelops the narrative of Lesches at both ends, almost engulfing it. Just as the Epic Cycle is built around the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey, so also, within the Cycle, the repertoire of Arctinus seems to be built around that of Lesches. There seems to be a stratification here, as if an earlier repertoire represented by Lesches of Mytilene were being enveloped by a later repertoire represented by Arctinus of Miletus. 2
§47. This observation, made on the level of content, has an analogy on the level of form: the Ionic diction of Homer, as also of the Cycle, envelops an earlier stage of Aeolic diction, so that Aeolic forms tend to survive only where they are not replaceable, in the metrical frames that they occupy, by corresponding Ionic forms. 1 From the linguistic point of view an even earlier layer of Homeric diction is closely akin to the surviving local dialect of Cyprus. 2 In this connection, we may take note of the fact that the Cypria makes explicit localized references to Cyprus (see, e.g., Lysimachus FGH 382 F 12; cf. "Apollodorus" Epitome 3.3-4); also, Stasinus, the reputed poet of the Cypria, is conventionally described as 'the Cypriote' (e.g., at Suda s.v. Homêros; cf. Athenaeus 334b). 3 Since the themes of the Cypria constitute the narrative basis for the entire epic tradition of the Trojan War, its Cypriote associations may be connected to an early phase in the Panhellenic diffusion of epic traditions on the island of Cyprus. 4
§48. In sum the Cycle may be viewed as a vestigial recapitulation in content of the chronological layering of the entire Homeric tradition, even though much of this layering has been sloughed off
by the actual Iliad and Odyssey. The traditions of these sloughed-off layers, as represented by the Cycle, could have kept growing alongside the Homeric tradition, becoming even more Ionian in diction than Homeric diction itself. 1 In the few remaining fragments of the Cycle, an Ionic layer is clearly superimposed on the arguably Aeolic traditions represented by Lesches of Mytilene and the Cypriote traditions represented by Stasinus of Cyprus. 2
§49. The overarching Panhellenism of the Homeric poems, as we have seen, is evident from the differentiation of these poems from those of the Cycle. But the differentiation must be asserted on the basis of whatever distinct traditions are offered by the Cycle. Without such a pattern of assertion, the distinction between the Homeric poems and those of the Cycle poems can lapse into indifference in face of Homeric Panhellenism. Thus whereas the poems of the Epic Cycle could be attributed to individual poets like Arctinus and Lesches, they could also be attributed to the central figure of textual fixation, Homer. 1 According to one particular myth, for example, Homer himself was commissioned to "dictate" the Little Iliad, along with another composition called the Phokais, when he traveled to Phokaia (Herodotean Life of Homer 15, pp. 202-203 Allen). In this version any attribution of the Little Iliad to Lesches of Mytilene is wanting. For another example, I cite again Pindar F 265 SM, referring to the myth that told how the composition of the Cypria was Homer's dowry for his daughter (who was married to Stasinus: Aelian Varia Historia 9.15, Tzetzes Chiliades 13.636-640). Further, Herodotus goes out of his way to argue, apparently against certain traditions in his own time, that the poet of the Cypria is not Homer (2.116-117). 2 The words of Callinus apparently referred to the Seven against Thebes as Homer's poem (F 6 W); or again, Herodotus feels bound to express doubt whether the poet of the Epigonoi, the sequel of the Seven against Thebes, is indeed Homer (4.32). 3 By the time of Aristotle the safest thing was to say simply 'the author of the Cypria' or 'the author of the Little Iliad', as opposed to the prototypical and idealized Homer (Poetics 1459b). One latter-day critic puts it this way: "If Homer had a kind of claim to all this epic literature--a rather strong claim to the Hymns, a weaker one to the Cycle--and the alternatives to admitting his claim were either anonymity or naming a definite poet, what explanation can be given of the phenomenon except that the whole literature was the work of a school?" 4 For the phrase the work of a school, elsewhere deemed the Homeric canon by the same author, 5 I would substitute a Panhellenic tradition. Whereas the Aithiopis and the Destruction of Ilion are claimed by Miletus by way of attribution to Arctinus of Miletus, and the Little Iliad is claimed by Mytilene by way of attribution to Lesches of Mytilene in Lesbos, no single polis has an unequivocal claim on Homer (though his cult as hero at Chios seems definable by way of the Homeridai at Chios). 6
§50. In offering this sketch of the synthetic tradition that produced the Homeric poems, I should close by stressing that I do not deny the notion of "poets within a tradition." 1 The oral composer in the context of performance can execute considerable refinements in the act of recomposition. 2 The composer can even appropriate the recomposition as his own composition, as if it emanated exclusively from an owned authority: "This is my song." 3 But the gradual replacement of divergences in local oral traditions by convergences in Panhellenic oral tradition leads to an internal idealization of the very concept of the composer. If indeed Panhellenization gradually eliminates opportunities for recomposition in performance, we should then expect a
commensurate elimination of opportunities for successive generations of performers to identify themselves as composers. I therefore do not argue generally that tradition creates the poet. 4 Rather I argue specifically that the Panhellenic tradition of oral poetry appropriates the poet, potentially transforming even historical figures into generic ones who represent the traditional functions of their poetry. The wider the diffusion and the longer the chain of recomposition, the more remote the identity of the composer becomes. Extreme cases are Homer and Hesiod. 5 To put it another way: the person of the poet, by virtue of being a transmitter of tradition, can become absorbed by the tradition. 6 Then the poet as an exponent of his poetry can become identified with and even equated with that poetry. Thus, for example, when Heraclitus (22 B 42 DK) says that Homer and Archilochus should be banned from contests in poetic performance, agônes, what is really being said is that rhapsodes should not be allowed to perform Homer and Archilochus. 7
§51. The appropriation of a historical person by the poetic tradition in which that person is composing can be visualized hypothetically in the following general schema of progressive phases, constructed from specific examples of performance conventions taken from a variety of traditional societies:
At a phase of the tradition where each performance still entails an act of at least partial recomposition, performer L publicly appropriates a given recomposition-in-performance as his or her own composition. 1
At a later phase of the tradition, performer M stops appropriating the recomposition of the
recomposition as his or her own composition and instead attributes it to the predecessor L; this attribution is then continued by successors NOPQ. 2
In the process of successive recompositions by NOPQ, the self-identification of L is
recomposed often enough to eliminate the historical aspects of identity and to preserve only the generic aspects (that is, the aspects of the poet as defined by traditional activity as a poet; also by being the ancestor or at least predecessor of those who continue in the tradition). 3 The definitive stages of Homeric text fixation, I would suggest, correspond to this stage 3. 4
§52. The key to loss of identity as a composer is loss of control over performance. Once the
factor of performance slips out of the poet's control--even if the performers of the poet's poetry have traditional comments about the poet as a composer--the poet becomes a myth; more accurately the poet becomes part of a myth, and the myth-making structure appropriates his or her identity. Such is the case with the poetry of a Homer or a Hesiod or an Archilochus, as performed by rhapsôidoi 'rhapsodes' like Ion of Chios. 1
§53. In sum, Panhellenism affects not only the form and the content of Archaic Greek poetry. It affects also the very identity of the poet. As the poet's composition is successively reperformed, the poet's identity is successively reenacted and thereby reshaped. 1
Notes
§2n1. The next paragraph is a reworking of N 1985.35 §17n3. From here on the Greek word
polis is no longer printed in boldface.
§3n1. Snodgrass 1971.421, 435; cf. Snodgrass 1987, especially pp. 160, 165, and Morris 1988,
especially pp. 754-755.
§3n2. N 1979.5-9.
§3n3. N 1982.43-49, 52-57, 59-60.
§3n4. N 1985.34-36.
§4n1. Ibid. Gentili 1985.45 discusses a poem for the Corinthian dead at Salamis: the inscription is Doric (CEG 131; Simonides EG 11), but the transmission is Ionic (Plutarch On the Malice of Herodotus 870e).
§5n1. For the related notion of intertextuality, in a specialized sense as applied to Homeric poetry, see Pucci 1987.29n30.
§5n2. This interconnected development of traditions is reflected in cross references from one tradition to another. I suggest that the notion of "cross reference" is indeed workable in the study of oral poetics, provided we understand that any references to other traditions in any given composition / performance would have to be diachronic in nature. On such cross referencing between the Iliad and the Odyssey traditions, see N 1979.35-58; also Pucci, pp. 240-242. For analogous cross referencing in Hesiodic poetry, I cite Theogony87, where the assertion that an ideal king can resolve even the greatest possible neikos 'quarrel' seems to presuppose a thematic association with the neikos between Hesiod and Perses at Works and Days35, which is treated by the Works and Days as an ultimate criterion, as the quarrel to end all quarrels; cf. N 1982.58-
59. In fact cross references can serve to distinguish one tradition from another. To cite an example: the description of the funeral of Achilles in Odyssey xxiv makes references to Patroklos and Antilokhos (77-79) in such a way as to signal that the Odyssey follows the Iliad tradition, not the Aithiopis tradition: see Edwards 1985b.223-225 (cf. N 1979.21; also Ch.7§15). A veritable network of cross references establishes the complementarity of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey traditions, of the Hesiodic Theogony and Works and Days traditions (cf. Slatkin 1987). It may be that the distinctness of two separate major compositions within each of the two traditions resulted from evolutionary differentiations within the Homeric and the Hesiodic traditions. Moreover, the Contest of Homer and Hesiod tradition (Certamen, pp. 225-238 Allen), and the myth behind it (see further at Ch.2§45), implies an even more fundamental pattern of evolutionary differentiation between the Homeric and the Hesiodic traditions.
§6n1. See N 1982.48-49.
§7n1. See Ch.1§10, where I discuss the notion of Panhellenic as applied to international (that is, inter-polis) festivals like the Panathenaia. On the performance of old elegiac and iambic poetry by rhapsodes, see Ch.1§16.
§7n2. References and further discussion in Ch.3, where we shall see that the patterns of Panhellenization in song are even more complex than they are in poetry.
§7n3. That the rhapsodes may not be able to accommodate the compositions that they perform to the current political requisites of the audience is suggested in Herodotus 5.67.1, as interpreted by Svenbro 1976.44; for more on this passage, see Ch.2§43n1.
§8n1. Cf. Ch.1§21 and Ch.1§22.
§8n2. Coupez and Kamanzi 1962.8, quoted by Finnegan 1970.6.
§9n1. Cf. Boutière and Schutz 1950, p. xii.
§9n2. Cf. Stevens 1986.43. Cf. Zwettler 1978.84-88 on the Arabic concept of the râwî.
§10n1. On categories of ownership of song (and / or dance), see Kunst 1958.2.
§10n2. Boulton 1954.4-5. Note here the oral performance's reference to the newness of its composition. It would be deceptive, here as elsewhere in oral traditions, to equate such "newness" with our own general notions of innnovation. We must be on guard against projecting into oral traditions an anxious modernist vision of the creative self, which can lapse all too easily into romantic scenarios of creation out of self-contained genius. We may achieve a more balanced formulation from the vantage point of anthropology: I cite Barnett 1953.39-95 on the concept of innovation, where he offers a cross cultural survey of nine possible social factors that promote innovation. Barnett's book has strongly influenced ethnomusicologists like Merriam (e.g., 1964.312-313), especially with his observation that whereas innovation in oral traditions may be initiated by individuals, the cultural background must allow it (for example, by way of collaboration of effort, expectation of change, and the like). On the relativity, from society to society, of the descriptive term improvisation, see the useful discussion of Merriam, p. 179.
§10n3. Davidson 1985.110; also in general pp. 103-142. The textual references here to the Shâhnâma follow the volume and page numbers of Bertel\'s 1966-1971. Again I draw attention to the "renewal" claimed by the composer.
§10n4. Ibid.
§10n5. Davidson, p. 109. Note again the notion of "renewal."
§11n1. I note the interesting ethnographic typologies discussed in Bausinger 1980.52.
§12n1. Commentary in N 1979.233-234. On the dêmos 'administrative district, population' in Archaic Greek poetic diction in the sense of 'local community', with its own traditions, customs, laws, and the like, see N, p. 149 §11n6; also Ch.9§2n4.
§12n2. Cf. Hesiod Works and Days25-26, where the aoidos 'singer' is juxtaposed with the tektôn 'carpenter' and the kerameus 'potter'; also with the itinerant ptôkhos 'beggar', ibid. Such a juxtaposition of aoidos and ptôkhos is also built into Odyssey xvii 381-385.
§12n3. There is clearly a hierarchy of professions within the category of dêmiourgoi,
supplemented by the notion that the ptôkhos 'beggar' is at the bottom. The association of the ptôkhos with the category of dêmiourgoi relates perhaps to the notion that beggars, like dêmiourgoi, could appeal for immunity as they traveled from dêmos to dêmos, or perhaps to a poetic topos concerning the social scale as ranging all the way from the king at the very top to the beggar at the very bottom. It could be argued that such a mention of beggars on one end of of the social scale is intended as a symmetrical implication of kings on the other end: just as beggars can be listed at the bottom of a hierarchy of dêmiourgoi, so also kings can be listed at the top. The sliding scale in the social status of Odysseus from king to beggar back to king in the Odyssey may be connected with a poetic topos concerning the relationship between the king and the dêmiourgoi. On the ainos 'fable' of the Hawk and the Nightingale in Hesiod Works and Days 202-212, where the hawk is to a king as the nightingale is to a poet as dêmiourgos, cf. N 1979.238-241.
§12n4. Old Irish tuath 'tribe' (as ruled by a king) is cognate with Umbrian touto 'civitas' and German Deutsch. On the áes cerd, see [J. F.] Nagy 1985.33, 35 and 239n48; cf. also Meid 1974.
§13n1. For the theory that literacy is the primary impetus toward a critical faculty, see, for example, Goody and Watt 1968.
§14n1. N 1982.47-49, 52. For a particularly compelling formulation with regard to Arabic traditions, I cite Zwettler 1978.221.
§15n1. Lévi-Strauss 1979.153-163, especially pp. 162-163.
§17n1. Detienne 1973.22-27. For example, Lêthê or 'Forgetting' personified is descended from Night in Hesiod Theogony227/224; Mnêmosunê 'Remembering' is contrasted with darkness in Pindar Nemean7.12-16.
§18n1. Detienne, pp. 69-80.
§20n1. For these terms, see the Introduction, Intro. §12.
§20n2. See the discussion by Detienne, p. 74.
§21n1. Waugh 1982 compares the French usage of the masculine gender as the unmarked member of an opposition with the feminine, in that the masculine can stand for the category as a whole: thus an adjective describing both masculine and feminine categories will be put into the masculine: des hommes et des femmes intelligents.
§22n1. For these terms, as used by Waugh 1982 following Jakobson 1939, see again the Introduction. Waugh, p. 302, pictures the marked-unmarked relationship as "a subset-set relationship where the marked category is the subset and the unmarked category is the set," or alternatively as "a figure-ground relationship where the marked pole is the figure and the unmarked pole is the ground."
§22n2. Given that the smaller circle within the larger circle symbolizes the specialized sort of mnê-, that is, a-lêtheia, I would say that the larger circle that contains lêth- would correspond to the function of the Muses, who help humans forget some things so that they may remember others. The root *mnâ- of mnê- 'remember' may in fact be related to the root *mon-t- (or *mon- th-) of Mousa 'Muse' (Hesiod Theogony53-55, 98-103). The etymological connection is certain if Mousa is to be derived from the root *men-, expanded as *mon-t- (or *mon-th-), which is one of
several possibilities entertained by Chantraine DELG 716. The relationship of the root *men- with the expanded form *mnâ-, as in mnê-, is clear: Chantraine, p. 703.
§22n3. The pertinent passages are discussed in N 1983.44. This expression oude me/se/he lêthei 'it does not escape my/your/his-her mind' implies a synchronic understanding of the word alêtheia as a compound consisting of privative a- and the root lêth-. In the formulation of Cole 1983.12, the reference of alêtheia is "not simply to non-omission of pieces of information...but also to not forgetting from one minute to the next what was said a few minutes before, and not letting anything, said or unsaid, slip by without being mindful of its consequences and implications." (For a critique of Heidegger's celebrated explanation of alêtheia, see Cole, pp. 7-8.) Cf. also Detienne 1973.48n107.
§23n1. I cite again Hesiod Theogony53-55, 98-103). The etymological connection is certain if Mousa is to be derived from the root *men-, expanded as *mon-t- (or *mon-th-), which is one of several possibilities entertained by Chantraine DELG 716. The relationship of the root *men- with the expanded form *mnâ-, as in mnê-, is clear: Chantraine, p. 703.
§23n2. The pertinent passages are discussed in N 1983.44. This expression oude me/se/he lêthei 'it does not escape my/your/his-her mind' implies a synchronic understanding of the word alêtheia as a compound consisting of privative a- and the root lêth-. In the formulation of Cole 1983.12, the reference of alêtheia is "not simply to non-omission of pieces of information...but also to not forgetting from one minute to the next what was said a few minutes before, and not letting anything, said or unsaid, slip by without being mindful of its consequences and implications." (For a critique of Heidegger's celebrated explanation of alêtheia, see Cole, pp. 7-8.) Cf. also Detienne 1973.48n107.
§24n1. I cite again Hesiod Theogony53-55, 98-103.
§24n2. On this theme, see Detienne 1973.29-50.
§24n3. This is not to say, of course, that the convergent version may not be complex, containing multiformities within its overarching uniformity.
§24n4. Cf. Ch.2§15; cf. also Ch.2§51n1.
§24n5. Royce 1977.104 points out, with reference to traditions of dance, that various structures of performance, as they become progressively more rigid, can suffer "abrupt confrontation and loss."
§24n6. The threat of "abrupt confrontation and loss," to use the expression quoted immediately above, could help promote an impetus for recording by way of writing. But a critical attitude
toward myth is caused not by the technology of writing but rather, more fundamentally, by the crisis of confrontation between variants of myth. See Ch.2§13.
§24n7. We may well ask: how does the local perspective contribute to the Panhellenic, and to what degree does the Panhellenic perspective recognize the local? From the standpoint of the local tradition, the best chance for self-assertion is a process of self-selection that accommodates the Panhellenic tradition. Note the discussion by Royce 1977.164 of the repertory of some 90 sones (dances) among the Zapotec of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec: in asserting their identity to outsiders, the Zapotec tend to select just three of these 90 sones. Royce notes (ibid.) that "these three are the dances that any non-Zapotec would name if asked about 'typical' dances of the Isthmus," and that it is these three dances that are synthesized by the Ballet Folklórico in its suite "Wedding in Tehuantepec."
§25n1. For a history of the usage of canon to designate a selective listing of authors and works, see Pfeiffer 1968.207.
§25n2. For an introduction to the era of Alexandrian scholarship, see Pfeiffer, pp. 87-233.
§25n3. For a survey of this usage, see Pfeiffer, p. 117.
§25n4. See Pfeiffer, pp. 89, 242.
§25n5. Pfeiffer, pp. 206-207. Cf. Horace Odes I 1.35, and the comments of Pfeiffer, p. 206.
§25n6. Pfeiffer, p. 207. The canon as conceived by the Alexandrian scholars is not to be confused with the actual collection of works housed in the great library of the Museum at Alexandria. The Pinakes or 'Tables' of Callimachus, in 120 books, was intended not as a selection but as a complete catalogue of the holdings of the Museum, generally organized along the lines of formal criteria, including meter. For an informative discussion, see Zetzel 1983.98-100, who stresses that the Alexandrian system of classification was "eminently suitable for describing the literature of pre-Alexandrian Greece" (p. 99).
§25n7. On the principles of selection, from Aristotle to the Alexandrians, see Pfeiffer, pp. 117,
205. This is not to assume that there was an ongoing process of actual selecting of Classical (as opposed to current) authors in the period of Alexandrian scholarship; I cite Page 1953.68, who doubts that "any ancient lyrical poet whose works were in circulation up to the Alexandrian era was omitted by the Alexandrian editors from their collection" (for a critique of this formulation, see Ch.3§3n2). In the case of epic, Quintilian Institutio oratoria 10.1.55 notes explicitly that the Alexandrian editors Aristophanes and Aristarchus included no contemporary poets into the ordo, or canon, barring even Apollonius of Rhodes.
§25n9. For the wording, see, for example, the description in Plato Laws 659ab. There is a stylization of this institution in the Frogs of Aristophanes, in the form of a competition between Aeschylus and Euripides (see Ch.13§41); in this context, we may note the usage of the word krisis and the corresponding verb krînô at Frogs 779, 785, 805, 873, 1467, 1473. Cf. also
Dunkel 1979.252-253.
§26n1. First we had the "works"; now we have the "days."
§26n2. West 1978.351.
§26n3. For the apparent exception on the island of Keos, see the passages quoted by West, p. 351.
§27n1. In the Odyssey, the new moon is the context for a festival of Apollo (xiv 162 = xix 307; xx 156, 276-278, xxi 258): West 1978.352.
§27n2. For example, Aphrodite was specially worshipped on this day: sources in West, ibid.
§27n3. The most important holy day of Apollo: sources ibid.
§27n4. For example, the 8th at Athens was the day for honoring Poseidon and Theseus: West, p. 353.
§27n5. For example, the 9th at Athens inaugurated the City Dionysia: ibid.
§27n6. That is, they may be holy days, but they are not necessarily holidays. This hedge suggests that the 8th and the 9th are less "Panhellenic" than the 1st, 4th, and 7th. This reading differs from that of West, p. 132, whose punctuation indicates that he takes duo ge men êmata as referring to what follows (the 11th and 12th at line 774) rather than to what precedes (the 8th and the 9th at line 772). I take duo ge men êmata at 772 and amphô ge men at 774 to be parallel in referring to what precedes in the syntax.
§27n7. Note the parallel expression concerning bird-omens at Works and Days828, as discussed at Ch.2§27n1.
§27n8. The Hesiodic name 'thrice-nine' would be the Panhellenic designation, as implied by the word alêthês. Note the observations at Ch.2§26 about alêtheia at Works and Days768. Local designations of this day may have been subject to tabu. The number thrice-nine is particularly sacred: see the references collected by West, p. 361.
§27n9. This interpretation differs from what is found in the standard editions.
§27n10. Note again the periphrasis, as in the case of thrice-nine at line 814.
§27n11. Here we see the localized perspective.
§27n12. Here we see the Panhellenic perspective. 'Know' is in the sense of histôr 'the knowledgeable one', as at Works and Days792.
§27n13. Note the parallelism between verse 828 here and verse 801, Ch.2§27, where again the verb krînô 'sort out' is used with reference to divination by birds. The crisis of sorting out the right and the wrong bird-omens is implicitly parallel to the crisis (again, verb krînô) of sorting
out what is alêtheia 'truth' and what is not. In order to appreciate the importance of ornithomanteiâ 'divination by birds' in the whole poem, we may note that Works and Days828 had served as a lead-off for a concluding stretch of verses, now lost, containing instructions on the interpretation of bird omens (West 1978.364-365). A bird omen is central to the entire ethical message of the Works and Days, that is, the ainos 'fable' (202) of "The Hawk and the Nightingale" (202-212), on which see Ch.9§7n6.
§28n1. That is, kharis personified. For the specific purposes of this book, I consistently interpret kharis as a 'beautiful and pleasurable compensation, through song or poetry, for a deed deserving of glory'. This word conveys both the beauty ("grace") and the pleasure ("gratification") of reciprocity.
§28n2. West 1978.49 observes: "The aorist of mêdomai, unlike the imperfect, means not 'planned' but 'wrought'." In the range of meaning from 'planned' to 'wrought', I submit, we see the range of meaning within the single word kerdos 'craft', on which see Ch.2§12.
§29n1. I shall argue in Ch.4 below that Pindar's "unique and true Panhellenic version" represents the official aetiology of the Olympics in Pindar's time.
§29n2. In visualizing an outer core of 'falsehoods' and an inner core of 'truth', I am following the interpretation of Young 1986, who adduces, besides Pindar Olympian1.28-32, Plato Republic 377a, Pausanias 8.2.6 and Strabo 1.2.9 C20. I would add Thucydides 1.21.1: oute hôs poiêtai humnêkasi peri autôn epi to meizon kosmountes mallon pisteuôn. These parallels help put Pindar Nemean7.20-23, also adduced by Young, in a new light; note the singularity of the Pindaric patha at Nemean7.21 as opposed to the plurality of the Homeric polla...pathen algea in the prooemium of the Odyssey (i 4). See Ch.7§5n2.
§31n2. The verb mûtheomai 'say', derivative of mûthos, seems less susceptible to such negative implications: see Pindar Pythian4.298 and Hecataeus FGH 1 F 1. On Aristotle's rehabilitation of the word mûthos, see Halliwell 1986.57-58, especially n16. On mûthos in Plato: Brisson 1982.
§31n3. How and Wells 1928 I 170.
§32n1. This point is developed further at Ch.5§15. It is no coincidence that the decline of the polis in the fourth century and thereafter coincides with the decline of Panhellenism.
§32n2. At Ch.5§15 and following, I refer to this phenomenon in shorthand as the exoskeleton of the polis.
§32n4. Detailed discussion in N 1985.
§32n5. Cf. Detienne 1981.92-94. As the scholia to Odyssey xxi 71 make clear, the mûthiêtai
'people of mûthos' in the island-polis of Samos are the people who represent stasis
'discord' (stasiastai). On the theme of stasis as a negative way of achieving a definition of the
polis, see Ch.12§51 and following.
§33n1. See N 1982.47-49. The phrase alêthea gêrusasthai 'announce things that are true [alêthea]' at Theogony28 is one of a set of variants, including alêthea muthêsasthai 'tell [verb mûtheomai] things that are true' at Iliad VI 382, Homeric Hymn to Demeter121, etc. (also attested as a textual variant at Theogony28) and etêtuma muthêsasthai 'tell [verb mûtheomai] things that are real [etêtuma]' at Homeric Hymn to Demeter44. I suggest that these variations result from a chain of differentiations setting off a marked Panhellenic version from unmarked versions that are ostensibly local or at least more local. The variant gêrusasthai 'announce' represents a differentiation of marked gêrûsasthai 'announce' from unmarked muthêsasthai 'tell'; also, the variant alêthea 'things that are true [alêthea]' represents a differentiation of marked alêthea 'things that are true' from unmarked etêtuma 'things that are real'. In each case, the marked member differentiates a concept that is Panhellenic (alêthês, gêrûsasthai) from an earlier concept that is perceived as obsolete (etêtumo- [or etumo-], muthêsasthai) with reference to the new marked member. At each stage of differentiation, we must allow for the probability that the unmarked member of the opposition had once been the marked member in earlier sets of opposition.
§33n3. Here I am following the interpretation of Race 1986.108.
§34n1. On water as a symbol of poetry or song, see Ch.10§9n2.
§34n2. The word palaio- 'of the past' implies a contrast specifically with neo- 'of the present, new': cf. Chantraine DELG 851.
§34n3. Cf. [A. M.] Miller 1982.114. Cf. Ch.2§10n2.
§35n1. On nostos as both 'homecoming' and 'song about homecoming', see N 1979.97 §6n2.
§35n2. Cf. again [A. M.] Miller 1982.114.
§35n3. Cf. N 1979.98. Telemachus is "wrong" in not understanding that the myth applies to the situation in the here and now. For him, the "newness" of the song has the surface-meaning of mere novelty (cf. the interpretation in Plato Republic 424bc). But he is "right" in insisting that the singing proceed. This way, the nostos sung by the singer may ultimately be fulfilled in the nostos of Odysseus, which is the "novelty" of the Odyssey--the "news" of what finally happened in the Odyssey. Penelope, by contrast, is "right" in understanding that the song applies to the present, but she is "wrong" in interpreting it at this particular moment in the overall narrative of the Odyssey. What is absolutely right, not wrong, can emerge only from the overall narrative in progress.
§36n1. Cf. Ch.8§5 and following.
§36n2. Ibid.
§36n3. As the narrative of Herodotus proceeds, the spotlight keeps shifting. At the beginning of this account, the spotlight is on a figure described as the very first king of Egypt (2.99.1-4); after
he is named and his deeds are accounted for, it is said that the priests who were the informants of Herodotus had records of a sequence of 330 other names that followed the first pharaoh, including one woman (2.100.1). This woman is then highlighted, with a recounting of her name and some of her deeds (2.100.2-4). Then follows the statement just quoted: 'About the other kings, they [= the Egyptian priests] had no public statement [apodeixis] to tell of their deeds, since there was nothing distinguished [= literally 'bright'], except for the last [king]' (2.101.1). At this point, the spotlight falls on the last in this sequence of 330 pharaohs, with a recounting of his name and some of his deeds (2.101.1-2), capped off by a reaffirmation that this king at least had these deeds to 'show for himself' (2.101.2; the verb is apo-deik-numai, on which see Ch.8§5 and following), whereas the other kings did not (again 2.101.2). Then the spotlight shifts again, to the king who came after this last one, and there follows a particularly lengthy and detailed accounting of this pharaoh's name and some of his notable deeds (2.102.1-2.111.1).
§37n1. On the Milesian orientation of the Aithiopis, see Pinney 1983, who argues convincingly that the iconographic theme of Scythian archers on Attic late sixth-century vases is akin to local epic traditions specifically associated with Milesian colonization on the northern coast of the Black Sea, and that these local epic traditions are reflected in the Aithiopis of Arctinus of Miletus. In the mythological traditions of the mother city, Miletus, the notion of "the Other" apparently became particularized as "the Scythian" in the social context of the daughter cities on the northern coast of the Black Sea (on the subject of Milesian colonization in this area, notably at Olbia, see Bravo 1974). Just as the mother city tends to replicate its social structure, divisions and all, in the daughter city, so also the new social experiences of the daughter city, such as contacts with "new" kinds of barbarians (in this case, Scythians), become incorporated into the ideology of the mother city (see Figueira 1981.192-202, especially p. 199). In light of the fact that Archaic Miletus and Megara were as a rule linked together in rivalry against Corinth and were both predominant as the colonizers of the coastline of the Propontis and the Black Sea (Figueira 1985.276), I note that the poetic traditions of Megara, like those of Miletus, draw attention to the theme of Scythians. These Megarian poetic traditions are preserved in the corpus attributed to Theognis of Megara, where the ideology of Megara incorporates the ideologies of the daughter cities of Megara along with those of the mother city (N 1985.51 §38n1 and Figueira 1985.127-128), and I cite here in particular the Scythian reference at Theognis825-830 (with the commentary of Figueira 1985.146). Even the Theognidean vision of the kakoi, the ethically inferior, as sociopolitically inferior savages who threaten the polis from the outside (Theognis 53-68; cf. N 1985.44 §29n4, 51 §39n2, 54), may convey a colonial point of view adopted from a daughter city on the coast of the Black Sea (cf. Figueira 1985.129). In contemplating the partial "Scythian" characteristics of the Achilles figure in the mythological traditions of Miletus/Olbia (as surveyed by Pinney 1983, especially pp. 133-139; cf. Alcaeus F 354 V), I see a typological parallelism in the figure of Rostam in the Shâhnâma of Ferdowsi: this national hero of Iranian epic traditions has partial "foreign" characteristics that give form to his function as both "the Other," an outsider, and "the Self," an insider to the body politic as represented by the ruling shâh (see Davidson 1985, especially pp. 61-103). On the equation of the ephêboi 'pre-adults' of Elis with Scythians in Photius Lexicon s.v. sunephêboi, see Hartog 1980.59-79 (especially pp. 71-72) and Vidal-Naquet 1986.133.
§37n2. Discussion in N 1979.29, 35-36, 38-40, 184, especially with reference to Iliad IX 413
§37n3. Details in Pinney 1983.143n56 and 145n94, who accepts as early a dating as the late sixth century B.C. (p. 133); cf. N 1979.167 (I agree with the reservations expressed by Pinney, p. 144n64, about the thesis that Achilles was originally a god of the underworld). On names like Êlusion 'Elysium' and Makarôn Nêsoi 'Islands of the Blessed' as simultaneous designations of a mythical place of immortalization and a ritual place of hero cult, see N, pp. 189-192.
§37n4. N 1979.8 §14n1: there I make clear that I part company with Griffin 1977, who thinks that the Homeric epics have screened out most of "the fantastic, the miraculous, and the romantic" (p. 40) elements characteristic of the Cycle because Homer was a superior or "unique" poet. (For a useful critique of Griffin's position, see Young 1983.166n32.) Instead I would stress that the fantastic and the miraculous elements in the Cycle characterize the religious ideology of local cults, reflecting the more localized interests of individual city- states or groups of city-states. The same goes for the romantic element of love stories, again for the most part screened out by the Homeric epics: it goes without saying that love affairs lead to conceptions of heroes, a basic theme of genealogical poetic traditions that promote the localized interests of the status quo. On the relationship of Panhellenic poetic traditions with the more localized ktisis ('foundation, colonization') poetic traditions of various city-states, see N 1979.8 §14n1 (with cross references) and especially pp. 139-141; also N 1982.63-64 and 1985.51 §38n1 and 63 §51n2.
§38n1. For a helpful survey, see Allen 1924.72-75.
§38n2. I use the concept of text in the broadened sense outlined at Ch.2§5.
§39n1. For a comprehensive survey of linguistic and other criteria that can be applied for an overall relative chronology, see Janko 1982.
§39n2. Kullmann 1985, especially pp. 17-18n37.
§40n1. A survey of Archaic Greek iconographical evidence, as assembled by Fittschen 1969 and juxtaposed by Kannicht 1982 with the evidence of Archaic Greek poetry, shows that the earliest identifiable pictorial responses to epic concern predominantly the themes of the Cycle, not those of the Iliad or Odyssey.
§40n2. This explanation differs from the one offered by Kannicht, p. 85, who accounts for the relative absence of early pictorial references to the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey by arguing that the artistic limitations of early Greek iconographical traditions made it too difficult for these traditions to react to the great artistic achievements of the Iliad and Odyssey.
§40n3. A similar point can be made in the case of the contrast between Iliad II 557-570 and Hesiod F 204.44-51, where both passages describe the extent of the dominion of the hero Ajax. As Finkelberg 1988 argues, the Homeric passage from the Iliad, part of the Catalogue of Ships, is more innovative than the Hesiodic passage in drastically restricting the realm of Ajax, even though the text fixation of the Homeric passage is presumably earlier than that of the Hesiodic. As Finkelberg also argues (pp. 39-40), the Homeric version is politically advantageous to Athens under the Peisistratidai and, secondarily, to Argos in the era of Pheidon, as also to Corinth and even to Sparta, while it is disadvantageous primarily to Megara. Such a version, which suits the politics of the more powerful city-states, is clearly more Panhellenic in scope than the Hesiodic
version (which itself is distinct from the overtly pro-Megarian version: Finkelberg, p. 40). I should add that the parallelisms between Iliad II 557-570 and Hesiod F 204.44-51 (as illustrated by the underlinings in Finkelberg, pp. 32-33) suggest that the Homeric version reduces the realm of Ajax not so much by deleting elements found in the Hesiodic version but by augmenting the traditional elements and then reassigning the greater portion to figures other than Ajax.
§41n1. On the Homeridai, see Ch.1§11.
§42n1. The basic testimonia are conveniently available in Allen 1924.228-229 and Burkert 1972.76n10. Cf. N 1979.165-166.
§42n2. Tradition also has it that it was Lycurgus, lawgiver par excellence, who brought to Sparta the Homeric poems, which he acquired from the descendants of Kreophylos at Samos, according to Plutarch Life of Lycurgus 4. It is said of the poems that Lycurgus 'had them written down', egrapsato, and that he then 'assembled' them (ibid.). I draw attention to a further detail in the narrative of Plutarch (ibid.):
ên gar tis êdê doxa tôn epôn amaura para tois Hellêsin, ekektênto de ou polloi merê tina, sporadên tês poiêseôs, hôs etuche, diapheromenês: gnôrimên de autên kai malista prôtos epoiêse Lukourgos
'for there was already a not-too-bright fame attached to these epics among the *greeks, and some of them were in possession of some portions, since the poetry had been scattered, carried here and there by chance, and it was *lycurgus who was the first to make it [= the poetry] well-
known' (ibid.)
. For an alternative tradition, according to which Lycurgus met Homer directly, see Ephorus FGH 70 F 103 and 149 (by way of Strabo 10.4.19 C482). The notion of a disassembled book, scattered here and there throughout the Greek world, and then reassembled for one particular time and place by a wise man credited with the juridical framework of his society, is parallel to the story about the making of the Book of Kings in the Iranian epic tradition. According to Ferdowsi's Shâhnâma I 21.126-136, a noble vizier assembles mubad-s, wise men who are experts in the Law of Zoroaster, from all over the Empire, and each of these mubad-s brings with him a "fragment" of a long-lost Book of Kings that had been scattered to the winds; each of the experts is called upon to recite, in turn, his respective "fragment," and the vizier composes a book out of these recitations. As Davidson 1985.123 points out, "It would seem from this passage that the authority of the unified Empire and of the unified Book of Kings is one." The vizier reassembles the old book that had been disassembled, which in turn becomes the model for the Shâhnâma 'Book of Kings' of Ferdowsi (Shâhnâma I 23.156-161). We see here paradoxically a myth about the synthesis of oral traditions that is articulated in terms of written traditions, as Davidson argues in detail (pp. 111-127). For a comparable myth in Irish traditions, concerning the recovery of the "lost" Cattle Raid of Cúailnge, see [J. F.] Nagy 1986.292-293.
§43n1. So also, perhaps, in the case of Kynaithos of Chios: it may well be that his "Homeric" repertory was not the Iliad and Odyssey. This Kynaithos, as we have seen, is said to have been the 'first' rhapsode to recite Homeric poetry at Syracuse, in the 69th Olympiad (504/1 B.C.), according to Hippostratus (FGH 568 F 5). By implication Kynaithos was the first recorded winner in a seasonally recurring festival at Syracuse that featured a competition of rhapsodes. Cf. Ch.1§12. As another possible example of a distinct repertory, see Ch.1§10n4 on Herodotus 5.67.1, where the reference to the "Homeric" repertory of the rhapsodes who were banned from Sikyon implies not the Iliad and Odyssey but rather an overall Seven against Thebes epic tradition. In the Contest of Homer and Hesiod 287-315 Allen, a myth tells how Homer visited the people of Argos, gave a performance there, and was subsequently given great honors by that city- state. In Callinus F 6 W, the Seven against Thebes is attributed to Homer. In contrast Herodotus
4.32 may be taking a stance that is detrimental to Argos when he expresses doubt whether the poet of the Epigonoi, the sequel of the Seven against Thebes, is indeed Homer.
§44n1. Eleven books of the Cypria (Proclus summary, p. 102.10 Allen), five of the Aithiopis (p. 105.21), four of the Little Iliad (p. 106.19), two of the Destruction of Ilion (p. 107.16), five of the Nostoi (p. 108.15), and two of the Telegonia (p. 109.7).
§44n2. A clear example is the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, where the functions that Hermes "wins" from Apollo correspond to earlier stages in patterns of differentiation involving the aoidos 'singer' and the mantis 'seer'. The later stages of these patterns were taken over by the figure of Apollo. Discussion in N 1982.56-57.
§44n3. See Ch.1§21n5. On the associations of the Little Iliad of Lesches with the local traditions of Lesbos, see the discussion and bibliography in Aloni 1986.120-123. In general, Aloni's book offers an interesting case in point illustrating the interdependence between two distinct narrative traditions owned by two distinct communities in conflict. The communities in question are the cities of Mytilene in Lesbos on the one hand and on the other Athens in the era of the Athens Athenian dynasty of tyrants, the Peisistratidai. The focal point is "Trojan" Sigeion (cf. Herodotus 4.38.2), an outpost of Athenian power, founded by the Peisistratidai as an intrusion into a geographical area controlled by Mytilene, whose rival outpost was the Akhilleion (Herodotus 5.94.1-2; Sigeion was at the mouth of the river Skamandros: Herodotus 5.65.3). Aloni argues that the contemporary winners of the conflict, the Athenians, needed to appropriate at least part of the narrative traditions owned by the losers, the Mytilenaeans, in order to legitimize their own expansionistic presence in Sigeion (see especially pp. 65n8, 91). In the context of the conflicting claims of the Athenians and Mytilenaeans, note the use of the word apo-deik-numi at Herodotus 5.94.2; cf. Ch.6§31 (also Ch.11§5). Note too the story of the duel to the death between the Athens Athenian Phrynon, an Olympic winner, and the Mytilenaean Pittakos, tyrant and lawgiver, as recorded in Diogenes Laertius 1.74 and Strabo 13.1.38 C599-600 (and omitted in Herodotus 5.95: cf. Plutarch On the Malice of Herodotus 858ab). Both sources agree that the Mytilenaeans won in this conflict, only to lose later in an arbritration undertaken by Periandros, tyrant of Corinth (this aspect of the tradition is not omitted in Herodotus 5.95.2). The accretion of narrations concerning an earlier victory and a later loss by the Mytilenaeans recapitulates, it seems, a hierarchy of accommodations between rival narrative traditions: the ultimately losing side is pictured as having won first.
§45n1. For a possible allusion to Contest of Homer and Hesiod tradition in Hesiod Works and
§45n2. Cf. Ch.1§10 and following.
§46n1. Allen 1924.64.
§46n2. Cf. Kurylowicz's fourth law of analogy, as discussed at Intro. §13.
§47n1. Cf., for example, Householder and Nagy 1972.785. For a restatement of the facts that necessitate the positing of an Aeolic phase in the evolution of Homeric diction: West 1988.162-163 (with bibliography).
§47n2. Householder and Nagy, pp. 783-785.
§47n3. As Huxley 1969.134-135 points out, there are also traces of Cypriote localization as the setting for Homeric Hymn10, where the poet, in praying to Aphrodite as the queen of Salamis in Cyprus (10.5), treats her as a local Muse in asking her to give him a song that brings gratification (ibid.); also in Homeric Hymn6, addressed to Aphrodite as queen of all Cyprus (6.2-3), where the poet prays that the goddess grant him victory in the competition: dos d' en agôni | nikên tôide pheresthai 'grant that I carry away victory in this contest [agôn]' (6.19-20).
§47n4. Janko 1982.176 gives reasons for estimating 750 B.C. or thereabouts as the terminus post quem for any possible proliferation of early phases of the Cypria tradition on the island of Cyprus, but he doubts that Cyprus was "the area in which this tradition grew to maturity."
§48n1. The case is clear in Hesiodic poetry: despite its ultimate local provenience, Aeolic Boeotia, this poetry is more Ionic in diction than even Homeric poetry. See Janko 1982.85, 197; cf. N 1982.70-72.
§48n2. In Little Iliad F 12 Allen, however, as quoted by Clement Stromateis 1.21.104.1, the occurrences of a in place of ê may suggest an Aeolic layer of transmission: see West 1971.308n3. Alternatively such occurrences may reflect editorial aeolicisms.
§49n1. This point is stressed by Allen 1924.75.
§49n2. It is the more complex pattern of the Homeric poems, where one level of narrative is being subordinated to another, as contrasted with the more simple pattern of the Cypria, that convinces Herodotus that the poet of the Cypria cannot be Homer. Further discussion in Ch.14§16.
§49n3. We have already seen that the city-state of Argos apparently attributed to Homer the entire
Seven against Thebes tradition. See Ch.2§43n1.
§49n4. Allen 1924.71, who adds that the "work" of such a poet could have been "gradually taken from him" by the "survival and revelation of local tradition" (ibid.). I disagree with this additional point to the extent that I interpret the "revelation of local tradition" not as something that is taken away from Homeric poetry but rather as something that is generally rejected by Homeric poetry.
§49n5. Allen, p. 76, where he speculates that, by the time of Peisistratos, "the Cycle was all but
finished and the Homeric canon all but closed."
§49n6. For references on the Homeridai, cf. N 1979.165 §25n4.
§50n1. As Griffith 1983.58n82 suggests that I do in N 1979.5-6, 296-297.
§50n2. To call such refinements "innovation," however, can be deceptive: see Ch.2§10n2.
§50n3. Cf. Ch.2§10. For a survey of conventions expressing the simultaneous appropriation of authority and authorship in Iranian poetic traditions, see Davidson 1985.103-142. In the conventions of Greek oral poetic traditions, self-identification is particularly appropriate in the context of the prooimion or 'prelude': brief discussion in N 1982.53.
§50n4. As Griffith 1983.58n82, again, suggests that I do in N 1979.5-6, 296-297.
§50n5. Cf. N 1979.295-300.
§50n6. I explore this topic at length in N 1985.
§51n1. On categories of ownership of song (and/or dance), see Kunst 1958.2. See also the examples cited at Ch.2§10. On the ownership, in North American Indian traditions, of personal songs obtained in the vision quest, see Merriam 1964.83. Cf. also Merriam and d'Azevedo 1957.623: "Most songs seem to have been embellished, consciously or unconsciously altered over time, combined, improvised, forgotten and 'caught' again in new form as one's own. The last are thought of as 'new' or 'my' songs, but the singer has no inclination to hide the fact that he was influenced by another song, and that 'I just changed it a little'. Nevertheless, it does become a 'new' song." For bibliography on the relativity of the descriptive term improvisation, see Ch.2§10n2.
§51n2. As in Rwanda praise poetry, with memorization and remembering of the "original" composer by name: Finnegan 1977.79; cf. also p. 75. In Somali poetry: "A poet's composition...becomes his own property, under his own name, and another poet reciting them has to acknowledge from whom he has learnt them" (Finnegan, p. 74). For a possible trace of this type of attribution in the South Slavic traditions, see Lord 1960.19-20.
§51n3. Rwanda and Somali examples: Finnegan, p. 83. Cf. Merriam 1964.83 on the ownership of songs by kinship groups. See Boutière and Schutz 1950.xii on the Provençal convention that requires the joglar 'performer' to narrate the vida 'life story' of the trobador 'composer' whose composition he is about to perform. On the related genre of the razo (from Latin ratiô) as a sort of prelude, see Boutière and Schutz, p. xiii. The purpose is to recover the context of composition.
§51n4. Kirk 1962.88-98 offers a different model of Homeric transmission, where his division into various successive stages presupposes a general pattern of decline. For a critique, see Jensen 1980.113-114.
§52n1. There are instances where we have specific evidence that the transmission is regulated in the context of a hero cult in honor of the poet. See N 1979.304 §4n3 on the cult of Archilochus;
cf. also p. 124 §9n1 on what appears to be a cult of a clearly historical figure, Pindar himself. See also the discussion in N 1982.49-51 on the cult of Hesiod, to be supplemented with the comments at Ch.1§22n4. In this discussion it is argued that the traditions of Archaic Greek poetry already contain, as a built-in program, so to speak, the ideology that makes cult heroes of poets.
§53n1. On the reenactment of the poet through reperformance, see Ch.12§68.
The Panhellenization of Song
§1. The concept of Panhellenism helps explain not only how the multiple traditions of Archaic Greek oral poetry became a synthetic tradition but also how this tradition, as visualized in the hypothetical schema that has been offered, tended to counteract the emergence of historically verifiable authorship. Further, the concept of Panhellenism also helps explain why the oldest body of Greek literature to survive--the poetry of Homer and Hesiod--is representative of oral poetry, not song. I argue that the Panhellenization of poetry preceded the Panhellenization of song because the traditions of song were more diverse than the traditions of poetry. In the Archaic and even the Classical period of Greece, it appears that the greatest diversity in local oral traditions was on the level of song, with a wide variety of different melodic patterns native to different locales. 1 In their diversity, the local traditions of song were less adaptable to the evolving synthesis that I call Panhellenization.
§2. The earliest attestations of a critical mass of actual compositions in Greek song--which we may also call lyric poetry--are represented by the surviving texts attributed to Alcman, Stesichorus, Alcaeus, Sappho, Ibycus, Anacreon, Simonides, Bacchylides, and Pindar; in the era of Alexandrian scholarship, these nine names constituted the inherited canon of lyric poetry (cf. Palatine Anthology 9.184, where all nine are enumerated). 1 The relative dating of these poets covers a period stretching roughly from 650 to 450 B.C. 2 These attestations of song are the reflex of what we may call a second wave of Panhellenization, achieved through an ongoing synthesis as represented by the myths about the "inventions" of figures like Terpander and Olympus, to whom we turn presently. As with the first wave, namely, the Panhellenization of oral poetry, the relatively later Panhellenization of oral song would entail a progressively restricted series of recompositions, in ever-widening circles of diffusion, with the streamlining of convergent local traditions at the expense of divergent ones. 3 In this way, a preexisting multitude of local traditions in oral song could evolve into a finite synthetic tradition of fixed lyric compositions suited for all Hellenes and attributed by them all to a relatively small number of poets.
§3. Wilamowitz was struck by the limited number of poets just listed, nine, whose lyric compositions were being edited in the era of Alexandrian scholarship, 1 and he was ready to conclude that these Archaic poets were for all practical purposes the only ones whose texts of lyric poetry had survived from the Classical into the Hellenistic period. 2 This line of thinking
fails to distinguish between the relatively small selective canon inherited by the Alexandrian scholars and the massive nonselective collection of works that was at their disposal in the Museum; 3 it is enough to say that the canon of nine lyric poets was inherited from the Classical period. 4 I argue that this limited number of nine lyric poets is due to the Panhellenization of preexisting traditions in oral song, just as the comparably small number of canonical Archaic poets who are credited with compositions in hexameters (predominantly two, Homer and Hesiod) 5 or in iambics (Archilochus, Hipponax, Semonides, Solon, and so on) and elegiacs (Archilochus, Callinus, Mimnermus, Tyrtaeus, Theognis, Solon, Xenophanes, and so on) is due to the Panhellenization of preexisting traditions in oral poetry. 6
§4. I have suggested that the very evolution of what we know as the Classics--as both a concept and a reality--was but an extension of the organic Panhellenization of oral traditions. 1 In line with this reasoning, the evolution of an ancient Greek canon in both poetry and song need not be attributed primarily to the factor of writing. 2 Granted, writing would have been essential for the ultimate preservation of any canon once the traditions of performance were becoming obsolete; still I argue that the key to the actual evolution of a canon must be sought in the social context of performance itself.
§5. In Archaic Greece the form of song or lyric poetry was functionally divided into two distinct media of performance. This division is most explicitly formulated in a hypothetical discussion, as framed by Plato Laws 764c-765b, of an idealized system of festivals in an idealized polis; the presuppositions of this discussion, however, are based on the institutional realities of the polis. On the one hand is monôidiâ 'monody' (764de, 765b), that is, performance by a single professional such as a rhapsôidos 'rhapsode' or kitharôidos 'lyre singer' (764de). On the other hand is khorôidiâ 'choral song' (764e), that is, performance by a nonprofessional khoros 'chorus', a singing and dancing ensemble of selected men, boys, or girls (764e), 1 who represent some aspect of the polis as a whole. 2 The essential context of public performance in both the monodic and the choral media is competition--among rhapsodes, among lyre singers, among choruses. This competition is called krisis (765b), and those who are officially chosen to select the winners are kritai 'judges' (ibid.). 3 Granted, there is no traditional distinction made between a monodic and a choral mode of composition. 4 Still the medium of both monodic and choral composition is public performance. Moreover, it is possible to explain the distinctiveness of solo lyric poetry, or monody, in terms of choral lyric poetry, rather than the other way around. 5 For now, however, I confine myself to observing the traditions of melody in singing and instrumental accompaniment and postpone till later my account of the complex patterns of differentiation in choral and monodic performance. 6
§6. Because of the diversity of localized traditions in melody, oral poetry, not oral song, was better suited for Panhellenic diffusion in that rhythmical (metrical) and phraseological systematization would not violate localized perceptions of what is correct as readily as the synthesis of diverse melodic patterns. Granted, the melody of song would have promoted diffusion from the standpoint of mnemonic utility. 1 Still, melody would also have impeded
diffusion from the standpoint of contextual sensitivity. Thus the process of Panhellenization took effect relatively later for oral song than it did for oral poetry.
§7. The Panhellenization of song required an ongoing synthesis of patterns in vocal and instrumental traditions. Within the actual traditions of song, however, what I am calling a synthesis is treated as if it resulted from inventions by prototypical figures. The two names most commonly associated with these "inventions" are differentiated in terms of instrumental accompaniment: Terpander in the realm of string instruments, to which I refer with the general term kitharâ 'lyre', 1 and Olympus in the realm of wind instruments, that is, the aulos 'reed'. 2 The most comprehensive direct account of the relevant traditions is to be found in "Plutarch" On Music 1032cd-1034b. Even before we consider this account, however, I should stress that instrumental accompaniment does not require the point-for-point following of the vocal part by the instrumental part: in "Plutarch" On Music 1137b, with a description of an Archaic musical style associated with Terpander and Olympus, it is made clear that the instrumental part calls for complexities that do not match the vocal part. 3
§8. Let us begin with Terpander, that is, Terpandros 'he who gives pleasure to men.' 1 Tradition has it that he was a singer from Lesbos who moved to Sparta, where he was the first of all winners at the Spartan festival known as the Karneia (Hellanicus FGH 4 F 85 by way of Athenaeus 635e). The Feast of Karneia was reportedly founded in the twenty-sixth Olympiad, that is, between 676 and 672 B.C. (Athenaeus 635ef). 2 In other words the inception of the Karneia, an institution that was recognized by tradition as the oldest established festival of the Spartans, was reckoned in terms of Terpander's victory in a contest of singing to the accompaniment of the lyre (Athenaeus 635ef). That Terpander was eventually thought to be a solo singer is clear from his being regularly designated as a kitharôidos 'lyre [kitharâ]
singer' ("Plutarch" On Music 1132d, 1133b-d). 3
§9. Tradition also has it that Terpander "invented" what are called the nomoi of kitharôidiâ 'lyre singing': Boeotian, Aeolian, Orthios, Trokhaios, Oxus, Kêpiôn, Terpandreios, Tetraoidios ("Plutarch" On Music 1132d; cf. 1132c; supplemented by Pollux 4.65). 1 For the moment the word nomoi has been left untranslated. It is enough to observe at this point that Terpander's "invention," as discussed in "Plutarch" On Music 1132cd and Pollux 4.65, is traditionally seen as the forerunner of a specific genre 2 known in the time of Plato as the kitharôidikos nomos 'citharodic nome' (Laws 700b). In this context the word nomos is specific to the given genre: thus it is reported in "Plutarch" On Music 1132c that Terpander was the "inventor" of the kitharôidikos nomos 'citharodic nome', which is to be compared with the tradition, as reported in Herodotus 1.23, that ascribes to Arion the "invention," in Corinth, of the dithurambos 'dithyramb'. 3 Arion is described in Herodotus (ibid.) as the premier kitharôidos 'lyre singer' of his era, who was the first to name, compose, and teach the dithyramb at Corinth in the era of the tyrant Periandros. In this early description, we see that the word kitharôidos originally did not exclude involvement in choral performance.
§10. That the strict distinction in genres between citharodic nome and dithyramb may be relatively late is suggested by a detail in the story of Arion: when he is abducted by pirates and performs for
them a solo lyric composition that ultimately saves his life, this composition is described as an orthios nomos (Herodotus 1.24.5). 1 This naming of Arion's tune corresponds to one of Terpander's nomoi in the list of his citharodic nomes (Pollux 4.65). Still, for Plato, the kitharôidikos nomos 'citharodic nome' and the dithurambos 'dithyramb' are to be treated as parallel genres inherited from the Archaic period (again Laws 700b).
§11. Let us move beyond the use of the term nomos in the Terpander tradition, in the context of Terpander's having supposedly invented the various categories of nomoi just listed. In this context nomos is a matter of a specific genre and reflects a specialization of usage. In other contexts, however, the word nomos refers more generally to various types of local melodic patterns. In generalized references to song within song, nomos has the general sense of 'localized melodic idiom' (as in Aeschylus Suppliants 69); 1 such a usage meshes with the basic meaning of nomos, which is 'local custom'. 2 Just as nomos as 'local custom' refers to the hierarchical distribution or apportioning of value within a given society (root *nem-, as in nemô 'distribute'), so also nomos as 'localized melodic idiom' refers to the hierarchical distribution or apportioning of intervals within the melodic patterns of song. 3
§12. In line with the earlier argument concerning melodic traditions as extensions of patterns in pitch or intonation, 1 I suggest that the various Greek systems of nomoi evolved in symbiosis with the patterning of pitch accent in the phraseology of song. 2 As a melodic pattern that is characteristic of distinct speech in distinct habitats, nomos serves as the ideal metaphor for conveying the distinctiveness of bird song, as when the voice of Alcman declares that he knows the nomoi of all the different kinds of birds in the world (PMG 40). This theme can best be understood in the context of Alcman PMG 39, where the poet names himself as the "discoverer" of melody and words that put into human language the voices of partridges. In other words, the song of Alcman is being conceived as a mimesis of bird song, and the varieties of bird song resemble the varieties of nomoi. Thus song, as a mimesis of speech, can extend into a mimesis of the "speech" of birds. 3
§13. In the context of Terpander's "invention" of nomoi, however, nomos takes on more restricted meanings. From the standpoint of our main source, "Plutarch" On Music (1132de), the nomoi of Terpander are the result of a systematization of preexisting melodic patterns. 1 The figure of Terpander represents the common denominator of these patterns. The fitting of these patterns into a system attributed to Terpander is formalized in the tradition that attributes to this figure the "invention" of a seven-note scale that accommodates his nomoi ("Aristotle" Problems 19.32; "Plutarch" On Music 1140f, 1141c). 2
§14. Corresponding to Terpander's "invention" of this scale is his "invention" of the seven-string lyre, displacing the older four-string type (Strabo 13.2.4 C618, quoting Terpander PMG, p. 363; "Plutarch" 1141d). The iconographical evidence of the eighth and early seventh centuries B.C. corroborates this tradition: the norm during this period is a four-string instrument, which is replaced after this period by a seven-string instrument. 1 It has been said that the spread of the seven-string lyre in the seventh century "betokens a revolution in music." 2 In terms of the
Panhellenic synthesis that I am proposing, the older four-string lyre would be adequate for any single local nomos, while the newer seven-string lyre, which represents the "revolution" of the seventh century, would fit a wide variety of nomoi, irrespective of local provenience, within a new interrelated system. 3 In the diction of Pindar, Apollo is represented as leading the choral performance of 'all sorts of nomoi' pantoiôn nomôn Nemean5.25) as he plays on the seven-string lyre, which is described as heptaglôssos 'having seven languages' (5.24).
§15. Parallel to the tradition about Terpander's "invention" of the seven-string lyre is the story in Homeric Hymn to Hermes51: when Hermes "invents" the lyre, it has seven strings. In the narrative, Hermes gives the kitharis 'lyre' to Apollo (Homeric Hymn to Hermes499, in the context of 475 and following), the figure conventionally associated with this instrument (e.g., Hymn to Apollo131, 188). We may note, in connection with the traditional provenience of the Terpander figure from Aeolic Lesbos, the actual form kitharis 'lyre' in the Hymn to Hermes (e.g.,
499) and in Homeric diction in general (e.g., Odyssey i 153): the accentuation of this word follows a clearly Aeolic pattern. 1 In yet another version Amphion "invents" the seven-string lyre in Thebes (Pausanias 9.5.7). In this case two of the nomoi "invented" by Terpander for kitharôidiâ 'lyre singing' are precisely the Aeolian and the Boeotian (again "Plutarch" On Music 1132d). This tradition squares with the linguistic facts: the dialectal heritage of Thebes is Aeolic in general and Boeotian in particular.
§16. Before we pursue further the topic of an implicit Panhellenization as reflected by the "inventions" of Terpander in the realm of the lyre, let us consider the counterpart of Terpander, Olympus, and his corresponding "inventions" in the realm of the aulos. Just as Terpander is a prototype of the kitharôidos 'lyre [kitharâ] singer', so Olympus is presented as a parallel prototype of the aulôidos 'reed [aulos] singer' (cf. "Plutarch" On Music 1137b, 1133def; Aristotle Politics 1340a). 1 Like Terpander, Olympus is credited with the "invention" of specific nomoi ("Plutarch" 1133d). 2 Olympus is a decidedly mythical figure, a disciple of the mythical aulos player Marsyas of Phrygia ("Plutarch" 1133e). Olympus too is said to be a Phrygian (ibid.); 3 this detail becomes more significant as our discussion proceeds. 4 Besides Olympus, there are later figures who are less remotely mythical in appearance and who tend to be synchronized with Terpander. One such figure is Clonas, described as an inventor of nomoi for aulôidiâ 'reed [aulos] singing' ("Plutarch"1132c), who supposedly lived shortly after the time of Terpander (1133a). 5
§17. The systematizations attributed to figures like Terpander and Olympus are comprised of nomoi. Thus the nomoi, from the standpoint of these traditions about "inventors" and their "inventions," are no longer separate melodic idioms: they are patterns that are already integrated with each other into a larger system that controls its constituents. In other words we see here an early stage in the ongoing Panhellenization of local traditions in song.
§18. In considering the performance traditions of Archaic Greek song, I concentrate on the internal and external references to the performance of compositions attributed to the canonical nine poets of lyric. In these references we can find clear traces of Panhellenic systematization, as we have seen in the example from Pindar: the seven-string lyre, presented as a symbol of systematization, allows Apollo to lead the choral performance of 'all sorts of nomoi' pantoiôn
§19. The word nomos, however, is hardly adequate for designating the actual process of systematization since its basic meaning of local custom retains a built-in emphasis on the local origins of the constituents of the system. A more adequate word is harmoniâ, in the specific sense of a tuning or accordatura that fits a given melodic idiom, as attested in Aristophanes Knights994. In a more general sense harmoniâ can be understood as a 'system of intervals in pitch', as in Plato Republic 397d, where the point is that the traditional harmoniâ and rhythm of song is regulated by the words of song. Plato's usage in this passage, it has been observed, "points to the fact that the existence of melody depends on the prior existence of an organised scheme of pitches standing to one another in determinate relations, on the basis of whose relations the selection that generates a melody is made." 1 We must distinguish this notion of harmoniâ from the later notion of tonos, especially as developed by Aristoxenus, pupil of Aristotle, who himself was the son of a professional musician from Tarentum (Suda s.v. Aristoxenos. The difference has been formulated as follows: "each tonos had the same pattern of intervals: they differed one from another, as modern keys do, only in respect of pitch." 2 In contrast the harmoniai, as Plato understands them in the passage under consideration, "were distinguished from one another primarily by being constituted out of different sequences of intervals." 3 Correspondingly "rhythm" in this passage means "the element of rhythmic organisation that any composition must possess, an individual rhythm being the formal rhythmic structure underlying an individual piece or type of piece, its overall pattern of movement." 4
§20. Let us consider the six names of various harmoniai as discussed in Plato Republic
398e-399a: the Ionian [= "Iastian"], the Dorian, the Phrygian, the Lydian, the Mixolydian, and the Syntonolydian. From other testimonia, to be cited later, we see that such harmoniai were the basic melodic patterns of Archaic Greek lyric in its attested phase of development. Moreover, Plato's list of Archaic harmoniai corresponds to actual self-references found in Archaic Greek lyric poetry.
§21. On the basis of these self-references, it becomes clear that there were in fact other such harmoniai, besides the ones listed en passant by Plato in Republic 398e-399a. Most notably missing from Plato's list is the harmoniâ named as the Aeolian in the Archaic diction of lyric poetry. I cite the specific reference to a harmoniâ described as Aeolian in Lasus of Hermione PMG 702.3, where it is described as barubromos 'deep-roaring', suggesting that the tessitura of the Aeolian was marked by its frequency of lower notes. 1 Plato's omission of the Aeolian, in view of his inclusion of the Ionian and the Dorian, is asymmetrical from the standpoint of the Greek language, the major dialectal subdivisions of which are Aeolic, Ionic, and Doric. 2 But this very asymmetry reflects the transformations over time in the systematization of Greek modes. The Aeolian harmoniâ was already replaced by Plato's time with the so-called Hypodorian. The Archaic nature of the Aeolian harmoniâ within the newer systematization of the harmoniai is indicated by the older concept of an Aeolian nomos within the framework of an older systematization of nomoi ascribed to Terpander. 3
§22. Not only the names of the harmoniai listed by Plato but even the descriptive modifications
associated with them, such as suntono- 'tense' in Syntonolydian, correspond to actual contrastive self-references found in Archaic Greek lyric poetry. For example, in the words of the Archaic poet Pratinas of Phleious, an older contemporary of Aeschylus, what are described in terms of lyre tuning as suntono- 'tense' and aneimenê- 'lax' melodic patterns or "Muses" are rejected for the moment as extremes in favor of a "moderate" Aeolian harmoniâ (PMG 712). Plato uses the notion of khalarâ- 'lax' in describing the Ionian harmoniâ (Republic 398e).
§23. In our present survey of Archaic references to harmoniai, I draw particular attention to a quotation from Terpander, where the frame of quotation specifies that the song is being composed in the Dorian harmoniâ (PMG 698, in Clement Stromateis 6.88). Thus Terpander is associated with not only the Aeolian melodic tradition, compatible with an older system of modes known as nomoi, but also the Dorian, compatible with a newer system of modes known as harmoniai, which accommodate both Dorian and Aeolian. This accretive combination of older Aeolian and newer Dorian tuning or accordatura dovetails with the myth that tells how Terpander came from Aeolic Lesbos to Doric Sparta. 1 It dovetails also with a linguistic given: that the dialectal texture of the medium that we know as choral lyric is dominantly Doric, with significant recessive elements of Aeolic. 2 This dialectal texture is most evident in the choral lyric poetry of Pindar. 3 In fact the medium of Pindar provides the following explicit self- reference:
Aioleus ebaine Dôrian keleuthon humnôn
An *eolic man went along the Dorian path of songs. 4
Appropriately these words are framed in the metrical system known as dactylo-epitrite, which is the Doric counterpart to the other major metrical system used in Pindar's choral lyric compositions, the Aeolic. 5 All the attested lyric poetry of Pindar, with only a few exceptions, is composed in one or the other of these two kinds of meters. 6
§24. From such evidence I infer that the choral lyric traditions represented by Pindar resulted from an accretive blend of Aeolic and Doric poetic language, where all the various elements of mode, rhythm, and the words themselves can be seen participating in the synthesis. The model that I posit here for the choral lyric tradition of Pindar can be extended to the lyric tradition of Sappho and Alcaeus. In this case the available evidence points to a diachronic blend of Aeolic and Ionic poetic language. 1
§25. The synthesis of Aeolic and Doric traditions is expressed overtly in Pindar's Olympian1, where a Dorian lyre is playing (17) while the molpê 'singing and dancing' is described as Aeolian (102). In this particular case I infer that the actual mode is Aeolian since the meter of this composition is Aeolic. Elsewhere self-references to the Aeolian mode correspond to the actual composition of the given ode in Aeolic meter (Pindar Pythian2.69, Nemean3.79). 1 So also with the Dorian mode: we have already seen an example of a reference to this mode within a song composed in dactylo-epitrite, that is, Doric meter (Pindar F 191 SM), and there are other
examples (e.g., Pindar Olympian3.5). 2 Such a neat pattern of convergence between the given meter and the self-reference to a mode seems to work only where the mode is Aeolian or Dorian. Other Pindaric compositions in the Aeolic meter contain self-references to the Lydian mode (Olympian14.17, Nemean4.45; cf. Olympian5.19). Also, one composition in dactylo-epitrite meter contains a possible reference to the Lydian mode (Nemean8.15). The Lydian mode may be adaptable to more than one native metrical tradition. After all, in Plato's list of six harmoniai in Republic 398e-399a, we hear of three different kinds of Lydian mode: Lydian, Mixolydian, and Syntonolydian. Perhaps these differentiations result from different adaptations to different native meters.
§26. What seems at first to interfere with a coherent picture of melodic patterns in the development of traditions in Archaic Greek song is the traditional naming of seemingly "foreign" modes or harmoniai, such as the Lydian, which are distinct from the three native names of Aeolian, Ionian, and Dorian. For example, there is a reference to the Phrygian melodic patterns in Alcman PMG 126, as also in a fragment from the Oresteia of Stesichorus, PMG 212. Elsewhere Alcman is said to have named some famous Phrygian aulos-players in his compositions (Athenaeus 624b). In Pindar's own words (F 125 SM) a string instrument called the barbiton was "discovered" by Terpander at the feasts of the Lydians, the sound of which would answer to that of the pêktis, another Lydian string instrument. Alternatively the "invention" of the barbiton is attributed to Anacreon (Athenaeus 175e). On the authority of Posidonius, Anacreon is said to have referred to three kinds of melody, which were supposedly the only three he used: the Dorian, Phrygian, and Lydian (Athenaeus 635cd). We may compare the repertoire of Pindar, as gleaned from the self-references surveyed above: Dorian, Aeolian, and Lydian. As for the Lydian pêktis, noted by the words of Pindar (F 125 SM) in the context of praising Terpander as a forerunner, we may compare the report that credits Sappho with being the first to use this instrument (Athenaeus 635e). 1 On the authority of Aristoxenus (F 81 Wehrli), Sappho is also credited with the "invention" of the harmoniâ called Mixolydian, which the composers of tragedies supposedly learned from her songs ("Plutarch" On Music 1136cd). 2
§27. The contrastive nature of these "foreign" harmoniai turn out to be a key to our understanding the systematization of Archaic Greek modes. I draw attention to the contrastive mentions of explicitly local harmoniai, in particular Pindar F 140b SM, with its mention of a local harmoniâ of the Locrians that is described as a rival of the Ionian "Muse." 1 In order to explore further the principle of contrastiveness as it operates within a system of harmoniai, let us return to Plato's list of harmoniai in Republic 398e-399a: Ionian [= "Iastian"], Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, and Syntonolydian. These six harmoniai are described in terms of fixed scales by Aristides Quintilianus, p. 19.3-10 (ed. Winnington-Ingram), whose testimony seems to be a genuine reflex of old traditions in the actual performance of Archaic Greek lyric poetry. 2 Notable for its omission in both Plato Republic 398e-399a and Aristides Quintilianus, p. 19.3-10 is the Aeolian mode, specifically designated as a harmoniâ in Pratinas of Phleious PMG 712 3 and Lasus of Hermione PMG 702. 4 Heraclides Ponticus (F 163 Wehrli, by way of Athenaeus 624e) equates the Aeolian of Lasus with a new replacement category, the Hypodorian. Other sources (e.g., Cleonides, p. 198.13 Jan) equate the Aeolian specifically with Locrian, as "invented" by Xenocritus of Locri (scholia to Pindar Olympian 11.17); clearly such an old
category as Locrian would be out of step with any newer systematization. According to Athenaeus 625e the Locrian became obsolete after Pindar. Which brings us back to our point of departure, the reference in Pindar F 140b SM to a local harmoniâ of the Locrians that is a rival of the Ionian "Muse."
§28. There is much confusion arising from the fact that such terms as Dorian and Phrygian earlier used to designate the harmoniai, were later adapted to the newer theoretical notion of tonos, as used by Aristoxenus. 1 In the so-called Greater Complete System of Aristoxenus, some earlier terms reflecting regional differentiation were replaced by newer terms designed to connect even more explicitly the various systems that had at earlier stages been separate from one another: thus the categories of Aeolian and Ionian were replaced respectively by Hypodorian and Hypophrygian. 2 In the case of Hypodorian we have noted the explicit testimony of Heraclides Ponticus (F 163 Wehrli, by way of Athenaeus 624e), who equates the Aeolian of Lasus of Hermione PMG 702 with Hypodorian, a component of a newer system of interrelations as recognized by Aristoxenus. Such names of harmoniai, as reused in the later classification- systems of Aristoxenus and the like, 3 reflect not the local melodic idioms themselves but the eventual Panhellenic systematization of categories that resulted from the ongoing juxtaposition of the local melodic idioms. 4
§29. Such categories as Phrygian and Lydian are particularly indicative: they convey identification of the locale indirectly, not by way of naming what is native but by way of representing what is alien to the native--in this case not just alien but "barbarian" as well. It has been pointed out that the harmoniai with barbarian names have no common feature that distinguishes them from the ones with Greek names, or the other way around. 1 The same sort of mentality is at work in the distinctions among harmoniai with Greek names. In the case of Ionian, for example, this harmoniâ would represent a synthesis of what is alien to, say, native Locrian traditions (again I cite Pindar F 140b SM). Still the synthesis implied by a concept such as the Ionian harmoniâ could take place in terms of local traditions. In other words the local traditions are the frame of reference. 2 In this way the alien is appropriated because it can be performed. In other words alien becomes native, in a broader and inclusive sense of native. 3 Such thought patterns of inclusion reflect the real beginnings of Panhellenism.
§30. It has been calculated that changing from any one harmoniâ to another meant re-tuning at least five strings on a seven-string instrument. 1 Which leads to the following inference: "To minimize the inconvenience which such re-tunings involved, musicians must have striven to find as much common ground between different modes [= harmoniai] as they could, and to identify certain notes in one where possible with notes in another." 2
§31. Still the various harmoniai were distinct enough to require considerable effort in the development of a performer's repertoire. In the comedies of Aristophanes we see the ridiculing of a character on the grounds that he could learn only the Dorian harmoniâ when he had been a boy in school (Knights 985- 995). 1 The context for such learning of the harmoniai can best be observed in the Clouds of Aristophanes, with its informative description of old-fashioned
Athenian paideiâ 'education' (tên archaian paideian 961), the kind that purportedly produced the men who fought at the Battle of Marathon (985-986). 2 Boys learn selected compositions of old lyric masters in the house of the kitharistês 'master of the kitharâ' (964), who teaches them to learn by heart (promathein: 966) the performance of famous lyric compositions (967) 3 and who insists on their adherence to performing these compositions in the proper harmoniâ 'mode' that had been 'inherited from their forefathers' (968; cf. 969-972). 4
§32. In the same context, Aristophanes Clouds969-972, there is mention of a composer, called Phrynis, who is ridiculed for modernizing the old conventions of harmoniâ. This Phrynis belongs by our standards still to the Archaic period: he was a kitharôidos 'lyre [kitharâ] singer' from Mytilene who won first prize in a contest at the Panathenaia of 456 (or possibly 446). 1 He was primarily known for his virtuosity in the genre of the kitharôidikos nomos 'citharodic nome' (Athenaeus 638c). According to "Plutarch" On Music 1133b, he was the first to introduce the practice of modulating between harmoniai within a single composition (apparently a citharodic nome: ibid.; see also Pherecrates F 145.14- 18 Kock). Such testimony implies that the contemporaries of Phrynis, such as Pindar, did not yet compose songs that modulated between harmoniai. We have already seen a parallel on the level of meter: Pindar generally avoids modulating between the Aeolic and the Doric or dactylo-epitrite meters. Moreover, we have seen that the Doric and Aeolic meters of Pindar seem to be correlated respectively with self-references to the Dorian mode on one hand and to the Aeolian or the various "foreign" modes on the other. It appears that, to this extent, Pindar keeps his meters and his harmoniai distinct in any given composition, and that only on the level of dialect are the Aeolic and Doric elements accretively merged. Still the report that the Locrian mode, to be equated with the Aeolian (Cleonides, p.
Jan), had become obsolete after Pindar (Athenaeus 625e), combined with the fact that the concept of Hypodorian eventually replaced that of Aeolian (Athenaeus 624e, citing Heraclides Ponticus F 163 Wehrli), suggests that the distinction between the Aeolian and the Dorian modes had become obsolete after Pindar. The new nomenclature of Hypodorian suggests that the old Aeolian melodic tradition had become at best a residual subcategory of Dorian. 2
§33. Such shifts in classification might help explain what seem at first to be contradictions in the later testimony about the melodic pattern of various genres. 1 For example, there is a report in "Plutarch" On Music 1136f that the partheneia 'maiden-songs' of Alcman, Simonides, Bacchylides, and Pindar were composed in the melodic pattern of Dorian. 2 Yet, in the few fragments of attested partheneia collected as Pindar F 94a-104b SM, the metrical pattern is Aeolic, which suggests an Aeolian melodic pattern. If indeed such a pattern is perceived as Hypodorian, the term Dorian here may be viewed as inclusive of Aeolian. 3 An alternative explanation is that the partheneia of Pindar, like his epinîkia 'victory odes', may have been composed in either the Dorian or the Aeolian melodic patterns, and that the formulation offered in "Plutarch" On Music 1136f is overly restrictive. Still there seem to be clear signs of correlation between given genres and given melodic patterns, parallel to the well-known correlation between given genres and given metrical patterns. Thus, for example, Aristotle says explicitly that the Phrygian harmoniâ is natural to the dithurambos 'dithyramb' (Politics 1342b); he notes an anecdote about Philoxenus, who tried to compose a dithyramb in the Dorian harmoniâ and who
could not help but fall back into the Phrygian (ibid.). 4 Further, we hear that the Hypodorian and the Hypophrygian, described as having relatively less melody than other patterns, are inappropriate for the choruses of tragedy ("Aristotle" Problems 19.48), and that the Hypodorian is the most suited of all harmoniai for solo kitharôidiâ by principal actors (ibid.). We may note the remark in Plato Republic 398e that thrênoi 'laments' are associated with such harmoniai as the Mixolydian and the Syntonolydian.
§34. Before we end this discussion of relationships between melodic systematization and the content of songs, it is important to consider yet another set of categories for melodic traditions, organized under the heading of genos 'genus'. Classification by way of genus was systematized by Aristoxenus. According to this system (Aristoxenus Harmonics 21.31- 27.14, 46.19-52.34) there is a fundamental unit of composition, the tetrachord, which consists of four notes and which is divided into three genera: (1) enharmonic, (2) chromatic, and (3) diatonic. The two outer notes of the tetrachord are constant for all three of the genera while the two inner ones are variable; the different locations of the inner notes within the tetrachord of four notes constitute the differences in genera. A tetrachord has different interval patterns according to its genus: in the enharmonic it is quarter-tone, quarter-tone, ditone (that is, 1/4, 1/4, 2); in the chromatic it is predominantly semitone, semitone, tone-and-a-half (1/2, 1/2, 1 1/2); in the diatonic it is semitone, tone, tone (1/2, 1, 1). 1 Although these categories themselves are late, 2 they clearly contain old patterns: it has been plausibly argued that the tetrachord, which is the basis of the three genera, is related to the system of tuning for the older four-string lyre. 3 Within the later system of tuning for the newer seven-string lyre, as reflected by the harmoniai, it is possible to find embedded the earlier system of tuning for the older four-string lyre, as reflected by the tetrachord, with its three categories of genus. 4 This diachronic hierarchy seems to be supported by the synchronic fact that "the tetrachord, whether it came high or low in the scale [of the harmoniâ], had primary status in the melody, it was a nucleus, while the notes outside the tetrachord derived their significance from their relation to it." 5
§35. We might say that the containers known as the three genera are new, but they contain three redistributed sets of old patterns. 1 Moreover, the actual distribution into containers reflects a relative ranking of features that are at least perceived as ranging from old-fashioned to innovative. The most old-fashioned features, clearly, fall into the category of the enharmonic genus. There are reports about later musicians who imitated Pindar and Simonides by deliberately avoiding the chromatic genus, thereby "sounding" enharmonic ("Plutarch" On Music 1137f; cf. 1145a). The enharmonic genus was considered typical of tragedy ("Plutarch" 1137de). 2 In the fourth century B.C., as we know from the testimony of Aristoxenus, the chromatic genus was the prevalent mode (Harmonics 23.9-22); 3 moreover, Aristoxenus specifies that it tended to displace the enharmonic genus, which was becoming obsolete (ibid.). 4
§36. When Aristoxenus discusses the order in which the genera came into being (Harmonics 19.17-29), he places the diatonic as the first and oldest on the grounds that it sounds more universal, as if the diatonic genus were the first system that would occur to human nature (prôton gar autou hê tou anthrôpou phusis prostunchanei ibid.); then comes the chromatic, and finally the
enharmonic, on the grounds that human perception has the hardest time in getting accustomed to the enharmonic (ibid.). In "Plutarch" On Music 1134f-1135 there is a convergent formulation, attributed to Aristoxenus, according to which the mythical master of the aulos, Olympus the Phrygian, supposedly "invented" the enharmonic genus by experimenting with the diatonic genus and adjusting it; all music before Olympus was supposedly diatonic or chromatic (ibid.). According to Aristoxenus this "experimentation" of Olympus, "transforming" the diatonic genus into the enharmonic, led to a system of composition in the Dorian tonos ("Plutarch" 1135a). 1 The account goes on to admit that such a system, as attested in the compositions attributed to Olympus, cannot readily be classified under any one single genus, whether it be diatonic, chromatic, or even enharmonic, because the interval patterns reveal areas of nondifferentiation that do not correspond even to current enharmonic standards (On Music 1135ab). Thus the Archaic musical style of Olympus is to be considered a sort of early enharmonic (ibid.). This admission makes it clear that the enharmonic was in fact the basis for differentiation, and that the hierarchy in terms of myth has to be reversed in terms of the actual development of patterns. 2
§37. The hierarchy of myth, which is based on contemporary musical perceptions of what comes naturally, must be juxtaposed with actual contemporary musical trends. Despite the thought- pattern of myth, which insists on the invention of the chromatic out of the diatonic, it is generally agreed by present-day musicologists, on the basis of other indications in the ancient sources, that the diatonic genus superseded the chromatic as the prevailing musical style in post-Hellenistic times. 1 One such indication is the explicit testimony of Aristides Quintilianus, p. 16.10-15 (ed. Winnington-Ingram). Moreover, we have also seen the testimony of Aristoxenus to the effect that the chromatic genus tends to displace the enharmonic in his own time (Harmonics 23.9-22). Thus it would appear that the enharmonic is more Archaic in its interval patterns than the chromatic. Similarly, if indeed composers avoid the chromatic in order to imitate the older masters--and we have seen that Aristoxenus verifies this practice as a contemporary one--then the chromatic genus must surely be less Archaic than the enharmonic. We may infer then that the Archaic masters like Pindar and Simonides "sounded" more enharmonic than chromatic or anything else.
§38. From the standpoint of the Archaic masters of lyric, it may even be enough to describe their enharmonic melodic patterns as simply harmonic. 1 In setting up a chronological hierarchy of (en)harmonic as the oldest, followed by chromatic and then by diatonic, we may perhaps draw some inferences from the presence of the so-called puknon in the enharmonic and chromatic genera, as opposed to its absence in the diatonic. The word puknon refers to a pattern where the two lowest intervals of the tetrachord, when added together, are less than the remaining interval of the tetrachord. Thus in the chromatic genus 1/2 plus 1/2 is less than 1 1/2, and in the enharmonic genus 1/4 plus 1/4 is less than 2. By contrast in the diatonic genus 1/2 plus 1 is not less than 1. In other words the distinctive feature of enharmonic and chromatic genera is the consecutive sequence of two small intervals, the puknon, while the rest of the tetrachord is occupied by one single large interval. In addition there is an auxiliary rule according to which the puknon cannot be followed in traditional melody by an interval that is shorter than one tone. 2 The smaller intervals in the enharmonic and the chromatic, which are relatively older genera, seem to resemble more closely the "speech melody" of ancient Greek accentuation than the larger intervals of the diatonic, which is relatively younger. 3 The smaller intervals in the enharmonic and chromatic are
the very factors that would make ancient Greek music sound foreign from the standpoint of the tempered tones and semitones of the modern Western musical traditions. 4
§39. If indeed the enharmonic tetrachord were once simply the harmonic, preceding any differentiations leading to the chromatic and thereafter to the diatonic, then we may look for the clearest traces of preserved affinities with the pitch accent system of the Greek language precisely in the enharmonic genus. On the authority of "Plutarch" On Music 1135ab and 1137ab (especially 1137b), we know that some of the oldest melodic patterns, attributed to Olympus and Terpander, were trichords, not tetrachords. 1 It can even be argued, on the basis of such testimony, that certain types of tetrachords developed out of trichords. 2 The affinity of the (en)harmonic tradition with trichords, that is, three-note systems, suggests even closer links between the interval patterns of the enharmonic genus and the interval patterns of pitch accentuation in the Greek language. 3
§40. Rounding out this survey of the chronologically overlapping melodic systems of nomoi, harmoniai, tonoi, and genera, we may say that they all reflect in various degrees an ongoing process of mutual assimilation and systematization, to which I have applied the overall concept of Panhellenization. The present list is hardly exhaustive. For example, another important factor that contributed to the systematization of melodic traditions was the innovative interaction of conventions in accompaniment by lyre and reed (aulos), 1 and the actual conflation of distinct melodic patterns associated with the lyre, the aulos, and the voice, as pioneered by such antecedents of Pindar as Lasus of Hermione (Theon of Smyrna, p. 59.4 Hiller, Suda s.v.; "Plutarch" On Music 1141c). 2 This particular figure is reputed to have been a teacher of Pindar (scholia to Pindar Olympian1, p. 4.13-15 Drachmann) and a rival of Simonides (cf. Aristophanes Wasps1409-1411). Given that the provenience of Lasus is the Dorian city of Hermione, we may note again the specific reference to a harmoniâ described as Aeolian in Lasus PMG 702.3; 3 there is a comparable self-reference to an Aeolian song and dance in Pindar Olympian1.102 (aiolêidi molpai), the same composition in which the voice of the poet, at the beginning, asks that the Dorian lyre be handed over to him dôrian...phorminga 17). 4
§41. With this survey of melodic traditions in Greek song serving as background, we may pursue further the notion of a canon in our ongoing discussion of Panhellenization in poetry and song. What I have proposed is that the formation of a canon in song--which we can also call lyric poetry--started relatively later than the formation of a canon in nonlyric poetry proper. Once the Panhellenic breakthrough of song did happen, however, its transmission would have been facilitated to rival that of poetry not only because of the mnemonic utility of melody but also because of the relative brevity of song as opposed to the potentially open-ended length of poetry. In any inherited distinction between SONG and SPEECH, we would expect that the pressures of regularization in SONG would tend to delimit the length of production in contrast with the potentially open-ended length of speaking everyday SPEECH. So also in any differentiation of SONG into song vs. poetry, we would expect that song would be more clearly delimited in length of production by contrast with the potentially open-ended length of poetry in its imitation of SPEECH. 1
§42. With these considerations, let us examine the social context of performance. If indeed the
transmission of Panhellenized song coexists with that of poetry, it stands to reason that the professional performer of such song, the kitharôidos 'lyre [kitharâ] singer' and the aulôidos 'reed [aulos] singer', would be valued on a scale comparable to that of the professional performer of poetry, the rhapsôidos 'rhapsode'. In fact the epigraphical evidence shows that rhapsôidoi, kitharôidoi, and aulôidoi, as they perform in competition at festivals, are awarded comparable sums for their prizes. 1
§43. In the following chapters, we have occasion to observe a recurrent pattern where the composer/performer of song or lyric poetry is eventually differentiated into a mythical protocomposer on the one hand and a contemporary professional performer, the kitharôidos or aulôidos on the other. But this pattern is just one of many other possible patterns of evolution. The category of lyric poetry includes performance not only by a single professional or nonprofessional performer but also by a nonprofessional group of specially selected natives of the polis, the khoros 'chorus', who both sang and danced the song. 1 In Pindar's time, as we see later, the nonprofessional chorus would be performing, on commissioned occasions, songs composed by professional poets of Panhellenic prestige, such as Pindar. 2 As we also see later, the institution of the chorus plays its own role in the emerging concept of authorship in Archaic and Classical Greece. 3
§44. Of all the composers of song, or lyric poets, I single out Pindar as the focus of our attention. Along with his near-contemporary, Bacchylides, Pindar is the latest and the last in the canon of lyric poets inherited by the Alexandrian editors. The last securely datable poem of Pindar, Pythian8, was composed for performance in 446 B.C. (for Bacchylides, the last datable compositions are Odes 6 and 7, performed in 452 B.C.). With this date of 446 we have an imprecise but revealing terminus in the history of ancient Greek poetry.
§45. A striking feature of this terminus is the fact that the canon of lyric poetry excludes poets who flourished in the second half of the fifth century or thereafter. This fact will in due course be linked with the argument that the canon of lyric poetry results from patterns of Panhellenization in oral traditions of song. Although there is ample evidence for the existence of poets who composed song in the second half of the fifth century and thereafter--the most prominent of whom are Timotheus of Miletus and Philoxenus of Cythera-- 1 there is also evidence that their song was a medium that had evolved beyond the lyric poetry represented by Pindar and the other canonical lyric poets. In particular the differences can be seen in the genres known as the citharodic nome and the dithyramb. 2 I quote from a brief summary of the situation: 3
One point about the development of lyric poetry in the latter part of the fifth century...is both clear and relevant to the question [of why this poetry was excluded from the canon]: two kinds of lyric poetry, the [citharodic] nome and the dithyramb, began to dominate nondramatic poetic composition. Both were different from all the earlier lyric types, including the earlier nome and dithyramb, 4 in signficiant respects: they were nonstanzaic, the relative importance of music to words suddenly and greatly increased, and their affinity to drama was recognized; Aristotle
groups them with tragedy and comedy in his classification of the mimetic arts at the beginning of the Poetics. It may be that the Alexandrian critics did not consider this new poetry, which continued dominant in the fourth century, to be of the same genre as lyric poetry (nearly all of which was stanzaic), 5 and for this reason excluded Timotheus, Philoxenus of Cythera, Cinesias, and the other writers of dithyrambs and nomes.
§46. I propose a different reason for the exclusion of these poets in the canon of the
Alexandrians: the likes of Timotheus and Philoxenus, unlike the earlier masters of lyric, were already being excluded from the canon of traditional Athenian education in the "Classics," mainly on the grounds that the innovative virtuosity characteristic of such poets, and of the new genres that they represented, tended to restrict their oeuvre to performance by professionals and to defy the traditions of liberal education for nonprofessionals, that is, for the future citizens of the polis. 1
§47. With regard to this crucial era of the second half of the fifth century and thereafter, it is important to note that, alongside the emergence of new media of song as represented by the "new" nomos 'nome' and the "new" dithurambos 'dithyramb', 1 there is a concurrent obsolescence of the old media of song as represented by lyric poetry proper. In fact the traditions of composition in lyric poetry, as once practiced by Pindar, seem to be becoming extinct in this era of the "new" nome and the "new" dithyramb. Such a trend of extinction is most evident from the standpoint of traditions in performance. For example, in Eupolis F 366 Kock (paraphrased by Athenaeus 3a) the complaint is made that the songs of Pindar have for some time been covered over in silence, ignored by the audiences of the day (Eupolis was a contemporary of Aristophanes). In Eupolis F 139 Kock (quoted by Athenaeus 638e) we see a parallel theme: the speaker is complaining that the songs of Stesichorus, Alcman, and Simonides are considered out of date by contemporary audiences, who prefer the "modern" poetry of the likes of Gnesippus. The latter poet is ridiculed for his modernisms also by Cratinus (F 97 Kock), a pioneer of Old Comedy, who was an older contemporary of Eupolis and Aristophanes (Athenaeus 638ef).
§48. In Aristophanes Clouds1353-1358, the figure of Strepsiades is taking an old- fashioned stance in berating his son Pheidippides, a new convert to the school of Socrates, representing modernist trends of education that have eroded the traditions of old-fashioned liberal education in the "Classics." 1 At a symposium Pheidippides refuses a request to take up the lyre and sing a famous lyric composition by Simonides (Aristophanes Clouds1355-1356). The composition was an epinîkion, that is, a victory ode (Simonides PMG 507). Technically Pheidippides is refusing here to perform a skolion. This word skolion, as used in the time of Aristophanes, is an appropriate general designation for the performance, self-accompanied on the lyre, of compositions by the great lyric masters. 2 A notable example of this usage of skolion is Aristophanes F 223 Kock, with reference to the performing of compositions by Alcaeus and Anacreon, which are here called skolia. 3 Such a general sense of skolion is lost later as the word becomes progressively restricted in meaning (as we see from Athenaeus 694f-695f). 4 The performances at symposia of the great lyric masters correspond to the monodic medium of the kitharôidos. 5 To engage in these performances was an old-fashioned convention at symposia, as we can see from such references as the present passage from the Clouds of Aristophanes, the scholia to Aristophanes Wasps1222, and Eupolis F 139 Kock (by way of Athenaeus 638e). 6
According to "Plutarch" On Music 1140f, Pindar attributed the "invention" of the skolion to Terpander, who as we have seen is also the traditional "inventor" of the system of melodies used in kitharôidiâ 'lyre singing' (On Music 1132d). 7
§49. As we see from the passage in the Clouds, Pheidippides ridicules the singing of Simonides' lyric poetry specifically because he considers it something that is passé (Clouds 1357-1358). 1 There is still, however, an important last stand of old-fashioned lyric poetry in the second half of the fifth century and thereafter, and it is to be found in the choral traditions of Athenian tragedy and comedy. The poets of Old Comedy, as we have seen, even ridicule the new poetry that purports to displace the old poetry. On another level Old Comedy could also ridicule the old poetry of lyric traditions, as in the parody of Pindar F 105 SM in Aristophanes Birds926-930, 941-945(note too the adjacent reference to Simonides in Birds 917-919).
§50. The point remains that the old traditions of lyric are obsolescent by the time of Aristophanes, and in fact the Birds, presented in 414 B.C., is the last attested comedy of Aristophanes that mentions or parodies the compositions of Pindar. 1 We may note that Pindar F 105 SM is taken from a composition, known as a huporkhêma, intended for the tyrant Hieron of Syracuse. 2 The only other Aristophanic reference to a Pindaric composition where we know the identity of Pindar's intended audience is in Acharnians 637/639 and in Knights 1329/1323, both referring to Pindar F 76 SM, a passage from a famous dithurambos 'dithyramb' composed expressly for the glorification of Athens. Both these Aristophanic references to recognizable Pindaric passages, one the huporkhêma for Hieron and the other the dithurambos for the Athenians, focus on the beginning of a Pindaric composition. It seems that the allusion is being made to the most famous parts of famous compositions. Besides these two cases there seems to be only one more where we can be reasonably certain that the reference is to a well-known passage of Pindar: Knights 1264-1266, alluding to a prosodion 'processional song' (F 89a SM). 3 It has been observed that these three Aristophanic references to three passages apparently familiar to an Athenian audience can give us an indication of the kind of repertoire that was being taught to young Athenians in the years roughly between 450 and 420 B.C. 4 This repertoire is decidedly limited in scope, which converges with what we have observed about the canon of nine "Classics" of lyric poetry: given the vast variety of traditions that they represent, this canon is a relatively small corpus.
§51. It seems likely that the evolving predominance of Athenian theater as a poetic medium played a major role in the obsolescence of lyric poetry in other media and by extension in other genres. From Plato's writings we hear of complaints about theatrokratiâ (Laws 701a) 1 and about the intoxication of pleasure in the poetry of theater (Laws 700d), leading to 'transgressions' of genre (paranomia: Laws 700e). 2 To be contrasted are the good old days, as in the era of the Persian Wars (Laws 698b-700a), 3 when there were still distinct eidê 'types' and skhêmata 'figures' of song and dance (Laws 700a), 4 five of which are specified as examples: humnos 'hymn', thrênos 'lament', paiân 'paean', dithurambos 'dithyramb', and kitharôidikos nomos 'citharodic
nome' (Laws 700b). These genres, 5 as well as other genres left unspecified (ibid.), 6 are the structurally distinct aspects of mousikê 'music' (that is, for all practical purposes, lyric poetry), parallel to the structurally distinct aspects of aristokratiâ in Plato's good old Athenian society
(Laws 701a). 7 In contrast the progressive leveling by Athenian theater of generic distinctions in lyric poetry is for Plato parallel to the leveling by Athenian democracy of class distinctions in society. 8 What I have been describing as an infusion of lyric genres into theater, and their concomitant atrophy elsewhere, is seen by Plato as an illegitimate mixing of genres (Laws 700d), a degeneration into a superseding genre of lyric traditions in Athenian drama (ibid.). In contrast, as Svenbro points out, 9 Athenian drama is seen by Aristotle not as the product of degeneration but rather as a teleological organic development in the evolution of poetic traditions (Poetics 1449a14-15). 10
§52. From either point of view, the lyric poetry of Athenian theater would be considered the final productive phase of a medium that had otherwise become unproductive already by the second half of the fifth century. In Aristophanes Clouds1361-1376, as we have seen, Pheidippides refuses to take up the lyre and sing a lyric composition by Simonides, on the grounds that the singing of lyric compositions at symposia is passé. 1 It is clear that Pheidippides is not well-versed in the art form of this kind of performance. 2 Then he is asked at least to perform something from the compositions of Aeschylus, while holding a branch of myrtle (Clouds 1365). 3 The aulos, not the lyre, serves as the medium of accompaniment for the lyric compositions of Athenian Drama. 4 Singing to the lyre implies potential self-accompaniment, whereas singing to the aulos does not. Thus a lower degree of education is required for performing in the chorus of an Aeschylean tragedy or for reperforming at a symposium selections from the choral songs of such a tragedy. 5 Even this kind of performance is refused by Pheidippides, who elects to recite a passage from a speech in Euripides (Clouds 1371). The word rhêsis 'speech' (ibid.) makes it clear that the modern Pheidippides opts for a medium that is devoid of the lyric element. 6
§53. Plato's portrait of nostalgia for those earlier days when lyric poetry had not yet been absorbed and ultimately usurped by Athenian theater returns us to the era of Pindar, last in the canon of lyric poets. Let us consider the genres in which Pindar composed. It is best to begin with the inventory of an Alexandrian edition of Pindar as reported in the Vita Ambrosiana, according to which Pindar's compositions are subdivided into seventeen books corresponding to specific genres of lyric poetry. 1 We are struck by the fact that of the distinct genres of lyric poetry mentioned in Plato's partial list, namely the humnos, the thrênos, the paiân, the dithurambos, and the citharodic nomos (again Laws 700b), all but the last one are also represented in the Vita Ambrosiana inventory of Pindar's poems. The inventory of seventeen books attributed to Pindar contains ten distinct genres (an asterisk marks those genres that correspond to Plato's list):
humnoi 'hymns'
paiânes 'paeans'
dithuramboi 'dithyrambs'
same
prosodia
same
parthenia
same
parthenia [distinct set]
same
thrênoi 'laments'
same [Pythians]
same [Isthmians]
same [Nemeans]
5 It is difficult to be certain whether such an editorial organization of Pindar's poems goes further in time than the Alexandrian era--back to the time of Plato, for example. 6 But we do know for certain that Plato was familiar enough with Pindar's poems to refer to them at least sixteen times in the attested Platonic corpus. 7
§54. It remains to ask how exactly these references came about. One readily available explanation
is that Plato was citing from a hypothetical edition of Pindar that was circulating in Athens. 1 Most likely such an edition would have been a school text going back to an earlier time when youths had still been well-educated in the actual performance of old-fashioned lyric compositions. 2 By Plato's time, however, it was becoming less and less likely that performers of kitharôidiâ or aulôidiâ, especially amateurs, could still have had in their repertoires selections from Pindar and other grand masters of lyric poetry. I quote from the summary of a musicologist: 3
The classic Athenian comedy had been made for a society which talked music as it talked politics or war. But in Aristophanes' post-war plays, a shrunken chorus gives us only a last flash or two of his musical parody; and his successors substituted entr'actes by variety artists. The Alexandrian era still has excellent stage gossip on performers, but a first-hand judgement on the style or quality of music is hardly to be found after the fourth century. Aristotle already prefers received opinions. His master Plato and his pupil Aristoxenus are the last who speak to us with the authority of musical understanding.
§55. It must be kept in mind that the contemporary Athenian traditions of composing and performing lyric poetry had already outgrown, well before Plato's time, the traditions represented by Pindar. 1 I do not rule out the possibility that some of the better schools, even in Plato's time, insisted on extensive memorization of the libretti of the lyric masters, but it is clear that most schools limited their requirements to a small repertoire of selected passages to be memorized for recitation (cf. Plato Laws 810e). 2 As for professional musicians, there is evidence that they still had access, even at as late as the era of Aristotle, to the melodic traditions of Archaic masters like Pindar. I refer to a revealing report in "Plutarch" On Music 1142b attributed to the music theorist Aristoxenus, pupil of Aristotle: according to Aristoxenus, the son of a professional musician from Tarentum, 3 there was a composer, one of his own contemporaries, who in the course of his career reverted from the musical idiom of Timotheus and Philoxenus to that of the Archaic poets, among whom Pindar is mentioned first. Clearly the musical tradition of Pindar had survived until
then. Still there would have been no chance for any major ongoing recomposition of Pindar's lyric poetry through performance in that contemporary traditions of choral lyric composition would have been sufficiently differentiated from Pindar's old-fashioned traditions. In fact the very traditions of performing Pindar's compositions had become obsolete.
§56. In Pindar's own time, by contrast, his compositions could still be readily reperformed, ordinarily not by a chorus 1 but by individuals at symposia, simply as "Classics." As we have seen, Old Comedy represents the mode of reperforming an epinician composition of Simonides, at the symposium, in the format of a solo rendition with self-accompaniment to the lyre (Aristophanes Clouds 1355-1358). By implication there was a time when a choral composition, such as we see in the songs of Simonides or his contemporary Pindar, could be actively converted into a solo performance. Such interchangeability between choral and solo contexts is a clear indication, however indirect, of the flexibility of the choral lyric form as a still-living tradition in the era of Pindar. 2 This flexibility presupposes a solid education of nonprofessionals in the art of professionals known as kitharôidoi 'lyre singers'. 3 In the later era of Timotheus and Philoxenus, as we have also seen, such flexibility had broken down.
§57. As "Classics" the compositions of a Pindar could be reperformed at will in the "good old days," but they would have to be grounded in an awareness of the situations and ideologies in which Pindar was commissioned to give public poetic testimony. These situations and ideologies, or occasions, may strike us at first as potential obstacles to the Panhellenization of such compositions. The very occasions of this lyric poetry, however, were of Panhellenic importance, with an impact lasting in prestige. Each of Pindar's compositions was originally commissioned for a specific occasion, to be performed ostensibly by a chorus assembled and trained for that one original occasion. But the prestige of such an occasion was meant to reverberate indefinitely in time and space.
§58. This transcendent occasionality of Pindar's lyric poetry is most evident in the only genre of his compositions to survive almost intact: the four books of epinîkia 'victory odes'. These victory odes or epinicians were commissioned as ad hoc choral performances in celebration of victories won by athletes at the Panhellenic Games, and the four books of Pindar's epinicians match the four most prestigious Panhellenic athletic festivals: the Olympian, Pythian, Isthmian, and Nemean Games. Though each of Pindar's victory odes was an occasional composition, centering on a single performance, each containing details grounded in the historical realities of the time and place of performance, still each of these victory odes aimed at translating its occasion into a Panhellenic event, a thing of beauty that could be replayed by and for all Hellenes for all time to come.
§59. The occasion of the poet's victory ode not only conferred Panhellenic prestige: it also received it since the athlete's victory itself was a Panhellenic event, the prestige of which depended on the relative Panhellenic prestige of the given games in which the victory occurred. Just as the concept of Panhellenism is relative in terms of poetry and song, 1 so also in terms of athletics: the older the athletic festival, the more Panhellenic was its prestige. Thus the Olympics of Elis (traditional founding date of 776 B.C.) were more Panhellenic than the Pythians of Delphi (582 B.C.), the Pythians more than the Isthmians near Corinth (581 B.C), the Isthmians more than the
Nemeans near Argos (573 B.C.). The list could be extended, with such runner-up festivals as the Panathenaia of Athens (with athletic competitions instituted at 566/5 B.C.). 2
§60. It is clear that there would have been no rationale for recommissioning a chorus to reperform such a composition since the original occasion would have been archetypal from the standpoint of the lyric poetry. To put it another way, the original occasion would have been gone forever from the standpoint of us outsiders who are critics of this poetry. For us, any reperformance of such a composition in, say, Aristophanes' time seems at first sight to be just a performance of a canonical poet. From the internal point of view represented by the poetic tradition, however, a reperformance in an old-fashioned symposium is a remaking of an original poetic event. There is no chorus, no chorus-leader present; instead a soloist performer must reconstitute their roles, while accompanying himself on the lyre. 1 The example of the young Pheidippides in the Clouds of Aristophanes, however, suggests an incipient failure of liberal education, even by the time of Old Comedy, to produce anyone to take up such a challenge. 2
Notes
§1n1. There is a useful survey by Comotti 1979.15-25 (see especially p. 18). For an insight into the character of local melodic patterns, consider the expression dêmôdê mousikên 'songmaking of the locale [dêmos]' at Plato Phaedo 61a, in the context of the discussion by Brisson 1982.55-56. In the discussion that follows, I use the same notions of pitch and melody that I have set up in the working definitions at Ch.1§33n1.
§2n1. See Pfeiffer 1968.205. On the concept of canon as used here, see Ch.2§25.
§2n2. Cf. Kirkwood 1974.3. The dating of Corinna as roughly contemporaneous has been a matter of controversy, discussed impartially by Page 1953.68-84. If indeed this lyric poetry is Archaic (cf. Gerber 1970.394-395), like the canon of the nine lyric poets, the question remains: why was Corinna ignored in the canon? I agree with the reason offered by Page: by the time that we reach the era of Alexandrian scholarship, Corinna would have "long ceased to rank among hoi prattomenoi, the poets whose works survived in universal and unbroken circulation (p. 69)." If then we suppose that Corinna is an Archaic poet, I would further suppose that the transmission of her lyric poetry happened not on a Panhellenic but on a more localized Boeotian level. (On the localized nature of the compositions attributed to Corinna, I cite the useful discussion of Davison 1968.300-302.) The absence of an ultimately Panhellenic transmission could perhaps be connected with the possible absence of an Athenian transmission. We would not expect Corinna, as a local poet of Boeotia, to be a "Classic" in the paideiâ 'education' of Athenian youths, on which see further at Ch.3§31. On the likelihood that the canon inherited by the Alexandrian scholars reflects primarily the traditions of Athenian paideiâ, see in general Ch.13. In any case it is important to distinguish between the selective canon inherited by the Alexandrian scholars and the nonselective repertory of works housed in their Museum: see Ch.2§25n6. For the Alexandrian scholars, exclusion of an author from the canon does not preclude an active interest in that author, even as a model for imitation. As Zetzel 1983.99 points out, "one of the most striking characteristics of Alexandrian poetry was its tendency to avoid the major classical genres and even to elevate to literary status forms probably not recognized previously as literature at all."
This way the classifier sets himself apart as one who is beyond classification (Zetzel ibid. cf. also Rossi 1971.83- 86).
§2n3. This is not to say that we should expect the patterns of recomposition in poetry and song to be neatly parallel in every way.
§3n1. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff 1900.63-71, especially p. 65.
§3n2. Ibid. See also Page 1953.68, who doubts that "any ancient lyrical poet whose works were in circulation up to the Alexandrian era was omitted by the Alexandrian editors from their collection." For bibliography on reactions to this view, see Pfeiffer 1968.205n4.
§3n4. What Zetzel 1983.98 writes about the three canonical iambic poets (Archilochus, Hipponax, and Semonides of Amorgos: cf. Quintilian Institutio oratoria 10.1.59) can be applied also to the nine canonical lyric poets: "it was a selection and not, as has sometimes been thought, a complete list of all early authors--it was explicitly a list of earlier authors, stopping with the fourth century B.C." (emphasis mine). I would also compare the canonical notion of Seven Sages, datable all the way back to the Archaic period, where the number seven is a constant while the actual membership is variable, in that we witness attestations of different "members" at different times and different places (see Ch.8§44n2).
§3n5. As we have already observed in the case of Homer, the patterns of attribution to such a given "author" become progressively more exclusive as we move forward in time: see Ch.1§7n1. Thus the Epic Cycle, for example, becomes reassigned to distinct poets, whose canonical status is considered inferior to that of Homer: see Ch.2§38 and following. On Orpheus and Musaeus, presented as if they were earlier than Hesiod and Homer, cf. Aristophanes Frogs1032-1035 (further references at Ch.8§2n8). By contrast Herodotus 2.53.3 argues against the notion that there might be such poets older than Homer and Hesiod (cf. Ch.8§2n8). It is clear from the context that Herodotus places Homer and Hesiod as the earliest because he deems their canonical status the very highest.
§3n6. Ch.2 above. By the time of the second century A.D., the entire surviving corpus of Greek lyric in the broader sense, including iambic and elegiac poetry, was ranked as a nonpractical aspect of education in the Classics (cf. Dio of Prusa Orations 18.8, p. 478 R).
§5n1. The element of dancing is made explicit in this context: orchêsesi (Laws 764e). In Ch.12, we shall consider various patterns of differentiation between singers and dancers in the context of the khoros.
§5n2. The valuable testimony in Plato Laws 764c-765b on the given of institutional differentiation, in terms of public performance, between the monodic and choral media is too readily dismissed by commentators. I stress also the crucial testimony in Aristophanes
Frogs1329-1364, with parodies of the monodic technique (note monôidiâ at 1330) as distinct from the choral lyric technique, parodied in 1248-1329.
§5n3. Cf. also Plato Laws 659ab, as cited at Ch.2§25n9.
§5n4. This point is stressed by Kirkwood 1974.10, 212n16 (with specific reference to Plato Laws 764c-765b); cf. also Harvey 1955.159n3 and Färber 1936.16. Davies 1988.61 observes that "it is dangerously misleading to talk of choral or monodic poets."
§5n5. Cf. Ch.12§2 and following.
§5n6. Ibid.
§7n1. For a useful survey, see Barker 1984.14. References to string instruments in Archaic Greek poetry tend not to differentiate kitharâ from, for example, phorminx: see Barker, p. 25n19, who also takes note of the later taxonomy of differentiation, as in Aristotle Politics 1341a. Cf. also Maas and Snyder 1989.5, 202.
§7n2. Survey in Barker, p. 15.
§7n3. Also I should caution against any general assumptions of parity between instrumental and vocal intervals: for a cross-cultural survey, see Nettl 1956.50.
§8n1. As the discussion that follows makes clear, I interpret this name as generic, in line with the programmatic use of the verb terpô 'give pleasure' in poetry to describe the effects of poetry, as in the case of Phemios at Odyssey i 347. The name Terpandros is analogous to the expressive patronymic Terpiadês, derived from verb terpô 'give pleasure', as applied to the singer Phemios at Odyssey xxii 376. More details in N 1979.17 §4n1.
§8n2. Athenaeus also reports a variant tradition according to which Terpander was a contemporary of Lycurgus (635f, on the authority of Hieronymus On Kitharôidoi). Lycurgus is credited with being one of the founders of the first numbered instance of the Olympic Games, that is, at 776 B.C. (Athenaeus ibid.).
§8n3. In this connection, "Plutarch" On Music 1133d mentions one Periclitus, who was at some undetermined later point likewise a winner at the Spartan Feast of Karneia in the contest of singing to the accompaniment of the kitharâ: like Terpander, he was a kitharôidos 'lyre singer' from Lesbos, and after his death the continuous tradition at Lesbos of singing to the kitharâ supposedly came to an end (ibid.). On the preeminence of kitharôidoi from Lesbos, see also Aristotle F 545 Rose and Hesychius s.v. meta lesbion ôidon.
§9n1. See the commentary of Barker 1984.96n16; also p. 251. The list of seven nomoi in "Plutarch" On Music 1132d omits the Orthios, present in the list of eight given by Pollux 4.65. In Suda s.v. orthios nomos, it is specified that there are seven nomoi; the account goes on to mention the Orthios along with the Trokhaios. In Suda s.v. nomos, the Tetraoidios and the Oxus are mentioned. Perhaps the number seven may have been a constant within some traditions,
whereas the constituents were variable over the course of time. In Timotheus Persians (PMG 791) 225, there is a reference to ten ôidai 'melodies' of Terpander.
§9n2. On the appropriateness of the term genre here, see Svenbro 1984.225 and n135. See also Pfeiffer 1968.184 on eidos.
§9n3. On the "invention" of the dithyramb in Corinth, see also Pindar Olympian13.17-19.
§10n1. This reference in Herodotus 1.24.5 to the lyric performance of Arion as a nomos suggests that the earlier meaning of this word was broad enough in scope to designate simply a lyric composition that followed a set mode or melodic pattern, in this case specified as orthios 'shrill'. There is another reference to orthios nomos in Aristophanes Knights 1279. As for the story about the attempt by greedy sailors to rob Arion of his great wealth (Herodotus 1.24.1-2), we may compare the Homeric Hymn [7] to Dionysus, where Dionysus is abducted by pirates. This thematic connection between Arion and Dionysus is parallel to the connection between Arion and the dithyramb (again Herodotus 1.23), which is associated with the cult of Dionysus (e.g., Archilochus F 120 W).
§11n1. Cf. Comotti ibid. Cf. also Aristophanes Birds745 and the commentary of Fraenkel 1962.209-212.
§11n2. Chantraine DELG 742-743.
§11n3. On the specific parallelism between the hierarchical distribution of intervals within a melody and the hierarchical distribution of sacrificial meat within a community, see Svenbro 1984 and N 1985b.
§12n2. The phraseology of song, from the synchronic standpoint of Greek metrics, is organized along the lines of a stylized syntactical unit, the colon; cf. Appendix §1.
§12n3. On the basis of the self-references, I infer that this extension is not just a matter of metaphor: the mimesis of bird song seems to be part of an actual musical tradition. Cf. Nettl
1964.284 on a Shawnee song tradition imitating the call of the turkey, where the sound patterns "still fit into the musical structure."
§13n1. In this source, the nomoi of Terpander are understood anachronistically as equivalent to the nomoi of Timotheus of Miletus, a virtuoso composer of the late fifth century, who is said to have composed his earliest nomoi in dactylic hexameters: "Plutarch" On Music 1132e. At 1132de (see Barker 1984.209n25) the source infers that Terpander too composed primarily hexameters (though it would be more accurate to say, on the basis of Terpander PMG 697, that Terpander composed in meters related to the hexameter: Gentili and Giannini 1977.35-36). Timotheus was famed for a performance of a composition of his that happens to be a kitharôidikos nomos 'citharodic nome', known as the Persians, at the Feast of the Panathenaia at Athens, around 408
B.C. The composition is attested as Timotheus PMG 788-791, and we do indeed find a prominent deployment of dactylic hexameters alongside various lyric meters, even at the beginning of the song (PMG 788). In his Persians Timotheus overtly refers to Terpander as his predecessor
(PMG 791.225-236). For more on the Persians of Timotheus, see in general the interesting discussion of Herington, pp. 151-160, who has enough information to calculate even the running time for the performance of the complete composition (thirty-five or forty minutes: p. 275n25).
§13n2. I should stress that the values within any scale at this particular stage of development in Archaic Greek song have to be considered in terms of relative rather than absolute pitch.
§14n1. There is a summary of the evidence in Wegner 1968.16, with helpful observations about the nonsignificance of occasional deviations from the number of four. I find it unnecessary to adopt, however, Wegner's restricted nomenclature of phorminx for the four-string and kitharâ for the seven-string instrument. On the still earlier use of seven- and eight-string lyres in the Minoan and Mycenaean periods, see Wegner, pp. 26-27. Also, I disagree with the theory of West 1981 that Homeric poetry was sung to a four-string instrument: the reasons for my disagreement have to do with the diachronic skewing of Homeric self-references, as discussed in Ch.1§9.
§14n2. West 1981.120. For a particularly early representation of a seven-string lyre, on a
seventh-century Greek sherd found at Smyrna, see Boardman 1980.97-98, with illustration. For a comprehensive survey of evidence concerning ancient Greek stringed instruments, see now Maas and Snyder 1989; at pp. 27-28 and 203, they argue that the post-Mycenaean iconographic attestations of four-string instruments may be a matter of iconographic convention rather than reality, and that seven-string instruments may have been the norm even in the post- Mycenaean period. From the standpoint of comparative ethnomusicology, however, it is logical to expect the diachronic sequence of morphological development in stringed instruments to proceed from the four- to the seven-string configuration, though there is no reason to rule out even the coexistence of four- and seven-string instruments in any given era.
§14n3. Cf. Barker 1984.49: "A four-stringed instrument, perhaps tuned to a pair of fourths separated by a whole tone, does little to fix a clear-cut form of scale. A seven-stringed instrument must do so, though later writers were in doubt as to exactly which notes Terpander's scale incorporated." The interval of a fourth, known as a tetrachord, is the basis of formulating the three categories of genus, to be discussed below.
§15n1. Schwyzer I 385. The variant of this Aeolic form kithariW is kitharê = kitharâ (e.g., Herodotus 1.24.5, referring to the lyre of Arion), which is not even attested in the Iliad and Odyssey. Cf. Shelmerdine 1981.41n73.
§16n1. See also the commentary on "Plutarch" On Music 1133e in Barker 1984.212n51.
§16n2. "Plutarch" On Music 1133d marks a transition from the discussion of nomoi as sung to the accompaniment of lyre or aulos: now the subject shifts to nomoi for solo aulos. It is made clear that Olympus is credited with inventions of both kinds of nomoi, those for solo aulos and those for voice accompanied by the aulos (1133e). The distinction between an earlier and a later Olympus (1133de) reflects an attempt to resolve conflicting relative chronologies. On the reference to a nomos of Olympus in Aristophanes Knights8-10, see Bowie 1986.24.
§16n3. On the myth of Marsyas, cf. Plato Symposium 215bc.
§16n4. For more on the Phrygian connection of Olympus and Marsyas, see Barker 1984.210n32.
§16n5. The text does not say that Clonas actually originated aulôidiâ, so that the emendation of aulêtikôn for aulôidikôn at the end of "Plutarch" On Music 1132f, entertained as a possibility by Barker 1984.210n35, seems to me unnecessary. If we keep the text as it is, the source is giving the following relative chronology: Olympus/Terpander/Clonas. Our source claims that Clonas composed elegiacs and hexameters ("Plutarch" On Music1132c). We have already seen a parallel claim, that Terpander composed hexameters (Ch.3§13n1). Also, our source gives two variant traditions about the provenience of Clonas: he is a Tegean according to the Arcadians, a Theban according to the Boeotians ("Plutarch" 1133a). Also named in this same context is one Polymnestus of Colophon (ibid.). We know that Polymnestus was mentioned in the songs of Alcman and Pindar ("Plutarch" 1133a). A Pindaric mention of Polymnestus is quoted by Strabo
(14.1.28 C643: Pindar F 188 SM).
§19n1. Barker 1984.130n18.
§19n2. Barker, p. 164.
§19n3. Barker ibid., with a survey of references. This working definition corresponds to my understanding of mode, as discussed in Ch.1§63n5. In modern Greek folk music there is an analogy in the notion of dromos 'road, mode', which is parallel to Arabic maqâm 'mode' and Turkish makam 'mode': see Beaton 1980b, especially p. 8, emphasizing the independence of the systems of dromoi from the Byzantine Oktoechos. On the difference between harmoniai and tonoi, Solomon 1984.249 notes: "Aristoxenus no doubt had to squeeze some of the intervallic leaps used originally in the native, tribal harmoniai and then in the tonoi into or out of the great system, but such is the universally compromising force of standardization. The difference between our own tempered and nontempered systems provides somewhat of a parallel."
§19n4. Barker ibid.
§21n1. Cf. West 1981.126.
§21n2. The dialectal subdivisions correspond to political subdivisions as well: cf. the narrative master plan of subdividing the notion of "Hellenes" into Ionians, Aeolians, and Dorians in Herodotus 1.6.2 et passim.
§21n3. See Ch.3§9n1. In this connection, R. Hamilton points out to me the fact that we know of no nomos that is Dorian. Again I invoke Kurylowicz's fourth law of analogy," discussed at Intro. §13.
§23n2. Survey in Palmer 1980.119-130; a basic work in this regard is Forssman 1966. Further discussion at Ch.14§9.
§23n3. Palmer, pp. 123-127.
§23n4. The 'Aeolic man' need not be Pindar (as claimed in the apparatus of Snell in SM, p. 130);
it could be Terpander himself, as a reputed founder of the choral lyric medium.
§23n5. The Doric affinities of the dactylo-epitrite are best illustrated by the metrical heritage of Stesichorus, as discussed at Appendix §21.
§24n1. On the evidence for Ionic in Lesbian poetic diction, see the summary in Bowie 1981.136. In the corpus of Sappho and Alcaeus there is probably more of an Ionic element than meets the eye; such an element can easily become blurred by the efforts of Alexandrian scholars in re- aeolicizing the transmitted text (on which topic see also Palmer 1980.115-116).
§25n1. Cf. Most 1985.100n26.
§25n2. The latter example is cited by Most ibid.
§26n1. Note that Sappho's own words (F 106 V) acknowledge the primacy of Terpander, the 'singer from Lesbos'.
§26n2. For a remarkable anecdote that pictures Euripides singing mixoludisti 'in the Mixolydian manner' to the members of his chorus in preparing them for performance of one of his compositions, see Plutarch On Listening to Lectures 46b. See also West 1981.125n73 on the reference by the Phrygian slave to his song as a harmateios nomos in Euripides Orestes 1384; according to Glaucus of Rhegium ("Plutarch" On Music 1133f), Stesichorus is credited with compositions in the harmateios nomos, derived from Olympus of Phrygia, and we have already seen a reference to a Phrygian tune in Stesichorus PMG 212.
§27n1. Commentary by Barker 1984.60-61.
§27n2. See especially West 1981.117-118. Cf. also Barker 1984.165-168. From the standpoint of someone like Aristides Quintilianus, the notion of scales is no longer anachronistic. The progressive systematization of relations between distinct harmoniai leads to a paradigm-shift from modes to scales.
§27n4. Cf. ibid. Cf. also West, p. 126.
§28n1. On which see Ch.3§1n1.
§28n2. For more on the Aeolian harmoniâ, see Ch.3§21 and Ch.3§27n2. Cf. Anderson 1966.48; also West 1981.128-129. Still, the nomenclature of the tonoi retains the notion of regional differentiation. Thus Aristoxenus Harmonics 46.20-47.1 compares the confusion of relationships between tonoi with the confusion of relationships between various days of the month in various regional calendars: what counts as the tenth day of the month for the Corinthians is the fifth for the Athenians and the eighth for yet others.
§28n4. For possible traces of various stages in this process of systematization, see the interesting discussion of West 1981.127.
§29n1. West, p. 126.
§29n2. The synthesis may require sub-categories: there were "more or less co-ordinated 'families' of harmoniai, grouped together under headings such as 'Lydian', etc." (Barker, p. 167).
§29n3. For more on this type of thought pattern, see Ch.10.
§30n1. West 1981.127.
§30n2. West ibid. I would have preferred the words pitch or tone over note here.
§31n1. Anderson 1966.234n65 argues that it was singing different harmoniai that was difficult, not learning to play them. On the appropriateness of the Dorian harmoniâ in teaching the young, see Aristotle Politics 1342a-b.
§31n2. The "old" paideusis 'education' (Clouds 986) is associated with the era that produced the fighters at Marathon (985-986).
§31n3. The composition to which reference is made here in Clouds 967 is apparently that of Stesichorus (see Sommerstein 1982.207).
§31n4. Each harmoniâ, as Sommerstein (p. 207) emphasizes, "required a different tuning (the literal sense of harmoniâ) of the instrument."
§32n1. Pickard-Cambridge 1962.43-44n4; on the date 446 see Davison 1968 [1958] 61-64.
§32n2. Again we may apply Kurylowicz's fourth law of analogy, as discussed at Intro. §13.
§33n1. The genres about to be named are discussed in further detail at a later point, Ch.3§51.
§33n2. Cf. also Aristoxenus F 82 Wehrli on the practice of Simonides, who reputedly used the Dorian pattern for partheneia 'maiden-songs', prosodia 'processional songs', and paiânes 'paeans'. In Etymologicum Magnum 295.53 and following, there is a report that Apollonius the so-called Eidographos classified the compositions of the lyric masters by distinguishing the following categories: Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Ionian, and so on (cf. Rossi 1971.92n63).
§33n3. The various existing patterns of inclusion led to various doctrines reducing the "original" number of harmoniai to three. According to Heraclides Ponticus (F 103 Wehrli, by way of Athenaeus 624c), the "original" three harmoniai were the Dorian, Aeolian, and Ionian; Heraclides makes the explicit equation of Aeolian with Hypodorian (F 163 Wehrli, by way of Athenaeus 624e). By contrast, according to the more prevalent doctrine, apparently espoused by Aristoxenus (cf. Athenaeus 635e, 637d), the "original" three harmoniai were rather the Dorian,
Phrygian, and Lydian. Further references and commentary in Barker, p. 213n62. According to the doctrine of Aristoxenus, I would infer, Hypodorian was treated as not only a subcategory but also a derivative of Dorian. According to the doctrine of Heraclides, on the other hand, it seems to have been derived from the Aeolian, in defiance of the nomenclature. The latter doctrine comes closer to a true diachronic scheme.
§33n4. Cf. Barker, pp. 95, 181. On the genre of dithurambos 'dithyramb', see Ch.3§9.
§34n1. Cf. Barker, p. 216n77.
§34n2. See Barker, p. 184n8, for a collection of references.
§34n3. West 1981.115-121.
§34n4. Ibid.
§34n5. West, p. 118.
§35n1. Cf. Kurylowicz's fourth law of analogy, as discussed at Intro. §13.
§35n2. See also "Aristotle" Problems 19.15, Hibeh Papyrus 13 (see Barker, p. 184), and other sources listed by West, p. 117n30. According to Plutarch (Sympotic Questions 645de) the chromatic genus was first used in tragedy by Agathon. On the interpretation of khrôma 'coloration' as a "deviation from the standard," see West, p. 117.
§35n3. Cf. Barker, p. 225n132.
§35n4. Cf. Barker, p. 183.
§36n1. Clement Stromateis 6.88 attributes to Aristoxenus the observation that the enharmonic genus suits the Dorian harmoniâ and the diatonic genus, the Phrygian (cf. West 1981.128). He then proceeds to cite a Dorian harmoniâ in a hymn to Zeus attributed to Terpander, the beginning of which he quotes (PMG 698).
§36n2. Note that the reason given by Barker, p. 165, for his choice of the enharmonic genus in his own description of harmoniai is that "the members of the 'unsystematic' group are more nearly enharmonic than they are anything else."
§37n1. Henderson and Wulstan1973.30; cf. West 1986.44.
§38n1. Cf. Henderson 1957.389.
§38n2. See Henderson, pp. 364-366.
§38n3. Cf. Ch.1§40n1; cf. also Allen 1987.123 on the speech melody of ancient Greek accentuation, "which gradually rises towards the high pitch, whether by steps or glide, and then returns to the low." If there is more than one low pitch in a Greek word, that is, in polysyllables, there will be one lowest pitch while the other lows will be intermediate (ibid.). The smaller
intervals in the enharmonic and chromatic may be a reflex of the distinction between lowest pitch and intermediate low pitch.
§38n4. Mountford and Winnington-Ingram 1970.707.
§39n1. West 1981.117.
§39n2. West ibid.
§40n1. For a reference to patterns of tuning the lyre that corresponded to tunes played on the
aulos, see Xenophon Symposium 3.1 and the commentary of Barker 1984.120n13.
§40n2. Cf. Comotti 1979.27-28 and Seaford 1984.15.
§41n1. A similar point is made, with illustrations from Arabic traditions, by Monroe 1972.40-41; cf. Zwettler 1978.212-213, 217.
§42n1. Cf., for example, IG II2 2311, an inscription concerning prizes at the Panathenaia (first half of the fourth century B.C.); also IG XII ix 189 (Eretria, ca. 340 B.C.). The most marked difference is that the kitharôidoi outrank the aulôidoi in the value of the prizes. To be compared is the hierarchy of listing in Plato Laws 658b: rhapsôidiâ kitharôidiâ tragôidiâ kômôidiâ. Note too the use here of the verb epi-deiknunai in the sense of public performance. Homer is specified as the exponent of rhapsôidiâ; exponents of the other three media are left unspecified. See also Laws 834e-835a. There is a kitharôidos featured in the representation of the Panathenaic procession on the Parthenon Frieze (Shelmerdine 1981.80).
§43n2. More on the professionalism of Pindar at Ch.12§5 and following.
§43n3. Cf. Ch.12§2 and following.
§45n1. See Kirkwood 1974.3-4.
§45n3. Kirkwood ibid. Cf. Herington 1985.228n39: "By the time that Aristotle was composing his Poetics, about 330 B.C., the dithyramb seems to have been the only kind of choral lyric that was still alive enough to deserve his notice in that work." On the performance of a citharodic nome, the Persians of Timotheus (PMG 788-791), at Athens around 408 B.C., see the informative discussion of Herington, pp. 151-160.
§45n4. I take note of the explicit contrast in "Plutarch" On Music 1142bc between the dithyrambs
of Philoxenus and those of Pindar as representatives of the new and old styles, respectively. Kirkwood 1974.4 argues that the dithyrambs of Bacchylides represent a transitional phase, being more innovative than his victory odes in revealing a greater proximity to the new styles associated with drama. On the appropriateness of dithyramb for expressing the author as speaking in his own person, cf. Plato Republic 394c. On evidence for Pindar's entry in the dithyrambic competitions at the City Dionysia in Athens at the beginning of the fifth century B.C., see Oxyrhynchus Papyri xxvi no. 2438, column ii, lines 9-10. On the total of fifty-six victories claimed for Simonides in various dithyrambic contests presumably held at various places, see Palatine Anthology 6.213 = EG 27.
§45n5. This is not to say that there are no existing nonstanzaic types of Archaic lyric: see the general discussion at Ch.1§58 and following. The application of the word "genre" here seems to me too wide-ranging to be useful.
§46n1. From here on, I use the expression liberal education in the sense expressed here. For more on Athenian paideiâ 'education', see in general Ch.3§31. Any eventual patterns of exclusion in fifth-century Athens, however, need not have affected the adoption of these "new poets" as "Classics" at a later time, in the context of revivals of "old masters." For example, there is the report of Polybius 4.20.8 (quoted by Athenaeus 626b) concerning the choral education, in his own time, of Arcadian youths who were being brought up on the compositions of Timotheus and Philoxenus: for these Arcadians, at least, these poets represent the "Classics." The phenomenon of shifting perceptions, where a given style is perceived as "modernistic" by one generation and "Classical" by another, is illustrated by the attitudes dramatized in Plato Laws 802cd. As for Plato, when he rejects the modernisms of Timotheus and the like, he is rejecting trends that were by then some eighty or more years old (as Barker 1984.128n13 points out). Plato's tastes are a matter of nostalgic retrojection into the Classical period. Such prescriptions as three years of liberal education, starting with the age of thirteen, in the art of the lyre (Laws 810a) are surely a mere exercise in idealization from the standpoint of Plato's own era. In the fourth century, even in Athens, the rapidly increasing specialization of "music" had increasingly restricted it to the professionals: I cite the revealing discussion in Aristotle Politics 1341a9-36, 1341b8- 18. The specialization is more pronounced in a place like Sparta: Politics 1339b1-4.
§47n1. . The new-style nomos and dithurambos are to be contrasted with earlier old-style attestations of these genres.
§48n1. For more on Athenian paideiâ 'education', see also Ch.3§31.
§48n2. Harvey 1955.162-163. That the skolion is not intrinsically monodic is made explicit in Athenaeus 694b, where we hear that older types of skolia could be choral. In this connection, we may note a report that Sophocles in his youth performed a dance, naked and anointed with oil, to the accompaniment of his lyre, around the trophy erected after the battle of Salamis (Athenaeus 20e-f); whatever we may think about the historicity of this account, its details point to a public choral setting. The "crookedness" implied by the word skolion is explained by Athenaeus (again 694b) as a metaphorical veering, by way of an individual's performance, from the "correctness" or "straightness" of collective performance in the singing and dancing of the chorus.
§48n3. For the attestation of an actual skolion (PMG 891), composed in the Attic dialect, that
closely corresponds in phraseology to a stanza in a larger poem composed in the Aeolic dialect and attributed to Alcaeus (F 249.6-9 V), see Nicosia 1976.73-74.
§48n4. Harvey ibid.
§48n6. Ibid.
§49n1. On old-fashioned paideiâ 'education' in lyric, see also Ch.13§52 and following.
§50n1. Irigoin takes note of this fact and adds (1952.15n3): "La lyrique chorale, qui passait déjà pour surannée, est désormais laissée de côté; c'est un genre littéraire dont la vogue est terminée, à Athènes tout au moins. Rares sont ceux qui en garderont le souvenir."
§50n2. On the form of the huporkhêma, see Ch.12§30.
§50n3. Irigoin 1954.14.
§50n4. Irigoin, p. 16.
§51n1. Cf. Plato Laws 658a-659c, 669b-670b and the comments of Svenbro 1984.231n133.
§51n2. Cf. Svenbro, p. 232n136.
§51n3. Cf. Svenbro, p. 231n131. See at Ch.3§31 and following for a parallel theme in Aristophanes, where the nostalgia for old-fashioned traditions in song making is linked with the good old days of Athenian paideiâ 'education', the kind that purportedly produced the men who not only knew how to perform the traditional songs but also fought at the Battle of Marathon (Clouds 961).
§51n4. For the notion of skhêmata as 'dance figures', postures and gestures that represent, see Barker 1984.119n10 on Xenophon Symposium 2.15. Cf. Ch.1§39n3.
§51n5. On the appropriateness of the term genre here, see again Svenbro 1984.225 and n135.
§51n6. Cf. Plato Ion 534c, as discussed at Ch.12§30, where the dithurambos 'dithyramb' is treated as parallel to the huporkhêma (for the meaning, see Ch.12§30), the enkômion 'encomium', the epos, and the iambos (all in the plural).
§51n7. Cf. Svenbro 1984.225.
§51n8. Ibid.
§51n9. Svenbro, pp. 225-226.
§51n10. Cf. Svenbro, p. 226 and n140 (where 1449b should be corrected to 1449a). As Lucas
1968.82 points out, this would imply "that there was no important change later than the early plays of Sophocles, and that no further development is to be looked for." This same attitude is already alive and well in Aristophanes, for whom anything after Sophocles is decadent (cf. Frogs 76-82, 787-794, 1515-1519).
§52n1. See Ch.3§48. See further Reitzenstein 1893.34 for a survey of illustrative passages.
§52n2. Perhaps the most celebrated example of this theme is in Cicero Tusculan Disputations 1.4 on the embarrassment of Themistokles in being unable, at a symposium, to sing and accompany himself on the lyre; the traditions underlying this theme are examined by Reitzenstein 1893.33-34.
§52n3. On the custom of substituting a myrtle branch for a lyre in performances at symposia: Dicaearchus F 89 Wehrli. Cf. the useful discussion of Barker 1984.103n16. On the earlier applications of skolion in a broader sense of a lyric song sung at a symposium (cf. Aristophanes F 223 Kock) and on the eventual semantic narrowing of this word to designate only such special Attic forms as the Harmodios-song, see Harvey 1955.162-163.
§52n4. As Henderson 1957.339 puts it, a single aulos supports the tragic chorus.
§52n5. Cf. the scholia to Aristophanes Wasps1239. Cf. also Reitzenstein 1893.34. For further observations on Athenian paideiâ 'education', see Ch.13§52 and following.
§52n6. The supporting evidence is conscientiously surveyed and clearly discussed by Reitzensten 1893.32-39; cf. Harvey 1955.162. On the interchangeability of aeidô/âidô 'sing' (as in Clouds 1371) and legô 'say' in referring to nonlyric as well as lyric delivery, see the discussion of Herington 1985.13 and 224- 225n15; my interpretation of this interchangeability, however, differs from his.
§53n1. Pindar scholia I, p. 3 Drachmann. I say an Alexandrian edition rather than the Alexandrian edition in light of observations made by Race 1987 concerning Oxyrhynchus Papyri xxvi 2438, c. 200 A.D., a papyrus life of Pindar: this document shows that the sequence of categories in the Vita Ambrosiana was hardly the only one.
§53n2. Mentioned by Plato in Ion 534c; see Ch.3§51n6.
§53n3. Mentioned by Plato in Ion 534c; see Ch.3§51n6 above.
§53n4. The notion of epinicianf will be discussed in detail at Ch.4.
§53n5. This order of the epinician or victory odes seems to have been standard until the period when the text was transferred from papyrus roll to codex. When this transfer happened, the old sequence of Isthmians-Nemeans was reversed, perhaps accidentally, to become Nemeans- Isthmians: see Irigoin 1952.100. The fact that some of the genre categories of the Pindaric corpus take up more than one book has to do, of course, with the conventional space capacity of papyrus rolls. The expected maximum was roughly 2,400 lines, in that 2,400 is denoted by the terminal letter omega in the numbering system used by Alexandrian editors in counting the lines contained in a given roll (where each successive letter of the Ionic alphabet is 100 more than the previous one): see Irigoin 1952.40. The typical length of an Alexandrian roll is represented by the number
of lines specified for Book 1 of Sappho in Oxyrhynchus Papyri x 1231, which is 1,320 lines. Irigoin, p. 41, compares the length of the Alexandra of Lycophron (1,474 lines), the Phaenomena and Prognostica of Aratus (1,154 lines in all), the Hymns of Callimachus (1,083 lines), and the four books of the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes (ranging from 1,288 lines for Book 2 to 1,779 lines for Book 4). Such a length for a roll would be just right for an Athenian tragedy or comedy (see Irigoin, p. 41n3). On the editorial arrangement of the epinicians of Simonides, with different rolls assigned to different athletic events, see Irigoin, p. 38; as for the epinicians of Bacchylides, they all could fit within one roll (ibid.).
§53n6. For bits of evidence that may suggest Athenian editorial conventions predating the Alexandrian ones, see Irigoin 1952.39-40. Cf. also Young 1983.47-48.
§53n7. See Irigoin 1952.16-18. No. 1: F 105a.1 SM, a passage from a huporkhêma (composed for Hieron of Syracuse), in Meno 76d. We have already noted ( Ch.3§50) that this passage was parodied in the Birds of Aristophanes. No. 2: same passage, in Phaedrus 236d. No. 3: F 169a.
SM, a passage also cited in Herodotus 3.38.4, from a poem of undetermined genre, in Gorgias 484b. Nos. 4-6: same passage, in Laws 714e-715a as also in 690bc and 10.890a. No. 7: same passage, in Protagoras 337d. No. 8: F 133 SM, a passage apparently (but not necessarily) from a thrênos, in Meno 81abc. Nos. 9-11: F 214, 213.1-2, 209 SM, passages from poems of undetermined genre, in Republic 331a, 365b, 457b. No. 12: F 292 SM, a passage from a poem of undetermined genre, in Theaetetus 173e. The rest are passages from the victory odes. No. 13: from Olympian2.16 (composed for Theron of Akragas), in Protagoras 324b. No. 14: from Isthmian1.2 (composed for Herodotus of Thebes), in Phaedrus 227b. No. 15: from Olympian1.1 (composed for Hieron), in Euthydemus 304bc. No. 16: from Pythian 3.54-57 (composed for Hieron), in Republic 408b.
§54n1. So Irigoin, pp. 19-20. Here is his summary of the major references: F 76 SM, a dithurambos for the Athenians, referred to by Aristophanes (Knights 1329 / 1323) and by Isocrates (Antidosis 15.166); F 89a SM, a prosodion 'processional song', apparently imitated by Aristophanes (Knights 1264-1266); F 105 SM, the huporkhêma for Hieron, mentioned in Aristophanes (Birds 926-930, 941- 945) and two times in Plato (Ch.3§53n4); F 169a.1-5 SM, cited in Herodotus 3.38.4, in Plato (five times, see Ch.3§53n4), and apparently in Aristotle (Rhetoric 1406a). Aristotle also refers to Pindar F 96 SM (Rhetoric 1401a) and to Olympian1.1 (Rhetoric 1364a).
§54n2. Cf. Ch.3§48, Ch.3§52. Cf. Ch.13§54n2.
§54n3. Henderson 1957.340.
§55n1. See Ch.3§48, Ch.3§52, Ch.3§54.
§55n2. Cf. also the discussion of Reitzenstein 1893.39n1. On the obsolescence of actual performance in song, see Reitzenstein, p. 42n1.
§55n3. See again Henderson 1957.343
§56n1. There are exceptional cases where the Pindaric composition was apparently meant to be
performed on more than one occasion. In Pindar Olympian6.98-102, for example, the composition calls for its performance at two related but distinct occasions: both at Stymphalos in Arcadia, the native place of Hagesias, the immediate subject of praise, and at the court of the tyrant Hieron of Syracuse in Sicily. Cf. Mullen 1982.26.
§56n2. The nature of choral lyric will be examined in detail at Ch.12§2 and following.
§59n2. The status of the Nemeans as originally the last book of epinician odes (see Ch.3§53n2) helps explain why the last three of the odes in that book, Nemean9, 10, and 11, celebrate victories won not at the Nemean Games. One of these, Nemean10, celebrates a victory at the Heraia of Argos. Nemean9 celebrates a victory in chariot-racing at Sikyon. Cf. Irigoin 1952.42.
§60n1. On the reperformance at symposia of choral passages from Old Comedy itself, see
Aristophanes Knights529-530, with references to the songs of Cratinus (F 69, 70 Kock).
§60n2. Reitzenstein, p. 42n1, observes that by the time of New Comedy even the convention of referring to the performance of skolion, not just in the broader sense of lyric types associated with the likes of Pindar but also in the narrower sense of the lyric type known as the Harmodios- song (e.g., PMG 894), had become obsolete.
§1. Let us begin a closer scrutiny of Pindar's traditions by examining an occasion that typifies the social context of his authorship. This occasion is memorialized in Pindar's Olympian1, a composition commissioned by the tyrant Hieron of Syracuse to celebrate a Panhellenic victory in a horse race event of the Olympics of 476 B.C. 1 To begin, let us review the major themes of Olympian1. In this composition the voice of the poet explicitly rejects the myth that told of the dismemberment of Pelops and his cannibalization at a feast of the gods. In its place is an explicit substitution of a myth that told of the young hero's abduction by the god Poseidon, who eventually repaid Pelops by helping him win a chariot race with Oinomaos. The telling of the second myth, however, is launched in Olympian1 with a partial retelling of the first; the resulting juxtaposition of the two myths has led to major problems of interpretation. The focal point of these problems is the ongoing dispute over the meaning of epei at Olympian1.26: was Pelops abducted 'after' or 'since' (in the causal sense) Klotho the Moira 'Fate' took him out of the 'purifying cauldron' (katharou lebêtos, 26), resplendent as he was with his shoulder of ivory (elephanti phaidimon ômon kekadmenon, 27)? The bibliography for both alternatives, 'after' or 'since' (causal), is massive, and consensus is lacking. 2 In the course of my own investigation, I
adopt the interpretation after.
§2. In reaching this conclusion, however, I take an approach that differs from earlier attempts: instead of assuming that Pindar is literally substituting one myth for another, I argue that the substitution as represented in Olympian1 is in fact a poetic expression of a preexisting fusion of two myths, where the earlier myth is officially subordinated to but acknowledged by the later myth. Furthermore I argue that the relative earliness and lateness of these two myths has to do not with any innovation by Pindar himself but rather with the historical sequence of the accretion of traditional myths officially associated with the complex institution of the Olympics. In other words both myths are traditional and in fact signal that they are traditional. As for the subordination of the myth that told of the dismemberment of Pelops to the myth that told of the abduction of Pelops by Poseidon and the hero's victory in the chariot race, I propose that this pattern corresponds to the subordination of the oldest athletic event of the Olympics, the single- course foot race, to the most prestigious athletic event of the Olympics in Pindar's time, the four- horse chariot race. In this sense Pindar's Olympian1 may be said to reflect the evolving aetiology of the Olympics in the early fifth century.
§3. Before we proceed, some definitions of terms are in order. By using the word aetiology here, I am implying that the relationship of given myths to given athletic events corresponds to the general relationship of myth to ritual. 1 Having noted in the previous discussion that the occasional nature of Pindar's songs or lyric poetry, especially as attested in his victory odes, seems at first a potential obstacle to Panellenization, we have begun to explore, and later explore further, the transcendence of occasionality in this poetry. For now, however, we must concentrate on defining with greater precision the nature of the occasions for Pindar's victory odes, which will have a direct bearing on the nature of his poetry. The victory ode cannot be understood without coming to terms with the notion of victory from the standpoint of ancient Greek athletics. The most distinctive feature of this standpoint is that the essence of the ancient Greek athletic games, including the four great Panhellenic festivals known as the Olympian, Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian Games, is fundamentally a matter of ritual. By ritual I mean a given set of formal actions that correspond to a given set of thought patterns that can take shape as a given myth. 2 The myth may refer to itself as the motivation, in Greek, the aition 'cause', of the ritual. Such self-reference, commonly known as aetiology, should not be taken as evidence for the notion that myth exists in order to explain ritual. It would be more accurate to say that ritual motivates myth as much as myth motivates ritual. In another context I have offered the following additional observations on Greek aition 'cause' in the sense of "a myth that traditionally motivates an institution, such as a ritual": "I stress 'traditionally' because the myth may be a tradition parallel to the ritual, not derivative from it. Unless we have evidence otherwise, we cannot assume in any particular instance that an aetiological myth was an untraditional fabrication intended simply to explain a given ritual. The factor of motivating--as distinct from explaining--is itself a traditional function in religion, parallel to the traditional function of ritual. It is only when the traditions of religion become obsolescent that rituals may become so obscure as to invite explanations of a purely literary nature." 3
§4. For a most convenient introduction to the subject of the ritual essence of ancient Greek athletics, on which there is a considerable bibliography, I refer to the compressed summary in Walter Burkert's handbook on Greek religion, who concludes that the Archaic institutions of
athletic activity evolved out of practices that could be described as (1) rituals of initiation into adulthood and (2) rituals of compensation for the catastrophe of death. 1 This is not to say that Greek athletics could be described synchronically as such rituals. Burkert says explicitly: "Of course, age groups and initiation were no longer part of the Panhellenic festival." 2 Still, a synchronic description reveals diachronic features of the two kinds of ritual just noted. 3 In fact such diachronic features can help us find a connection between these two kinds of ritual in the specific instance of Greek athletics.
§5. A common characteristic of initiation is that it ritualizes or symbolizes death and rebirth from one given status to another: one must "die" to one's old self in order to be "reborn" to one's new self. 1 In this light we may note the following themes of symbolized death in the institutions of the Panhellenic Games:
at the Olympics the athletes' 30-day period of separation, sexual abstinence, and fasting on a vegetarian diet 2
the wearing of black garb by the judges at athletic events 3
the crowning of the victor with garlands that bear funerary connotations 4
§6. Such themes of symbolized death for the athlete on the level of ritual correspond to the themes of primordial death for a hero on the level of myth. Each founding of each Greek athletic festival was apparently motivated by at least one myth that told of a hero's death. 1 In the case of the four great Panhellenic Games, the main foundation myths are as follows: 2
Olympian Games (Olympics), founded by the hero Pelops in compensation for the death of Oinomaos; 3 alternatively founded by the hero Herakles in compensation for the death of his great-grandfather, Pelops; 4 this foundation by Herakles can be treated as an act of refoundation 5 or more simply as the most definitive foundation (cf. Pindar
Pythian Games, founded by the god Apollo in compensation for having killed the Python
Isthmian Games, founded by the hero Sisyphus in compensation for the death of the child-hero Melikertes = Palaimon 8
Nemean Games, founded by the heroes known as the Seven against Thebes in
compensation for the death, by snakebite, of the child- hero Opheltes=Arkhemoros. 9
§7. Besides seasonally-recurring festivals of athletic events officially motivated by the death of heroes, there are early and rare traces in Archaic Greece of occasional or once-only festivals of athletic events motivated by the death of immediate ancestors or relatives. This evidence comes from dedicatory inscriptions that memorialize various prizes won at such events. 1 Just as the heroes of epic narrative can respond to the death of a fellow hero by instituting a once-only festival of athletic events 'for' this hero, a concept that is regularly conveyed by the idiom of epi + dative of the hero's name, 2 so also the bereaved in real life could institute what appear to be once-
only festivals 'for' the deceased, a concept again conveyed by the idiom of epi + dative of the name of the deceased. 3 This rarely attested custom of instituting once-only athletic events in honor of immediate ancestors was clearly obsolescent even by the time of the Archaic period, 4 and the custom that replaced it is clearly represented by the countless attestations of seasonally- recurring athletic events 'for' heroes, a concept yet again conveyed by the idiom of epi + dative of the given hero's name. 5 After the obsolescence of once-only athletic events instituted in honor of immediate ancestors, the way to institute funeral games for a person who had just died was for that person to be made a cult hero under the authority of the polis, so that seasonally-recurring athletic festivals could be held in his honor. 6
§8. The thought patterns that underlie both the once-only and the seasonally-recurring Greek athletic festivals are analogous to what Karl Meuli has found in various rituals of combat or mock combat in a wide range of societies throughout the world. 1 From Meuli's far-reaching survey, we find that in some specific instances of ritual combat a fundamental motive is to compensate for feelings of guilt--defined or undefined--about someone's death. 2 The dead person's anger can be assuaged--and the guilt or pollution canceled--by a death or a mock death that serves as compensation for the original death. 3 More fundamentally, the combat in such instances is a special kind of ordeal--where you fight for your "life" or run for your "life" or struggle in whatever other form of competition for your "life." Thus a word more appropriate than combat might be contest. 4 Who is to "live" and who is to "die" is determined not by chance but by the given society's sense of cosmic order. In some societies, the real death of one person is compensated proportionately: one other person "dies" in a ritual contest, while the one or ones who competed with this other person "live." In other societies, however, including the Greek, the proportion is inverted: one person "lives" by winning in a ritual contest, while the one or ones who competed with this person "die" by losing. In this way the compensation for the pollution of a death takes the form of winning one other life rather than losing one.
§9. From this point of view we can see how the diachronic features of initiation in the preliminary rituals of Greek athletic festivals are connected to the diachronic features of ritual contest in the actual athletic events: the athlete, like an initiate, undergoes a ritualized death in preparation for the new "life" that will be his if he wins in his contest. And as he engages in the contest, he is struggling for this "life" in order to compensate for the death that called for his own "death."
§10. Such a pattern of thought can be elicited from a rereading of Burkert's analysis of the chronologically oldest athletic event in the Olympics, the stadion, a single-course foot race in the stadium (the recording of victors in this race starts with 776 B.C.). 1 This event was as a rule inaugurated with the sacrifice of a black ram at the Pelopion 'precinct of Pelops', 2 to be followed by the corresponding sacrifice of a bull 3 at a heap of ash known as "the altar of Zeus," which was to serve as the finishing-point of the single-course foot race that came after these sacrifices (in fact the early stadium at Olympia ended at the altar of Zeus). 4 As Pausanias observes (5.13.1), the preeminence of Pelops among all the heroes involved in the sacrifices at Olympia corresponded to the preeminence of Zeus among all the gods. Thus the inaugural set of sacrifices
to Pelops and to Zeus, before the foot race, unites the hero and god in a "polar tension," 5 while the foot race itself "presupposes the bloody act of killing." 6 Moreover, from an aetiological point of view the foot race was actually part of the overall sacrifice, as we learn from the observation, made by Philostratus, that the sacrifice to Zeus was not complete until the foot race was won:
stadion de hôde heurêtai: thusantôn Êleiôn hoposa nomizousi, diekeinto men epi tou bômou ta hiera, pur de autois oupô enekeito. stadion de hoi dromeis apeichon tou bômou kai heistêkei pro autou hiereus lampadiôi brabeuôn: kai ho nikôn empurisas ta hiera olumpionikês apêiei.
Philostratus On Gymnastics 5
And the single-course foot race [stadion] was instituted in the following way. 7 After the Eleans had completed all their customary sacrifices [to Zeus], the consecrated parts would lie on the altar, though not as yet set on fire. The runners would stand at a distance of one stadium [stadion] from the altar, in front of which there was a priest signalling the start with a torch. And the winner would set fire to the consecrated parts and then depart as an Olympic victor. 8
§11. Another athletic event that counted as part of the overall scenario of sacrifice was the diaulos, a double-course foot race that followed the foot race of the stadion and was twice the stadion in length (this athletic event of the diaulos was apparently introduced in the Olympics at 724 B.C.). 1 Again, we turn to the description by Philostratus:
epei de Êleioi thuseian, edei men kai tous apantôntas Hellênôn thuein theôrous. hôs de mê argôs hê prosodos autôn gignoito, etrechon hoi dromeis apo tou bômou stadion hoion kalountes to Hellênikon kai palin eis tauton hupestrephon hoion angellontes, hoti dê aphixoito hê Hellas chairousa. tauta men oun peri diaulou aitias.
Philostratus On Gymnastics 6
When the Eleans made their sacrifice [i.e., the sacrifice to Zeus, where the winner of the stadion set fire to the consecrated parts], all the Greek envoys present had to sacrifice. But in order that their procession not be delayed, 2 the runners ran one stadium-length away from the altar [of Zeus], as if calling on the Greeks [= the envoys] to come, then turned and ran back as if to announce that all Greece was arriving to share in the joy. So much for the aetiology [aitiâ] of the double course [diaulos]. 3
Burkert concludes about the foot race of the stadion: 4
The end of the race, its goal, is the top of the ancient heap of ash [= the altar of Zeus], the place
where fire must blaze and burn up the [thigh-portions]. 5 The race marks the transition from blood to purifying fire, 6 from encountering death to the joyful satisfaction of surviving as manifested in the strength of the victor. 7 Thus, the most important [athletic event] at Olympia is part of a sacrificial act moving between the Pelopion and the altar of Zeus.
In other words the transition from the pollution of bloodshed to the purification of fire is a transition from participating in death to experiencing a life after death as manifested in the victory of the athlete and as symbolized by the sacrificial fire that he lights at the altar of Zeus. 8
§12. This foot race, then, framed by the set of sacrifices at the precinct of Pelops and at the altar of
Zeus, is the ritual core of the Olympics. We can see the deeper significance of this ritual core as a diachronic feature of initiation by following through on Burkert's argument 1 that the very festival of the Olympics was from the earliest times onward correlated with a myth that told how the hero Pelops was killed, dismembered, and served up by his father Tantalos as sacrificial meat boiled inside a tripod cauldron, to be eaten by the gods--only to be reassembled and brought back to life inside the same sacrificial cauldron by the agency of these same gods. 2 Burkert adduces a crucial parallel: 3 the athletic festival of the Lykaia in Arcadia was aetiologically correlated with a myth that told how Arkas, the eponymous ancestor of all the Arcadians, was killed and served up by his grandfather Lykaon as sacrificial meat to be eaten by the gods--only to be brought back to life by Zeus. 4 It so happens that the pan-Arcadian athletic festival of the Lykaia, as Burkert has demonstrated, is a network of rituals and myths that are overtly characteristic of initiation into adulthood, 5 so that the very parallelism of the aetiological myth of Arkas with the myth of Pelops can be taken as a particularly telling point in support of Burkert's arguments concerning reflexes of initiation practices in the Olympics.
§13. Specifically, as Burkert shows, the myth of the slaughter of Pelops must have been an aition correlated with the ritual of the slaughter of the black ram at the precinct of Pelops. In the myth the only part of the dismembered Pelops that was actually eaten by the gods was the hero's shoulder, consumed by Demeter, which was later replaced with an ivory piece in his reintegrated body. 1 Here we see a specific aition for the ritual reverence of the ivory shoulder blade of Pelops, a larger-than-life cult object on display at Olympia (Pausanias 5.13.4-6), 2 in that the shoulder blade of the slaughtered hero is analogous to the shoulder blade of slaughtered rams: in ancient Greece, as Burkert points out, "a ram's shoulder blade played a special part in the sacrifice of a ram." 3 Burkert notes that Demeter, who had eaten the hero's shoulder in the myth, also figures in the rituals of the Olympics: the priestess of Demeter occupied a special place at the Games (Pausanias 6.20.9). 4 Burkert concludes: "Thus, the Olympic ritual combines the very [figures] that went together in the myth--Pelops, Zeus, and Demeter. The cannibalistic myth of Pelops that so shocked Pindar clearly refers to the Olympic festival." 5
§14. I propose two qualifications. First, Pindar's "shock" is a poetic convention that allows the subordination of one myth, the dismemberment and reintegration of Pelops, to another myth. Second, the myth of Pelops' dismemberment and reintegration need not be viewed as an aition for the Olympic festival as a whole. True, it suits admirably the oldest aspect of the festival, the foot
race of the stadion as framed by the sacrifices at the precinct of Pelops and at the altar of Zeus. But we must keep in mind that the Olympics kept evolving with later accretions of further and further athletic events, and that the ritual features of these events would have required a corresponding evolution in aetiology, with later accretions of myths.
§15. For example, let us take the athletic event of the chariot race at the Olympics, supposedly introduced there in the year 680; 1 whether or not this date is exact, 2 until the introduction of the chariot race only the victors of the foot race had been consecutively recorded since the year 776. 3 Corresponding to the athletic event of the chariot race is an aition, the myth of the life-and-death chariot race of Pelops with Oinomaos. The death of Oinomaos, resulting from the race, led to the foundation of the Olympics by Pelops, according to one version of this myth. 4 As an aition for the foundation of the Olympics with special reference to the chariot race, the myth of the death of Oinomaos would at first seem to be at odds with the myth of the death of Pelops, an aition with special reference to the foot race. But in fact the two layers of myths are integrated into a sequence, just like the two layers of athletic events. Pelops had his chariot race with Oinomaos after he had been restored to life, as I argue on the basis of the narrative sequence in Pindar's Olympian1.
§16. The very activity of a chariot race, as an athletic event--which one would expect to be conceived in myth as a custom resulting from a hero's death-- 1 is instead treated in the myth of Pelops as a preexisting institution. Oinomaos is represented as customarily challenging each of the suitors of his daughter, Hippodameia, to a chariot race to the death, where the loser had to forfeit his life; in a fragment from Hesiod (F 259a MW) we witness a reverse victory list of successive suitors who had in this way lost their lives to Oinomaos. The race between Pelops and Oinomaos, however, transforms the preexisting institution from the standpoint of the myth: with the death of Oinomaos the "old institution" with its consecutive series of losers before Pelops becomes a "new institution" with its consecutive series of winners after Pelops. The "new institution" clearly is based on the death of Oinomaos; but what about the "old institution"? We must keep in mind that the "new institution" of the chariot race, from an aetiological standpoint, is also "new" by opposition to the genuinely older institution of the foot race, which is based on the death of Pelops. What is more, the chariot race of Pelops happens after this same death in the narrative. Thus the "old" institution of the life-and-death chariot race could be considered equivalent, in terms of the myth, to the genuinely older institution of the foot race on the level of ritual: in the chicken-and-egg pattern of myth making, 2 the death of Pelops could motivate the competition in which Pelops competes. 3 The death of Oinomaos in this competition could then motivate the successive competitions of the athletic event of the Olympic chariot race founded by Pelops.
§17. Even in the later aition about the chariot race of Pelops and Oinomaos, however, there is a narrative connection with the earlier aition about the death of Pelops. The story has it that Oinomaos would sacrifice a ram before his chariot race with each suitor and let the suitor have a head start until the consecrated parts of the meat were consumed by fire; then he would chase after the suitor, catch up with him, and kill him. 1 This theme, by being parallel to the Olympic ritual of the ram's slaughter at the precinct of Pelops, is thereby also parallel to the Olympic myth about the
slaughter of Pelops. In this way the older aition about the slaughter of Pelops leaves its signature on the newer aition about the chariot race of Pelops. 2
§18. The integration of an older aition that motivates the foot race with an expanded newer aition that motivates both the foot race and the chariot race leads to modifications or reshapings of the older aition. Thus, for example, the setting of the cannibalistic feast of the gods is shifted from Olympia in the Peloponnesus to Sipylos in Asia Minor; 1 this shift, as attested in Pindar's Olympian1, 2 makes room for the chariot race of Pelops as the central aition, at Olympia, of the Olympics proper. 3 I see no reason to ascribe this shift to Pindar's invention 4 since it is in keeping with the Panhellenic prestige of the chariot race as the central event of the Olympics in Pindar's time: I cite the testimonia of the Kypselos chest of about 570 B.C. 5 and the pedimental sculptures on the East side of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia. 6 In fact I prefer to think that the mythological rearrangements in Olympian1 reflect the evolving aetiology of the Olympics. 7
§19. The most remarkable of these rearrangments in Olympian1 is a narrative reordering, whereby the story about the dismemberment of Pelops is ostentatiously subordinated to a story that starts with his abduction by Poseidon, which leads into the story about the chariot race of Pelops. The key to this rearrangement is the detail about the ivory shoulder of Pelops in Olympian1.27, which can be correlated with the cult object of the larger-than-life ivory shoulder blade of Pelops as described by Pausanias 5.13.4-6.
§20. The story of the dismemberment of Pelops by Tantalos and the eating of his flesh by the gods is being ostentatiously rejected as a "false" substitute for the "true" story of the abduction and rape of Pelops by Poseidon (Pindar Olympian1.28-29, 1.30-42 , ). 1 And yet, the "true" story turns out to be aetiologically equivalent to the rejected "false" story. In the "true" story as well, Pelops undergoes a process of symbolized "death" and "rebirth," since his being abducted and sexually forced by Poseidon is a scenario of initiation into adulthood. 2 As Jean-Pierre Vernant has observed, 3 there is a striking analogue attested in some legally sanctioned customs of Crete (Ephorus FGH 70 F 149 by way of Strabo 10.4.21 C483-484), 4 where a boy can be abducted, sexually forced, and thereafter reintegrated with his society by an older citizen, who is then obliged to present the boy with various legally specified gifts (Ephorus ibid.). A final sacrifice, also legally specified (ibid.), underscores the institutional and even ritual nature of the proceedings. The diachronic features of initiation are perhaps most overt in the period of segregation, legally limited to two months in duration: after the boy is abducted, sexually forced, and taken away to the abductor's andrôn 'men's house', he is taken by his abductor into the wilderness, where men and boys spend their time hunting (ibid.). After this period of marginal activity, the boy is returned to his society as a man: one of the legally prescribed gifts that he then gets from his abductor is military equipment, as befits an adult warrior (ibid.). 5 Similarly with Pelops: after the boy is abducted, sexually forced, and taken to his divine abductor's home on Olympus, 6 the young hero receives from Poseidon the gift of a magnificent chariot team (Pindar Olympian1.86-87). It is with this chariot team that Pelops wins his race against Oinomaos, 7 and the hand of Hippodameia, and thereby inaugurates a kingship that serves as a model of political
power and sovereignty by virtue of being the ideological foundation for the royal Peloponnesian dynasties of Argos, Sparta, and Messene. 8 There is even an analogy with the Cretan boy's period of segregation: before Pelops gets his chariot team, he is expelled from his abductor's home on Olympus and banished to a place that is as yet foreign to him, the Peloponnesus. 9
§21. Pelops is expelled from Olympus because of a crime committed by his father Tantalos against the gods: according to Pindar's Olympian1, Tantalos had stolen nectar and ambrosia from the gods and given some to his human drinking companions (60-64). 1 Here we see the potential for a narrative substitution: the story about Tantalos' stealing of nectar and ambrosia serves as a functional equivalent of the story about his crime of creating a scene of cannibalism. In both cases Tantalos perverts the reciprocity of the feast by serving up inappropriate categories of food. In Pindar's retelling, however, the wording conveys a sense of both stories. 2 Having access to the ultimate food of nectar and ambrosia, the insatiable Tantalos is described as not being able literally to 'digest' his happiness:
alla gar katapepsai | megan olbon ouk edunasthê, korôi d' helen | atan huperoplon
He [Tantalos] could not digest his great bliss [olbos], 3 and, with his insatiability [koros], 4 he brought upon himself an overwhelming disaster [atê].
We are reminded of the witch who lived in the candy house in the story of Hänsel and Gretel: having access to the ultimate food, she lusts to eat the flesh of plump children. 5
§22. Thus the Pindaric retelling of the Tantalos story, though it steers away from the theme of cannibalism, still bears the signature of this theme. Besides the image of "digesting" just noted, there is also that of 'boiling' one's youthful vitality for an excessively long time, presumably just as fresh meat loses its vitality from overboiling. Pelops is pictured as using this image in the context of asking Poseidon for the gift of a chariot team and declaring to the god his desire to risk death in his quest for the hand of Hippodameia:
ho megas de kindunos analkin ou phôta lambanei. | thanein d' hoisin ananka, ta ke tis anônumon | gêras en skotôi kathêmenos hepsoi matan, | hapantôn kalôn ammoros; all' emoi men houtos aethlos hupokeisetai.
Great risk does not take hold of any cowardly mortal. But if it is destined for humans to die, why should anyone sit around in the darkness and boil away his life to a futile old age without a name, having no share [ammoros] in all the beautiful things of the world? 1 I will undertake this ordeal [aethlos] at hand.
§23. Clearly the crucial theme of death as an aetiological analogue of initiation into adulthood has been transferred from the story of Pelops in the cauldron to the story of Pelops in the chariot race, but the imagery of the cauldron has been ostentatiously retained. Even more remarkable is the incomplete replacement of the story of Pelops in the cauldron by the story of Pelops in the chariot race. Although the voice of Pindar rejects the first story as "false," the second and "true" story is begun with a detail from the first: Poseidon fell in love with Pelops as the young hero was taken 'out of a purifying cauldron' by the goddess of fate, the Moira called Klotho (katharou lebêtos Olympian1.26). 1 Even more, Pelops is described in this same context as having a shoulder of ivory (Olympian1.27: elephanti phaidimon ômon kekadmenon). This detail presupposes the myth that tells how Demeter mistakenly ate the shoulder of the dismembered Pelops, which then had to be replaced with the artifact made of ivory. 2 Thus the aetiological sequence of the composite myth that motivates the Olympics is maintained, even though the aetiological emphasis is shifted.
§24. The maintenance of the aetiological sequence of the Olympics in Pindar's Olympian1 is at the cost of a narrative inconsistency in terms of the professed "true" story: the emergence of Pelops from the cauldron, ivory shoulder and all, just before his abduction by Poseidon
(Olympian1.25-27), gives the impression that, even from the standpoint of Olympian1, there were two perverted feasts of Tantalos. It is as if Tantalos first fed human flesh to the immortals before the abduction of Pelops and then fed nectar and ambrosia to mortals after the abduction. This impression is "false" in terms of the professed "true" story of Olympian1, but the sequence of two perverted feasts, one before and one after the abduction, may be valid in terms of the accretive aetiological program of the Olympics. 1 The full aetiological sequence is reinforced by the description of the feast at which Poseidon fell in love with Pelops as the youth emerged from the cauldron with his ivory shoulder, where the wording fits the context of the "first" feast (Olympian1.37-40). In terms of the "true" story of Olympian 1, however, the two stories of the two perverted feasts must be alternatives, and Pindar's composition in fact treats them that way, explicitly rejecting one of the stories as "false" (= ABC) in favor of the other, which is "true" (= A'B'C'):
Tantalos perverts feast by serving up inappropriate food (the flesh of Pelops) to immortals.
Tantalos is punished by gods.
Pelops survives cauldron.
Pelops abducted by Poseidon.
Tantalos gets nectar and ambrosia (as compensation?).
Tantalos perverts feast by serving up inappropriate food (nectar and ambrosia) to mortals.
Tantalos is punished by gods. Pelops is exiled from Olympus to Peloponnesus. Pelops calls on Poseidon for help.
Pelops survives chariot race against Oinomaos. Pelops settles Peloponnesus.
In fact the rejection of the "false" story is already being introduced immediately after mention of the emergence of Pelops from the cauldron:
ê thaumata polla, kai pou ti kai brotôn | phatis huper ton alathê logon | dedaidalmenoi pseudesi
poikilois exapatônti muthoi
Indeed there are many wondrous things. And the words that men tell, myths [mûthoi] embellished by varied falsehoods, beyond wording that is true [alêthês], are deceptive. 2
Still the details about the cauldron and the ivory shoulder, parts of the "false" story, are linked
with the details about the abduction of Pelops by Poseidon, parts of the "true" story. 3 To paraphrase: "When the god saw you emerging from the cauldron, with your shoulder of ivory, then it was that Poseidon abducted you." The prominent details of the "false" story are but a momentary flash: Poseidon abducts Pelops immediately after the young hero emerges from the cauldron (epei at Olympian1.26). 4
§25. With the immediate disappearance of Pelops, the "false" story about the cannibalization can spread at the expense of the "true" story about the abduction:
hôs d' aphantos epeles, i...ennepe kruphai tis autika phthonerôn geitonôn, i...hoti...
As soon as you disappeared, immediately one of the envious [phthoneroi] 1 neighbors said stealthily that...
What 'steals' into the story is the rejected idea that Pelops had in fact never emerged from the cauldron. At the same time, what 'steals' into Pindar's own story is the ostentatiously rejected "false" story of Pelops in the cauldron. The aetiology of the Olympics amounts to a combination of the "false" and the "true" stories, in the sequence ABCA'B'C', with the subordination of the "false" ABC to the "true" A'B'C'.
§26. I stress again that Pindar's story even begins with a detail from the "false" story, namely, the ivory shoulder of Pelops. 1 The detail of the ivory shoulder, which is out of joint with the "true" story of Pindar's Olympian1, is also out of joint with the rest of Pelops' body. So too in the ritual dimension: we recall the larger-than-life size of the cult object venerated as Pelops' ivory shoulder at Olympia. 2 Yet just as the ivory shoulder of Pelops was on display as a centerpiece in the ritual complex of the Olympics, so it occupies primacy of place in the aetiological complex of Pindar's Olympian1.
Notes
§1n1. See Köhnken 1974.205: Hieron won in the single-horse competition of the Olympics of 476 B.C., and the preoccupation of Pindar's Olympian1 with the theme of chariot racing shows clearly that the tyrant is looking forward to winning a future Olympic victory in the more prestigious four-horse chariot competition. On the canonization of Olympian1 as the lead poem of
the corpus of Pindaric epinicians, see the arguments of Young 1983, especially pp. 47-48.
§1n2. There is a useful inventory of opposing views in Köhnken 1983.66-67, who argues for the interpretation since (causal). Although I disagree with his conclusions, I have learned much from Köhnken's observations, as also from those of Slater 1979.63-70 and of Gerber 1982.55-56.
§3n2. This working definition of ritual can apply to the ritual foundations of tragedy as briefly discussed in Ch.1§47. Further discussion at Ch.13§10 and following. My working definition of ritual is broad enough to accommodate much of the valuable comparative evidence on athletics assembled by Sansone 1988 (see especially pp. 129-130). Sansone's own formulation of ritual, however, is narrower: for example, he assumes at p. 113 that a given society's procedures of fasting and purification in hunting "are by no means ritual matters" on the grounds that "they are rational and pragmatic measures designed to enhance the likelihood of success." There is no reason to assume that ritual cannot be "rational and pragmatic." Such narrowing leads to unnecessary complications in establishing a hermeneutic compatibility between ritual and athletics in Sansone's book (e.g., p. 19).
§3n3. N 1979.279 §2n2. For further discussion of aetiology, see Calame 1977 I 44-45.
§4n1. Burkert 1985.105-107.
§4n2. Burkert 1983.101.
§4n3. On the terms synchronic / diachronic: Intro. §11.
§5n1. Cf., for example, Jeanmaire 1939.342-343. Cf. also Brelich 1969.
§5n2. See Burkert 1985.106; fuller documentation in Burkert 1983.102n43. Also Sansone 1988.54.
§5n3. Rohde 1898 I 152n1.
§5n4. Ibid. Note too Rohde I 151n5 on the funerary symbolism of the myrtle and the use of this flower for victory garlands in the Theban Games known as the Iolaia.
§6n1. There is a list of 20-odd examples collected by Pfister II 496-497, to be supplemented by the list of Brelich 1958.94-95. The variations in these myths reflect the political vicissitudes of the festivals themselves, in that different versions may represent the traditions of different groups, places, and times.
§6n2. It is important to keep in mind the following formulation of Rohde 1898 I 151-152 (1925.117): "The greatest Games of all, to which all Greece assembled, the Pythian, Olympian, Nemean, and Isthmian, were during the historical period, it is true, celebrated in honor of the gods; but that they had been originally instituted as Funeral Games of Heroes and only subsequently transferred to higher guardianship was, at any rate, the general opinion of antiquity." Rohde's accompanying note at I 152n1 is particularly helpful.
§6n3. Phlegon FGH 257 F 1: the Delphic Oracle is quoted as saying (lines 8-9) thêke d' epeita erotin kai epathla thanonti | Oinomaôi 'he [Pelops] established a festival and contests [ep-âthla] for the dead Oinomaos'. On the basis of observations to be presented below concerning the semantics of epi + dative of the person in funerary contexts, I infer that the collocation of ep- âthla 'contests' with the dative in this present passage conveys the notion, to be developed further below, that Pelops instituted the contests in compensation for the death of Oinomaos. In this particular case, furthermore, myth has it that Pelops actually caused, wittingly or unwittingly, the death of Oinomaos (cf., e.g., Apollodorus Epitome 2.7).
§6n4. Phlegon ibid.: the Delphic Oracle is quoted as saying (lines 9-11): tritatos d' epi tois pais Amphitruônos | Hêrakleês eteless' erotin kai agôna epi mêtrôi | Tantalidêi Pelopi phthimenôi 'after them, the third was Herakles, son of Amphitryon: he established the festival and the contest [agôn] for the dead Pelops, son of Tantalos, a maternal relative' [the daughter of Pelops, myth has it, was the mother of Amphitryon, father of Herakles]. On the basis of the phraseology here, I am ready to argue that the collocation of agôn 'contest' with epi with the dative conveys the notion that Herakles instituted the festival in compensation for the death of Pelops (cf. Herodotus 5.8 on agôn as a response to death; cf. also Ch.5§2n7 on the state-supported Athenian institution of the agôn epi-taphios in honor of the war-dead). From the standpoint of this oracular poem, Pelops and Herakles were respectively the second and the third founders of the Olympics; the "first founder" was one Pisos (lines 6-7), the eponymous hero of Pisa, the site of the Olympics. For another version, see Pindar Olympian10.43 and following, where Herakles founds the Olympics with the spoils taken from the dead Augeias (41-42). For a survey of versions about the foundation of the Olympics, with references, see Burkert 1983.95n7. On Herakles as the founder of the Olympics, there is a generalized reference in Pindar Olympian2.3-4; see also Aristotle F 637 Rose (cf. Pausanias 5.13.12); overview in Brelich 1958.l03. According to the scholia to Pindar Olympian1.149a Drachmann, Herakles is said to have instituted the practice of sacrificing first to Pelops and then to Zeus.
§6n5. Cf. the note that immediately precedes.
§6n6. Ibid.
§6n7. Anonymous Peplos (quoted by scholia to Aristides Panathenaea 189); Varro De Lingua Latina 7.17; Clement Protrepticus 1.2, 2.1. Besides Burkert 1985.105-107, see Brelich 1958.95-97, especially p. 96n70 on Python as a ritual hero. According to a variant, Diomedes was first to hold the Pythian Games in honor of Apollo: Pausanias 2.32.2 (Trozenian version).
§6n8. Pindar F 5, F 6 SM (p. 3); Pausanias 2.1.3 (note the phraseology: agôna ep' autôi, with epi
+ dative in the context of agôn); Hyginus Fabulae 273; Clement Protrepticus 2.29; Hypotheses
to Pindar Isthmians. Cf. Brelich 1958.103. On infants as cult-heroes, see Brelich 1958.85, 121-122, 237.
§6n9. Bacchylides 9.12 SM (note the phraseology: athlêsan ep' archemorôi, with epi + dative in the context of aethlos); Aeschylus Nemea (TGF 149); Euripides Hypsipyle (ed. Bond) 97-103; Apollodorus 3.6.4 (note the phraseology: ep' autôi...agôna, with epi + dative in the context of agôn); Hyginus Fables 273; Clement Protrepticus 2.29; and Hypotheses to Pindar Nemeans. This myth can function as a supplement to the myth of Herakles and the Nemean Lion: cf.
Callimachus F 254-269 in the edition of Lloyd-Jones and Parsons 1983. W. Race points out to me that the myth involving the Seven may correspond to the chariot race specifically, as distinct from the myth involving Herakles.
§7n1. There is a valuable collection of eight such inscriptions, ranging in date from the early seventh to the middle fifth centuries B.C., in Roller 1981.2-3. The author is helpful in addressing various questions raised about the geographical distribution of the evidence (p. 15n47).
§7n2. For example, Odyssey xxiv 91, where the idiom refers to Achilles as the dead hero in whose honor the Achaeans set up a once-only festival of athletic events. For a survey of the iconographic testimony on funeral games, see Roller 1981b.
§7n3. The idiom is attested in seven of the eight inscriptions adduced by Roller 1981.2-3; the eighth is too fragmentary for us to be certain whether the idiom was used there as well.
§7n4. See Roller, pp. 5-6, who ascribes the obsolescence of this custom to the progressive encroachment of the polis upon funerary practices and other such practices characteristic of powerful extended families. In the case of once-only athletic events in honor of immediate ancestors and the like, we must take note of the tendency toward Panhellenism even in this obsolescent custom: we know from the inscriptions that the athletes who competed in such events could come from other city-states (Roller, p. 3). Thus there must have been some degree of Panhellenic "advertisement."
§7n5. For example, Hesychius s.v. ep' euruguêi agôn, with reference to the Athenian festival of the Panathenaia (cf. Amelesagoras FGH 330 F 2 and Jacoby's commentary). Also Hesychius s.v. ballêtus: heortê Athênêsin epi Dêmophônti tôi Keleou agomenê, with reference to a seasonally- recurring ritual mock battle in compensation for the death of the child-hero Demophon (cf. Homeric Hymn to Demeter262-267, with commentary by Richardson 1974.245-247); this mock battle seems to have been the ritual kernel of a whole complex of events known as the Eleusinian Games (cf. Richardson, p. 246). See also Ch.4§6n2, with reference to the festival of the Olympics.
§7n6. See, for example, the list in Rohde 1898 I 151n4: the Delphic Oracle orders hero cults, taking the form of seasonally-recurring athletic festivals, in honor of such historical figures as Miltiades (Herodotus 6.38), Brasidas (Thucydides 5.11), Leonidas (Pausanias 3.14.1: note the phraseology: ep' autois...[sc. for both Brasidas and Leonidas] agôna). A comparable case is that of the murdered Phocaeans at Agylla/Caere (Herodotus 1.167.2).
§8n1. Meuli 1968 (1926); 1975 (1941) 881-906.
§8n2. There is no reason to assume that all instances of human ritual combat are built on any one motivating principle. For a reassessment of Meuli's views, see Sansone 1988.38 and following. In considering the valuable comparative data adduced by Sansone, I distance myself from his notions of "common origin" (e.g., p. 52).
§8n3. On the notion of compensation as owed by the living to the dead and more generally on the notion of a contract or pact between the living and their ancestors, see Lévi-Strauss
1984.245-248.
§8n4. In this connection I found it helpful to read Ong 1981.104-107 on the custom of "land diving" as practiced on the New Hebrides island of Pentecost. In an annual ritual intended to promote a good yam crop, the men of the community compete with each other by diving "from tree-and-vine towers as high as eighty feet and more, headfirst, with lianas tied to their ankles, the woody vines just long enough to break the men's fall as they hit the bare ground below" (p. 104). For the participants, the aetiological motivation for the ritual is as follows: once "a man named Tamalie quarreled with his wife, who ran away and climbed a banyan tree. Tamalie followed to recapture her, she jumped down to escape him, and he jumped after her. But she had tied lianas around her ankles to break her fall, while he, without lianas, simply plunged to his death. The other men took up the practice of land diving so that no woman would trick them again" (p. 106). I infer that the mock death of the men engaged in the ritual, modeled on the mock death of the primordial woman in the myth, compensates for the "real" death of the primordial man in the myth. Note too that the setting for the stylized death in the ritual is a thing of culture, that is, a tower, while the setting for the "real" death in the myth was a thing of nature, a tree. Ong continues: "The threat of death is real enough, though accidents, which occur with fair frequency, are generally minor (pulled muscles, sprains, contusions, skinned shoulders), since even if the lianas break, they generally do so at a point where they have already notably decelerated the fall. But death is in the air, literally and figuratively, and it is meant to be" (p. 105).
§10n1. Burkert 1983.95-98. Datings for the introduction of various athletic events in the Olympics: Pausanias 5.8.6-7 (on which see Huxley 1975.38-39).
§10n2. See Pausanias 5.13.1-2, and the comments of Burkert, p. 98.
§10n3. Burkert, p. 98n25.
§10n4. Burkert, p. 97. Such sacrifices in the context of the Olympics, as Burkert notes (p. 96), would have had smaller-scale analogues in the context of epichoric ritual practices at Olympia on occasions other than the Olympics.
§10n5. Burkert, p. 97.
§10n6. Burkert, p. 98.
§10n7. The wording here indicates clearly that the author is concerned not so much with describing current athletic practice as with indicating the aetiology that accompanies athletic practice.
§10n8. The translation follows Burkert, p. 97. Note the parallel wording adduced by Burkert, p. 97n22, from an inscription concerning institutional procedures at Delphi (as funded by Eumenes II), LSS 44.15: ho de dromos ginesthô...achri poti ton bômon, ho de nikeôn huphaptetô ta hiera 'the running is to extend up to the altar, and the winner is to set fire to the consecrated parts'. I am puzzled by the translation in LSJ s.v. huphaptô : 'is to set the fire for lighting the sacred lamps'.
§11n1. Datings for the introduction of various athletic events in the Olympics: Pausanias 5.8.6-7.
§11n2. Note the translation of hôs de mê argôs hê prosodos autôn gignoito by Jüthner 1909.139: "Damit aber deren Ankunft nicht ohne Zeremoniell vor sich gehe...."
§11n3. Translation after Burkert, p. 97, who notes (p. 100) that the portent recounted in Herodotus 1.59.1 about Hippokrates, father of the tyrant Peisistratos of Athens, must be understood as taking place immediately after the Olympic event of the diaulos, as the envoys were approaching the altar of Zeus. Hippokrates was one of these envoys, and as he approached, the water inside the sacrificial cauldrons (presumably at the altar of Zeus) started to boil before the application of fire. This portent seems to have conveyed the idea that the very presence of Hippokrates, as the future father of Peisistratos, was the equivalent of the Olympic victor's fire that was required to start the sacrifices at the altar of Zeus.
§11n4. Burkert, p. 98.
§11n5. I substitute 'thigh-portions' for 'thigh-bones', on the basis of the discussion in N 1979.216-217 (following Gill 1974).
§11n6. On purification as transition, consider the semantics of Latin pûrgô 'purify', the etymology of which, according to Thurneysen 1912-1913, is pûrigô 'carry [verb agô] fire [pûr, as attested in Oscan pûr, Umbrian pîr, and Greek pûr]'. The context of pûr agere 'carry fire' is actually attested in a ritual recorded in the Iguvine Tables (Ib 12), where fire is being carried in a portable altar or brazier called an ahti- (from verb agô). See N 1974b.105.
§11n7. Burkert's formulation can be more fully appreciated in light of the following observation on the typology of initiation: "Just as pollution is disease and disease is death, so purification is a renewal of life" (Thomson 1946.93).
§11n8. On the symbolism of fire as victory, see Ch.4§11n2 on the portent presaging the Panhellenic importance of the birth of Peisistratos: the fire of the victor is here made analogous to the begetting of the tyrant. Note too that the Greek word kratos designates not only political and military power but also athletic victory (cf. N 1979.90 §37n6). For a parallel thought pattern, consider the Roman aetiology for the games known as the Compitâlia, a word derived from com- pitum 'crossroads', further derived from com-petô 'meet, come together; compete with others in pursuit of a given honor' (for the latter definition, see Nonius Marcellus 276.10 Lindsay). According to this aetiology, as reported by Pliny the Elder (Natural History 36.204), the games of the Compitâlia were founded by Servius Tullius, a primaeval king of Rome who was begotten by a flaming phallus that appeared out of the royal hearth tended at the time by his mother; young Servius succeeded to the kingship when it was discovered that his head lit up while he slept (for more on this myth, see N 1974b.96-100). The aetiology specifically accounts for the foundation of the games as resulting from the belief that Servius Tullius had thus been begotten by the Lâr familiâris 'the ancestral spirit of the family' of the previous king, Tarquinius Priscus (Pliny ibid.). Moveover, it is specified that Servius Tullius founded the games in honor of the Lârês 'ancestral spirits' (ibid.).
§12n1. Burkert 1983.100.
§12n2. A survey of testimonia in Burkert, p. 99n32.
§12n3. Burkert, p. 100.
§12n4. On the dismemberment and eating of Lykaon by the gods, see Hesiod F 163 MW (and the comments by Burkert, pp. 86-87). On the revival of Lykaon, see [Eratosthenes] Katasterismoi (Fragmenta Vaticana ed. Rehm), p. 2 (and the comments by Burkert, p. 87n20).
§12n5. Burkert, pp. 84-93. Note his discussion of age divisions at p. 90 and of expulsion/ impulsion rituals at p. 92. I would draw special attention to this observation (p. 92): "The younger members of the rising generation had to be forced away into the wild 'outdoors' while the [older] twenty-five-year-olds, now marriageable, entered athletic competitions." In other words age classes could be differentiated by way of overt vs. stylized separation (i.e., rustication vs. athletics, respectively).
§13n1. Sources in Burkert 1983.99n32: most notably Bacchylides F 42 SM, Euripides
Iphigeneia in Tauris 386-388, Lycophron 152-155, Apollodorus Epitome 2.3.
§13n2. Burkert, p. 99n30 cites further sources.
§13n3. Burkert, p. 100, with documentation.
§13n4. Burkert, p. 100 and n34.
§13n5. Burkert, p. 100.
§15n1. Pausanias 5.8.7; this date seems to parallel the era when chariot fighting was becoming obsolescent in warfare. I owe this insight to J. L. Bentz.
§15n2. Burkert 1983.95n9 gives bibliography on counterarguments in favor of an earlier date. On the role of chariots as a mark of aristocratic prestige, see Connor 1987.47-49, especially with reference to Strabo 10.1.10 C448 (p. 49).
§15n3. Burkert, p. 95.
§16n1. Consider the general aetiologies connected with the four Panhellenic Games, as discussed above.
§16n2. On which see N 1974b.77.
§16n3. Cf. N 1979.284 on the aetiological significance of the myth concerning the death of Aesop at Delphi: "The Life of Aesop" tradition actually presents the death of Aesop as a cause of the First Sacred War, but the institutional reality that Aesop reproaches--namely, that the people of Delphi are sacred to Apollo--is a lasting effect of the First Sacred War. From the standpoint of the myth, the death of Aesop is the effect of his reproaching the institutions of Delphi; from the standpoint of these institutions, on the other hand, his death is their indirect cause. It is this sort of
'cause' that qualifies as an aition."
§17n1. Diodorus 4.73.4; cf. Burkert 1983.98.
§17n2. I note in passing the use of the word signature by Derrida 1972.393.
§18n1. Burkert 1983.99n33.
§18n3. Moreover the "new" setting in Asia Minor is perfectly in keeping with evolving patterns of myths about the origins of Peloponnesian dynasties. These patterns tend to augment the political prestige of Sparta and to diminish that of Argos: see Ch.10§25 and following.
§18n4. Pace Burkert, p. 99.
§18n5. Burkert, p. 95; cf. Pausanias 5.17.7. For a slightly different dating, see Roller 1981b. 109-110.
§18n6. Burkert ibid.
§18n7. My views here differ from what is found in the available commentaries on Pindar, which favor the idea that substantial parts of the myths related in Olympian1 were the poet's own personal invention. For an example of this different view, see Lefkowitz 1976.81-82. For a systematic argumentation along these lines, see Köhnken 1974. I interpret se d' antia proterôn phthenxomai at Olympian1.36 as 'I shall call upon you [= Pelops] in the presence of the predecessors', that is, with the past tradition as witness; for antia in the juridical sense of 'in the presence of', cf. antia seu 'in your presence' in Herodotus 7.209.2; also kalion anti maituron 'summoning in the presence of witnesses' in the Gortynian Code (e.g., 1.41 [ed. Willetts], etc.). Others interpret antia proterôn in the sense of 'contrary to the predecessors' (e.g., Slater 1969.57), as if Pindar were contradicting the tradition that came before him. On proteroi 'predecessors, men of the past' as designating the tellers of the tradition (e.g., Pindar Pythian3.80), see Ch.7§2. Instead of 'contrary to the predecessors', I propose a slightly modified interpretation, 'in rivalry with the predecessors', which is compatible with 'in the presence of the predecessors' inasmuch as the present performance, in agonistic pride, calls to witness all past performances to validate its own truth. Further, this present truth is to be witnessed not only by the past but also by the future (Olympian1.33-34).
§20n1. On the contrast of alêthea 'true' vs. pseudea 'false' at Olympian1.28-32, see Ch.2§28; there I argue that the version designated by alêthea is Panhellenic. As such, this version is appropriately the program of the Olympics.
§20n2. This point is effectively argued by Calame 1977 I 421-427 and by Sergent 1984.75-84.
§20n3. Vernant 1969.13-14. See also Sergent 1984.80-81.
§20n4. Cf. Brelich 1969.198-200. For evidence that these customs in Crete have antecedents
reaching back into the second millennium B.C.: Koehl 1986.
§20n5. For more on the Ephorus passage, see Sergent 1984.15-53.
§20n6. On the topic of Poseidon's home on Olympus, as it figures in this story, see Köhnken 1974.204.
§20n7. On the pertinence of this theme to Hieron in Olympian1, see Köhnken, p. 205: after having won in the single-horse competition of 476 B.C., the tyrant is looking forward to winning a future Olympic victory in the chariot competition.
§20n8. On the dynastic transition from Pelopidai to Herakleidai, representing the royal houses of Argos, Sparta, and Messene, see Ch.10§34 and following. The essence of Pelops as the archetype of political power and sovereignty in the Peloponnesus is clear from such indications as the passing of the skêptron 'scepter' from Zeus to Hermes to Pelops to Atreus to Thyestes to Agamemnon in Iliad II 100-108. The very name of the Peloponneus, the island of Pelops (cf. Tyrtaeus 2.15 W), bears out the status of Pelops as the prototypical king and authority (cf. West 1985.159); cf. Apollodorus Epitome 2.11, where the people of Mycenae install Atreus and Thyestes after being told by an oracle to choose a descendant of Pelops as their king.
§20n9. In this "foreign" land, Poseidon helps Pelops succeed in his exploits. At Olympian1.24 the Peloponnesus is described as the apoikiâ 'settlement' of Pelops. After this ordeal in the chariot race, the Peloponnesus finally becomes his new home.
§21n1. We may contrast the story of the abduction and rape of Ganymede by Zeus in Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite200-217. In this case the boy never leaves Olympus (nor does he ever become a man), and the gift of a magnificent chariot team goes not to him but to his father--a fitting compensation for permanently losing the boy. I consider this story a variant, just as the story of the abduction and rape of Pelops by Poseidon must be considered a variant. It is methodologically unsound to insist that one variant is the exemplum and the other, the imitation.
§21n2. I see no reason to argue that the story about Tantalos' perverted sharing of nectar and ambrosia was an invention of Pindar. That Tantalos had received the gift of nectar and ambrosia-- a gift that he proceeded to misuse--can be analyzed as a traditional story pattern where (1) the gods wrong a mortal, (2) the mortal is given a divine gift in compensation for the wrong, (3) the mortal misuses the gift, thereby wronging the gods, and (4) the gods punish the mortal and take back the gift. It may be that Tantalos' gift of nectar and ambrosia from the gods was viewed as a payment in compensation for the gods' having taken Pelops to Olympus, just as the gift of a chariot team to the father of Ganymede was in compensation for the gods' having taken Ganymede to Olympus (see Ch.4§21n1). Then, after Tantalos wrongs the gods, the gift is taken back and Pelops is expelled from Olympus. The compensation that was owed to Tantalos, so long as Pelops stayed on Olympus, now reverts to Pelops, once he is released, just as the abducted Cretan boy is compensated by his abductor upon being released. Thus Pelops gets the gift of a chariot team.
§21n3. On the semantics of olbos 'good fortune, bliss' and olbios 'fortunate, blissful', see Ch.
8§45 and following.
§21n4. On koros as 'insatiability', see Ch.10§21n2.
§21n5. I owe this parallel to J. F. Nagy. It may well be that even the story of Tantalos' perverted feeding of human flesh to the gods--not just the story of his feeding nectar and ambrosia to mortals--presupposes that Tantalos had enjoyed the ultimate bliss of having access to nectar and ambrosia in the first place.
§22n1. One of the anonymous referees for the earlier version of this presentation points out that the word ammoros 'having no share' in this passage may convey yet another image of eating; on the semantics of moira and related words in the sense of 'share, portion' of meat, see N 1979.134-135. I quote from the referee's incisive remarks: "Pelops, sitting by the cauldron of his stewing old age, cannot get a name for himself because he does not reach in and 'get his share'-- the champion's portion." On the theme of the champion's portion of meat in Greek and Irish traditions, see N 1979.133§19n4.
§23n1. On the purification in the cauldron, we may compare the formulation of Thomson quoted at Ch.4§11n3. My interpretation of epei at line 26 as 'after' rather than 'since' is supported by the wording of Pindar Olympian1.46-48, to be discussed further at Ch.4§25. On the associations of Klotho with the theme of birth, see Köhnken 1983.70; I find it unnecessary, however, to deny the associations of Klotho with the theme of rebirth.
§24n1. Cf. Hubbard 1987.9-11, who posits a parallel narrative sequence of two feasts in the Hesiodic treatment of the Prometheus myth.
§24n2. On the connotations of mûthoi 'myths' in this passage, see Ch.2§28.
§24n3. Bundy 1972.70 writes: "Once [Pindar] has given his audience a familiar frame of reference, he can find this version not to his liking and dismiss it for another." Bundy's opinion is that Pindar's preferred version is not one of his own making, and that it is less widely known than the rejected version (ibid.). I agree with the first part of this opinion and disagree with the second. Cf. Ch.2§28.
§24n4. My interpretation of epei here as 'after' rather than 'since' is supported by the wording of Pindar Olympian1.46-48, to be explained in what immediately follows.
§25n1. On the programmatic use of the adjective phthoneros 'begrudging, envious' in the diction of praise poetry to designate the generic opponent of praise poetry, see N 1979.223-232.
§26n1. Bundy 1972.71n79 writes: "Although Pindar's purposes here require that he rejects this version, yet the detail of the ivory shoulder is too good to spare, both for enhancing the beauty of Pelops as inspirational to Poseidon's love and for making us aware of the power of art irrationally to persuade men's minds by directing them toward outward beauty and away from inner truth."
§1. Having contemplated the ritual ideology of athletic events in one particular festival, from among the four seasonally recurring Panhellenic Games that produced the victors celebrated by the lyric poetry of Pindar, we may proceed to consider how this poetry formally relates itself to such ritual ideology.
§2. A prominent word used in the lyric poetry of Pindar and elsewhere for the concept of athletic event is agôn (e.g., Pindar Olympian1.7), apparently derived from the root ag- of agô as in sun- agô 'bring together, assemble, gather'. 1 The notion of 'assemble' is intrinsic to the general sense of agôn, that is, 'assembly' (e.g., Pindar Pythian10.30). This meaning is still preserved in various contexts, from which we can see that there can be 'assemblies' of not just people but even, for example, ships (e.g., Iliad XV 428). But in numerous other contexts the word specifically means 'contest' (e.g., Pindar Olympian9.90). Thus agôn conveys not only the social setting for an activity, namely, an assembly of people, but also the activity itself, namely, a contest. The implicitness of the notion of contest in the word for 'assembly' reflects a basic institutional reality about the ancient Greeks: 2 whenever they came together in whatever was called an agôn, they competed. 3 Using this word agôn, Nietzsche in fact characterized competitiveness, this fundamental aspect of ancient Greek society, as der agonale Geist. 4 The notion of competition built into agôn is admirably reflected in the English borrowing antagonism. 5 To think of agôn as 'athletic contest', however, would be to understand but one aspect of the ancient Greek agonale Geist. The word applies not only to athletic but also to martial activity. 6 Moreover, it applies to poetic or rhetorical activity. 7 The ritual aspect of these activities is suggested by attestations of the derivative word agôniâ in the sense of 'agony' (e.g., Demosthenes On the Crown 33, "Aristotle" Problems 869b6). Instead of the English borrowing agony, however, I prefer to use the word ordeal, which connotes not only the personal but also the ritual aspect of the agôn as a process diachronically characteristic of initiation into adulthood. 8
§3. The ritual aspect of the agôn is elucidated by another word, aethlos or âthlos, 1 which is likewise used in the sense of 'contest' in referring to the activities of athletics (e.g., Herodotus 5.22.2) and war (e.g., 1.67.1). A closely related word is aethlon or âthlon, meaning 'prize to be won in a contest'; 2 a derivative is âthlêtês, meaning 'athlete' (the English word is a borrowing from the Greek). That this word aethlos carries with it the sense of ritual is already clear from the epithet that characterizes it: hieros 'sacred' (Pindar Olympian8.64, 13.15). More than that: in Pindaric usage aethlos applies equally to the contests of athletes and to the life-and-death ordeals of heroes. We have already seen from the myth of the chariot race of Pelops that the ordeals of heroes on the level of myth correspond aetiologically to the contests of athletes on the level of ritual, in that the myths can motivate the rituals. Now we see that a word like aethlos can collapse
the very distinction between the myth and the ritual. Thus when Pelops embarks upon the chariot race against Oinomaos with the understanding that he will live if he wins but die if he loses, he refers to the race as an aethlos (Pindar Olympian 1.84). 3 Elsewhere in Pindaric song, the word applies to the mortally dangerous tasks imposed by King Aietes on Jason as a precondition for the hero's possessing the Golden Fleece (Pindar Pythian 4.220) 4 --ordeals that include the ploughing of a large field with a pair of fire-breathing bronze bulls (4.224-227) and fighting to the death a monstrous dragon that was guarding the Fleece (4.243-246). 5 In yet another Pindaric context, aethlos applies to one of the Labors of Herakles, namely, the hero's life-and-death struggle with the Nemean Lion (Pindar Isthmian6.48). 6 In the language of epic as well, aethlos applies either to an athletic competition, such as the Funeral Games of Patroklos (e.g., Iliad XXIII 646), or to a life-and-death struggle: as an example of the latter theme, I cite the Homeric application of the word in the plural to the Labors of Herakles, all considered together (Iliad VIII 363). 7 Finally, in the context of actual war, we find aethlos applying to the martial efforts, all considered together, of Achaeans and Trojans alike in the Trojan War (Iliad III 126), or, considered separately, to the efforts of the Achaeans in general (Odyssey iii 262) or of Odysseus in particular (iv 170).
§4. For the athlete the ritual significance of these life-and-death struggles by heroes finds its expression in the occasional lyric poetry of Pindar. In order to introduce this topic, however, I choose a remarkably suggestive passage not from Pindar but from quite elsewhere, namely, the Alcestis of Euripides. Offstage, the quintessential hero Herakles has just wrestled with and defeated Thanatos, Death personified; then, on stage, he cryptically refers to this confrontation as an athletic event: athlêtaisin axion ponon 'a worthy exertion [ponos] for athletes' (Euripides Alcestis 1027). In his speech Herakles does not reveal that he has struggled with Thanatos but prefers to represent his life-and-death ordeal as a wrestling match at a local athletic festival. 1 In the words of Herakles his 'exertion' in the wrestling match with Death was a ponos (again Alcestis 1027). 2 This and another word for 'exertion', kamatos, are programmatically used in the diction of Pindar to designate the hardships of preparing for and engaging in athletic competition. 3 Moreover, both ponos and kamatos are used by the poet to designate the life-and-death struggles of heroes. 4 As with the word aethlos 'contest', with ponos and kamatos there is a collapsing of the distinction between the myth of the hero's struggle and the ritual of the athlete's competition. Accordingly, 'ordeal' may be more apt a translation than 'exertion' for both ponos and kamatos since it conveys not only a heroic but also a ritual experience.
§5. This set of poetic words, as used in Pindar's diction, helps us understand more clearly the ritual ideology inherited by Greek athletics. As noted, 1 this ideology reveals diachronic features of two kinds of ritual: (1) initiation into adulthood and (2) compensation for the catastrophe of death. In the first case it is easy to see how the ordeal conveyed by words like aethlos, ponos, and kamatos is characteristic of initiation. In the second case, however, the connection between a hero's ordeal and the idea of compensating for a primordial death is more difficult to intuit. We must call to mind again the formulation of Karl Meuli: in various societies throughout the world, ritual combat can have the function of compensating for guilt about someone's death. 2 The guilt can be canceled by way of an ordeal that decides the guilty person, in that the guilty person is
killed in the ordeal while any innocent person survives. Such an ordeal may take the form of either a life-and-death contest 3 or an attenuated form of competition where "living" and "dying" may be stylized as winning and losing, respectively. 4 As I have already proposed, however, the ancient Greek model of such an ordeal reflects a rearrangement in ideology: in contrast with other models where the ordeal instituted to compensate for the guilt of a given person's death requires that one contestant "die" by losing and thereby be proven guilty while the other contestant or contestants "live," the Greek model requires that one contestant "live" by winning. 5 This "survival" of one person is then pluralized, communalized, by the khoros 'chorus', on the occasion of the epinician or victory celebration. 6 But the Greek model is still an ordeal, instituted to compensate for the guilt of a given person's death; to engage in the ordeal is to engage in the act of compensation. The ordeal, as part of an initiation, leads to a "winning" of life, a "rebirth" that compensates for death.
§6. For an example, let us take the Tlêpolemeia, a seasonally recurring festival of athletic contests held on the island of Rhodes and named after Tlepolemos, son of Herakles and the founder of Rhodes. 1 In the words of Pindar this athletic festival was founded by Tlepolemos as a lutron 'compensation' for what the poet calls a 'pitiful misfortune' (lutron sumphoras oiktras Olympian7.77). The catastrophe to which Pindar's ode refers is the hero's deranged slaying, in anger, of his grandmother's half-brother (7.27-32).
§7. The ideological pattern of these athletic games, compensating for the death of Tlepolemos' relative, is parallel to what we have seen in the Olympic foot race, supposedly compensating for the death of Pelops. The pattern can be summarized as follows. In the mythical past, some catastrophe occurs, typically but not necessarily entailing some form of guilt or pollution. Then a ritual is instituted to compensate for that one event. In contrast with the one event recounted in the myth, the events of the ritual are to take place seasonally and into perpetuity. 1 Finally, as we have seen from the diction of Pindar, the ritual ordeals of the athletes are ideologically equated, by way of concepts like aethlos, ponos, and kamatos, to the life-and-death ordeals of heroes in the past. 2
§8. The ritual ordeals of athletes need not correspond in detail to the life-and-death ordeals of heroes. Such correspondences as we find between the athletic event of chariot racing at the Olympics and the chariot race to the death between Pelops and Oinomaos are rare. 1 What is essential, rather, is simply that the ordeals of heroes, as myths, are analogous to the ordeals of athletes, as rituals, in that the themes of living and dying in the myth are analogous to the themes of winning and losing in the ritual of athletics. 2 When athletes win or lose in an athletic event, they "live" or "die" like heroes, and their ordeal thus compensates for a primordial death stemming from the heroic age.
§9. In the context of the athletic ordeal, however, the translation of winning into an actual winning of life is incomplete. From an anthropological point of view, the athletic ordeal proceeds from the phase of segregation in such rites of passage as an initiation into adulthood. Although the ideology of segregation presupposes reintegration, a new life after the death to one's old life, it is nevertheless preoccupied with the symbolism of death itself. Thus, for example, in the festival of
the Braurônia, an institution well-known for its overt features of initiation, 1 the young female initiates undergo a phase of segregation by ritually becoming "bears": this seasonally recurring event on the level of ritual (as attested for the cult of Artemis at Brauron) corresponds to a single event on the level of myth (as attested for the closely related cult of Artemis at nearby Mounychia), namely, the primordial killing of the bear of Artemis by an ancestor of the community. 2 In effect, then, the one primordial event of the bear's death is compensated by a perpetual series of seasonally recurring events where the young girls of the community must become "bears" and thus symbolically "die" before they are eligible to marry. In other words, the phase of segregation, where the girls become "bears" and thus prepare to "die," is a prerequisite for the phase of reintegration, where the girls become marriageable adults.
§10. So also with the ritual athletics of males: as we have seen, the institution of a festival like the Tlêpolemeia is a lutron 'compensation'--to cite again the wording of Pindar--for a primordial death (Olympian7.77), so that the athlete symbolically dies by participating in the ordeal of ritual athletics. Even though the one athlete who wins in a given athletic event thereby wins back "life," this winning is incomplete in terms of the ordeal itself: for the winning to be fully realized, the athlete must not only leave behind a ritual phase of segregation but also enter into a ritual phase of reintegration, which can happen only after the ordeal is completed. From the standpoint of ritual, what is needed after a victory in an athletic festival is a joyous return to the community--a reintegration or reincorporation symbolizing life after death. A formal realization of reintegration at home is the epinician or victory ode itself, performed at the victor's home city by a chorus of men or boys who are themselves natives of the city. 1
§11. The role of the chorus is essential. As the detailed investigations of Claude Calame have shown, the khoros 'chorus', a specially selected group of polis-dwellers whose sacred duty it is to sing and dance at a given ritual occasion, 1 amounts to a formal communalization of ritual experience by and for the community: the chorus represents, reenacts, the community of the polis. 2 In the case of an epinician performance, the ritual experience of a single person's athletic victory is being communalized through the chorus. 3
§12. What I am proposing, then, is that the epinician performance is the final realization, the final constitutive event, of the ritual process of athletics. In Pindar's own words the occasion of an epinician ode, stylized as kômos '[occasion for a] band of revellers', is a lutron 'compensation' for the kamatoi 'ordeals' of the athlete (lutron...kamatôn Isthmian8.2). We had seen earlier that the ordeal of the athlete is a formal lutron 'compensation' for a primordial death (lutron sumphoras oiktras 'lutron for the pitiful misfortune' Olympian7.77). Now we see that the Pindaric victory ode is a formal 'compensation' for the athlete's ordeal. 1 The actual Greek word for 'victory ode', epi-nîkion 'epinician', literally means something like 'that which is in compensation for victory [nîkê]'. 2
§13. In sum, the choral lyric poetry of Pindar, specifically his epinician mode of speaking, refers to its own social function in terms of a final stage in the ritual program of the four great Panhellenic Games. This ritual program can be classified as belonging, in the most general of anthropological terms, to the categories of (1) initiation and (2) competition in honor of the dead.
These categories, as we have seen, are appropriate to what we may call tribal society. 1 But we have had to move beyond the generalities of anthropology, toward the particularities of Greek civilization, where tribal institutions are reshaped by the twin phenomena of the emergence of the polis and the trend of Panhellenism. One clear symptom of the impact of these phenomena is the fact that the athletic contest leading to the athlete's victory is a competition not in honor of a dead relative, nor even of a distant ancestor--as we might expect from the standpoint of a tribal
society--but of a hero. Now the Greek hero is a product of the polis, in that the cult of heroes is historically speaking a transformation of the worship of ancestors on the level of the polis. Furthermore, the Greek hero is a product also of Panhellenism, in that the epic of heroes as represented by Homeric poetry is an artistic and social synthesis on the level of Panhellenic diffusion. 2
§14. So much for the specific Greek variant of the general anthropological category of competition in honor of the dead. As for the other anthropological category that applies to the Panhellenic Games, the category of initiation, the athletic victory and the subsequent celebration of victory are not strictly speaking an initiation for the Greeks, in that the setting is not the tribe but, in the case of the victory, an assembly representing all Hellenes and, in the case of the subsequent celebration of victory, a chorus representing the victor's polis. So, again, we are dealing with a product of the twin phenomena of Panhellenism and the polis.
§15. I do not mean to say that these twin phenomena are antithetical to the tribal institutions that preceded them. Rather, they represent a set of differentiations emanating from tribal institutions. The polis, as not only heir to but also rival of the tribe, neutralizes the threat of rivalry derived from its own tribal heritage by absorbing the compatible aspects of this heritage and by internationalizing (that is, making inter-polis) the incompatible aspects. 1 I call endoskeletal those aspects of the tribe that are absorbed within the polis and exoskeletal those aspects that are generalized outside the polis. 2 In this line of thought, we may say that the institution of ordeal through competition, instead of surviving as the institution of initiation within the endoskeleton, has moved into the exoskeleton as the institution of the Panhellenic Games. Thus, there is a neutralization of a potential conflict between the institution of the polis and the ancestors, who represent the original focus of ordeal through competition and who are the very foundation of extended family structures that survive as institutions antithetical to the evolving polis. My formulation here dovetails with an observation made by Erwin Rohde, that the concept of ancestors in Archaic Greece becomes differentiated into two distinct categories: on the one hand there are the heroes, stylized remote ancestors, who are defined both by their cult in any given individual polis and by their being recognized as heroes by citizens of any other given polis, and on the other hand there are the immediate ancestors, who can be kept within the confines of the polis in the restricted context of families and extended families. 3
§16. Pursuing this line of thought, I also argue that epinician lyric poetry bridges the gap between the endoskeletal and exoskeletal heritage of tribal society. It preserves the ritual ideology of ordeal through competition, and it even presents itself as the final stage in the ritual process, where the victorious athlete is reintegrated into his community. But the community is no longer the family or tribe but the polis, and it is the polis that the chorus of the epinician ode ostensibly represents. 1 A
notable example is Pindar F 194 SM, where a chorus of Thebans is represented as if they were rebuilding the walls of Thebes, in that they are metaphorically 'building the walls' (teichizômen) of the kosmos 'arrangement' of the words of their song (lines 2-3). 2
§17. In these patterns of differentiation, it is clear that the concept of local in the opposition of local and Panhellenic is not to be equated with the concept of the polis itself. The polis is local only insofar as it absorbs the endoskeletal aspects of the tribe; but it is also Panhellenic in that it promotes the exoskeletal aspects. The ideology of the polis is not exclusively local, or epichoric: it is simultaneously Panhellenic. Thus whenever the chorus, as representative of the polis, speaks about things epichoric, it does so with a Panhellenic point of view.
Notes
§2n1. Chantraine DELG 17.
§2n2. I use institution in the sense adopted by Benveniste 1969.
§2n3. For an institutional parallel as reflected by the Latin language, see Ch.4§11n3 on the semantics of com-petô.
§2n4. Background in Burkert 1985.105. See also Martin 1983.65-76 on the Greek notion of contest as a solution to problems.
§2n5. Cf. agônismos 'rivalry' in Thucydides 7.70.3.
§2n6. See Brelich 1961 on the ritual parallelism of these two activities. Note especially the reference to war as arêios agôn 'the agôn of Ares' in Herodotus 9.33.3. On the ritual dimensions of early Greek land warfare: Connor 1988, following Burkert 1985.169-170.
§2n7. On agôn as a festival of contests in poetry, see Homeric Hymn6.19-20. On agôn as a festival of contests in athletics and in poetry, song, and dance, see Homeric Hymn to Apollo 149-150 and Thucydides 3.10.3 / 5. On the state-supported Athenian institution of the agôn epitaphios in honor of the war-dead, featuring contests in athletics and in speeches praising the dead, see Demosthenes On the Crown 288 and Aristotle Constitution of the Athenians 58; cf. Roller 1977.26-30, especially p. 27 on the Funeral Oration of Pericles (Thucydides 2.35-46). Note too the following three subjects of the verb agônizomai 'compete, engage in an agôn' in
Herodotus: athletes (e.g., 2.160.3-4), warriors (e.g., 1.76.4), and rhapsôidoi 'rhapsodes' (5.67.1).
§2n8. We may note the semantics of German Urteil 'judgment', cognate of English ordeal.
§3n1. Note the combination en...agôniois aethloisi 'in aethloi [plural of aethlos] of the agôn' in Pindar Isthmian5.7.
§3n2. See Chantraine DELG 21; also Loraux 1982.187-188, especially nn84, 87.
§3n4. Cf. Pindar Pythian4.165.
§3n5. I interpret the word ponos at Pindar Pythian. 4.243 as applying to the ordeal of slaying the dragon, not just to the feat of ploughing.
§3n6. See also Bacchylides Epinician 9.8 SM. On aethlos as a generic designation of the Labors of Herakles, see Loraux 1982.186.
§3n7. Also Iliad XIX 133; Odyssey xi 622, .
§4n1. On the theme of wrestling with Death incarnate, common in latter-day Greek Demotic folklore, see Alexiou 1974.37-38. In view of the fact that Hades is the prevalent manifestation of the death god in Archaic Greek literature while Thanatos is rare, it is striking that the scholia to Alcestis 1 describe the myth of this drama as hê dia stomatos kai dêmôdês historia 'the current and popular story'. See Alexiou, p. 5. As H. Pelliccia suggests to me, the expression dia stomatos 'orally, by word of mouth' conveys the idea that a given theme is current, in currency, as in Xenophon Cyropaedia 1.4.25 and Theocritus 12.21.
§4n2. Cf. the parallel in Phrynichus TGF 2, where Herakles has a wrestling match with Hades (on which see Brelich 1958.102n90, 208).
§4n3. For ponos, see, e.g., Pindar Olympian5.15, Isthmian 5.25, etc. For kamatos, see, e.g.,
Pythian 5.47, Nemean3.17, etc.
§4n4. For ponos, see, e.g., Pindar Pythian4.236 (exeponêsen, applying to Jason's task of ploughing with the bronze bulls); Pythian4.243 (the same); Pythian4.178 (the voyage of the Argo). For kamatos, see, e.g., Nemean1.70 (the Labors of Herakles). For more on ponos as a heroic struggle, see Loraux 1982.174nn13, 14. For kamatos as heroic 'fatigue', see the passages collected by Loraux, p. 183n61. Note too the expression dus-ponos kamatos at Odyssey v 493. On mokhthos 'struggle', another synonym of ponos, see Loraux, p. 185.
§5n3. By contest I do not mean to exclude such events as a race to the death. In Plutarch Sympotic Questions 675c, there is a fascinating but all too brief reference to primordial combats to the death at Olympia.
§5n6. Note the formulation of Burnett 1985.42: "The numbers of the chorus generalized the singular success of the victor." She cites (ibid.) the expression of a collective possession of victory garlands at Bacchylides Epinician 6.8-9 SM (also at Pindar Isthmian7.38).
§6n1. See Nilsson 1906.462-463 on both the literary and the nonliterary evidence for this athletic
festival; also Rohde 1898 I 151n1 (I draw attention to the particularly useful comments toward the end of this note).
§7n1. Cf. Homeric Hymn to Demeter 262-267, with reference to a ritual mock-battle at Eleusis, a quasi- athletic event which was officially held on a seasonally-recurring basis to compensate for the death of the child-hero Demophon (N 1979.184); this mock-battle seems to have been the ritual kernel of a whole complex of events known as the Eleusinian Games (cf. Richardson 1974.246).
§7n2. For more on ponos in such a context, see Loraux 1982.174n14.
§8n1. In this instance I have even suggested at Ch.4§10 and following that the quasi-athletic aspects of the ordeal of Pelops reflect the chronologically secondary nature of the Olympic chariot race and of the aition that motivates it: they are predicated on the Olympic foot race and on its respective aition.
§8n2. When heroes themselves are represented as engaging in athletics, the narrative tends to treat the event overtly as athletics, not as a life-and-death struggle. I cite the story of the founding of the Nemean Games by the Seven against Thebes, who were the first to participate in the athletic events (e.g., Bacchylides Epinician 9.10-24 SM: see Ch.4§6n1); also the Funeral Games of Patroklos in Iliad XXIII (in this case, however, the happenings in the athletic events at least latently mirror the life-and-death martial ordeals of the heroes who participate in these events: see Whitman 1958.169).
§9n1. Brelich 1969.242-279; also Vidal-Naquet 1981.197-200 and Vernant 1982-1983.451-456. Cf. Henrichs 1981.198-208. Update in Kahil 1983.
§9n2. The sources are conveniently assembled in Brelich 1969.248-249; cf. also Henrichs 1981.200n2. See Kahil, pp. 237-238 on the iconographic evidence for a sacred footrace, in which young girls run naked; also p. 238 on the sacred dance.
§10n1. This epinician theme of reintegration at home is explored at length by Crotty 1982.104-138 and Slater 1984. Cf. also Kurke 1988.
§11n1. For an explicit reference to singing and dancing: Pindar Pythian1.1-4; cf. Ch.3§5.
§11n2. Calame 1977; cf. Burnett 1985.50 and 175n6, who surveys a series of passages where the epinician poet equates the chorus with the polis. For a useful survey of festivals serving as contexts for choral performance in the Greek-speaking areas of Italy and Sicily, see Burnett 1988.129-147.
§11n3. See Ch.5§5. Cf. Hubbard 1987b.5-6. At p. 8 he writes: "The chorus in Pindar's epinicia is never an independent personality in its own right, but is significant mainly as a reflection of community spirit in celebration of the athletic victory or some other object of praise."
§12n1. Just as the athlete's compensation is a ponos 'effort', so also the poet's: see Pindar
Pythian9.93 and Paean 7B.22. Also Nemean7.74, as discussed by Segal 1967.437-439.
§12n2. We may note that the epi- of this formation corresponds to the usage of the preposition epi with the dative case to designate the dead person for whom a given festival of funeral games was celebrated in compensation. See, for example, Ch.4§6n2.
§13n1. Cf. Ch.5§5. For a working definition of tribal society, see the discussion in N 1987.
§13n2. Discussion in N 1979.5-9, 114-117. It may be that descriptions of the deaths of warriors in Homeric poetry serve as a compensation for the absence of ritual detail in descriptions of the deaths of sacrificial victims. Homeric poetry, as a medium that seems to have reached its synthetic Panhellenic status by virtue of avoiding the parochial concerns of specific locales, specific regions, tends to avoid realistic descriptions of ritual, including ritual sacrifice (N, pp. 118-141). This is to be expected, given that ritual sacrifice--as for that matter any ritual--tends to be a localized phenomenon in Archaic Greece. What sacrificial scenes we do find in Homer are highly stylized, devoid of the kind of details that characterize real sacrifices as documented in the epigraphical evidence (cf. N, pp. 132-134, 217). In real sacrifice the ritual dismemberment of the sacrificial victim corresponds to the ideological articulation of the body politic (cf. Detienne and Svenbro 1979). Moreover, the disarticulation of the body in sacrifice presupposes the rearticulation of the body in myths of immortalization (N, pp. 208-209). Given, then, that Homeric poetry avoids delving into the details of disarticulation as it applies to animals, in that it avoids the Realien of sacrificial practice, we may expect a parallel avoidance of the topic of immortalization for the hero. By contrast the local practices of hero cult, contemporaneous with the evolution of Homeric poetry as we know it, are clearly based on religious notions of heroic immortalization (N, pp. 151-210). While personal immortalization is a theme too localized in orientation for Homeric poetry, the hero's death in battle, in all its staggering varieties, is universally acceptable. Homeric poetry compensates for its avoidance of details concerning the sacrifices of animals by dwelling on details concerning the martial deaths of heroes. In this way, the epic poetry of the Greeks, in describing the deaths of heroes, seems to serve as a compensation for sacrifice.
§15n1. Cf. N 1987.
§15n2. These terms were inspired by a conversation with J. Wickersham.
§15n3. See Rohde 1898.108-110; also Brelich 1958.144n202; N 1979.115. Cf. the distinction between the generation of Minos and anthrôpêiê geneê 'human ancestry' in Herodotus 3.122.2, as discussed by Darbo-Peschanski 1987.25. The remote ancestors, as distinct from the immediate ancestors, tend to be absorbed into the political genealogies of the city-state's existing constitution. See, for example, Roussel 1976.68 and 76n21 on the Boutadai, named after the cult hero Boutes. The Reform of Kleisthenes led to the naming of one of the dêmoi 'demes', the new social subdivisions of Athens, as Boutadai, which in turn led to the designation Eteoboutadai 'genuine Boutadai' to distinguish the genuine lineage from the deme; only one of the two branches of the Eteoboutadai resided in the deme to be called Boutadai at the time of the Reform (ibid.).
§16n1. On the chorus as representative of the polis, cf. again Burnett 1985.50 and 175n6, who surveys a series of passages where the epinician poet equates the chorus with the polis. Parallel to this function of the epinician poet, equating the chorus with the polis, is the function of the athlete himself within the ideology of epinician lyric poetry: as Hubbard 1986.44 notes, "the athletic
victor too serves as a private man on a collective mission and [...] his victories are just as much an adornment of his city as to himself personally."
§16n2. The polis of Thebes, myth has it, was founded when the sound of Amphion's lyre performance literally built the city walls (Hesiod F 182 MW; Pausanias 6.20.18). A related theme is apparent in the etymological connection of Latin mûnus 'token of reciprocity, duty' and commûnis 'communal' with moenia 'city walls'. The word kosmos can refer to (1) the 'arrangement' of beautiful adornment (Iliad XIV 187), (2) the beautiful 'arrangement' or adorned 'composition' of a song (as in Pindar F 194 SM; cf. Odyssey viii 489), (3) the 'arrangement' or 'constitution' of a polis (Herodotus 1.65.4), and later, by extension, (4) the 'arrangement' or 'order' of the universe (Xenophon Memorabilia 1.1.11). For the connection of this concept of kosmos with that of harmoniâ, dramatized in Theognis15-18 as the Wedding of Kadmos and Harmonia, an alternative myth about the foundation of Thebes, see N 1985.41 §25n2.
Epic, Praise, and the Possession of Poetry
§1. It has been argued that the athlete follows the ritual paradigm of the hero not only through an ordeal at the Games but also through a reintegration, by way of epinician lyric poetry, with the community at home. In what follows, I extend the argument: just as the Games, as ritual, momentarily collapse the distinction between hero and athlete, so too does epinician lyric poetry. For an effective demonstration, we must compare in detail the two different forms of poetry that are primarily associated with defining the hero and the athlete, namely, the epic of Homer and the epinician lyric poetry of Pindar. As the epinician is a kind of praise poetry, the distinction between epic and epinician can be traced back to a more fundamental opposition, between epic and praise poetry. 1
§2. In our initial survey of Archaic Greek literature from a broadened perspective of oral poetics, I started with the compositions attributed to Homer and ended with those of Pindar as the earliest and the latest examples respectively of Panhellenic traditions in poetry and song. 1 Before we set out to examine what else, besides a distinctly Panhellenic stance, is shared by these two traditions, let us observe the differences. For this purpose, we confront the question of occasionality in poetry and song, which helps explain the differentiation of epic and praise poetry. On this matter the testimony of Pindar's own wording is our most revealing source, and from it we learn not only about the nature of Pindar's traditions but also about the relationship of these traditions to those of Homer in particular and to the other traditions of Greek poetry and song in general. The title of the whole book, Pindar's Homer, conveys the kind of relationship that I hope to demonstrate in the course of my presentation. 2
§3. The occasionality of Pindar's medium is reflected in a word used in Pindar's diction to designate this medium: the word is ainos or ep-ainos, 1 which may be translated primarily as 'praise' in view of Elroy Bundy's observation that Pindar's epinician poetic tradition has one overarching purpose, that of praise. 2 Hence the common designation of Pindar's medium is
praise poetry. Another word used in Pindar's diction to designate his medium is kleos (plural klea/kleea), which can be interpreted to mean 'glory' or 'fame'--as conferred by song or poetry. An outstanding example is the declaration of Pindar: 3
xeinos eimi: skoteinon apechôn psogon, | hudatos hôte rhoas philon es andr' agôn | kleos etêtumon ainesô
I am a xenos. 4 Keeping away dark blame [psogos] and bringing genuine [etêtumon] 5 kleos, like streams of water, 6 to a man who is near and dear [philos], I will praise [= verb aineô] him.
§4. From the epic poetry of Homer, we see that this medium too refers to itself as kleos. 1 More important for now, however, since we are considering the differences between praise and epic poetry, is the fact that epic does not refer to itself as ainos. 2
§5. In contrast with kleos, the word ainos is more exclusive in its applications. It is concerned with function more than form. Or, to put it another way, it stresses the occasion for which a given form is used. The ainos is an affirmation, a marked speech-act, made by and for a marked social group. 1 As we see from Pindar's traditional diction, the ainos restricts and is restricted by its audience. As a medium the ainos specifies listeners who have the following qualifications:
the sophoi, that is, those who are 'skilled' in decoding the message encoded by the poet in his poetry 2
the agathoi, that is, those who are intrinsically 'noble' by virtue of having been raised on
proper ethical standards, which are the message encoded in the poetry 3
the philoi, that is, those who are 'near and dear' and who are thereby interconnected to the poet and to each other, so that the message that is encoded in the poetry may be transmitted to them and through them: communication through community. 4
§6. In this tripartite scheme, I have set up the distinction between code and message, with the
terminology of the Prague School of Linguistics, 1 in order to drive home a point that the lyric poetry of Pindar's ainos consistently makes about itself: namely, that the ainos is a code that carries the right message for those who are qualified and the wrong message or messages for those who are unqualified. By way of its self-definition, the ainos is predicated on an ideal: an ideal audience listening to an ideal performance of an ideal composition. But at the same time it is also predicated on the reality of uncertainties in interaction between performer and audience in the context of the actual performance of a composition: the ainos of Pindar is by its very character ambiguous, both difficult in its form and enigmatic in its content. As a difficult code that bears a difficult but correct message for the qualified and a wrong message or messages for the unqualified, the ainos communicates like an enigma--to use an English word that was borrowed
from and serves as a translation for the Greek ainigma (as in Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannus 393, 1525), which in turn is an actual derivative of ainos. An important example of this usage occurs in the poetry of Theognis (667-682), where the voice of the poet finishes an extended metaphor, the image of the ship of state caught in a seastorm (671-680), with the following declaration about the meaning of the symbol:
tauta moi êinichthô kekrummena tois agathoisin. ginôskoi d' an tis kai kakon an sophos êi.
Theognis 681-682
Let these things be riddling utterances [ainigma plural] hidden by me for the noble [agathoi]. One can be aware of even [future] misfortune, if one is skilled [= sophos]. 2
§7. In contrast with the praise poetry of Pindar, the epic poetry of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey makes no claims to exclusiveness and does not qualify as a form of ainos. Whereas both the epic poetry of Homer and the praise poetry of Pindar qualify as kleos, only praise poetry qualifies as ainos. On the other hand, whereas all praise poetry may qualify as ainos, not all examples of ainos are praise poetry. For example, the word ainos can also refer to the narrower concept of a speech of admonition, or par-ain-esis 'instructive speech'. 1 Or it can designate animal fables, such as those used by Archilochus to admonish his friends or blame his enemies. 2 As a double- edged mode of discourse, the ainos can admonish or blame as well as praise. 3 Moreover, the ainos can assume a variety of poetic forms. While it is sung and danced by choral groups in the Aeolic and dactylo-epitrite meters of Pindar, it is also recited by rhapsodes in such formats as the iambic meters of Archilochus 4 and the elegiac distichs of Theognis. 5 In other words it is better to think of the ainos as a mode of discourse, not as a genre. Still the point is that the genre of Homer's epic and the genre of Pindar's praise poetry are differentiated by the absence and presence respectively of self-definition in terms of ainos.
§8. How then does the fact that the kleos of epic fails to define itself as ainos make this kleos different from the kleos of praise poetry? In order to comprehend the difference, we must first consider the implications of the word kleos. In the epic poetry of Homer just as in the praise poetry of Pindar, kleos denotes the act of praising, 1 but in epic the praise takes place by the very process of narrating the deeds of heroes, predominantly in the third person. In praise poetry the praise is more direct: here too kleos denotes the act of praising, but the praise in this case applies to the here and now, inviting narration in the second person. In the epinicians or victory odes of Pindar, for example, the praise applies to the victories of athletes who competed in the great Panhellenic Games. The victory would be celebrated on the occasion of the victor's return from the Games to his native polis. The praise poetry of Pindar, then, is occasional. Occasionality is the essence of ainos. The epic poetry of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey on the other hand is distinctly not occasional: unlike the praise poem it does not praise anyone in the here and now of its own
performance. The praise of Homeric poetry is restricted to the heroes of the distant past. 2
§9. Whereas the epic of Homeric poetry is restricted to heroes, the praise of Pindaric song is not restricted to the victorious men and boys who were subjects of the poet's here and now. The word kleos in Pindar's praise poetry applies equally to the man of the present and the hero of the past, as in the following example:
legetai man Hektori men kleos anthêsai Skamandrou cheumasin | anchou, bathukrêmnoisi d' amph' aktais Helôrou, | [...] dedorken | paidi touth' Hagêsidamou phengos en halikiai prôtai
It is said that kleos bloomed for Hektor near the streams of Skamandros. And near the steep cliffs that rise above Heloros, [...] this light shone upon the coming of age of the son of Hagesidamos. Moreover, what is being praised about the man of the present, such as the athlete, is ideologically parallel to what is being praised about the hero. In the inherited diction of praise poetry, what an athlete undergoes in his pursuit of victory is denoted by ponos 'ordeal', also called kamatos or aethlos, and these very words apply also to the life-and-death struggles of heroes with their enemies, man and beast alike. 1
§10. In decidedly not making a distinction between the kleos due to an athlete of the present for his athletic event and the kleos due to a hero for his heroic deed, the ideology of Pindar's praise poetry is parallel to the ideology of the athletic games in which the athletes earned their kleos. As we have seen, the ideology of the games is fundamentally a religious one: each athletic festival, held on a seasonally recurring basis into perpetuity, is predicated on the death of a hero, on an eternally important proto-ordeal for which the seasonally recurring ordeals of athletes, in principle ongoing to eternity, serve as eternal compensation. This religious ideology, clearly attested in Pindar's praise poetry, is matched by the religious ideology of the poetry: each ordeal of each victorious athlete, compensating for the proto-ordeal of the hero who struggled and died, demands compensation of its own in the form of song offered as praise for the athlete. And the song in turn demands compensation from the victorious athlete and his family, to be offered to the composer of the song.
§11. Such a concluding link in the chain of compensation is clearly articulated throughout the praise poetry of Pindar, whenever the voice of the poet says that he owes it to his patrons to create a song (e.g., Olympian10.3, 10.8). This theme has been misunderstood by latter-day experts of Pindar as if it were a blatant illustration of Pindar's "mercenary Muse": when Pindar says that he owes the song to his patrons, critics misunderstand him as referring merely to a contract between patron and poet, entailing services to be performed and to be paid for. 1 This is to ignore the premonetary and in some respects sacral heritage of the very concept of value in Archaic Greek society. 2
§12. Of course other contemporary deeds, besides those of athletics, could have demanded requital in song of praise. The most obvious category is victorious deeds in war, which are in fact
denoted by the same terms that are used for victorious deeds in athletics: in the diction of Pindar and elsewhere, a man who fights in a war undergoes an ordeal as denoted by the words ponos (e.g., Pythian1.54), kamatos (Pythian2.19), and aethlos (e.g., Iliad III 126). Once again we see a collapsing of distinctions that affect the kleos due a hero and the kleos due a man. Only in the present case both hero and man are potentially getting kleos in return for the same activity, namely, a martial struggle. The internal evidence of poetic diction can be reinforced by external evidence: as we can observe from the facts collected by Angelo Brelich on the institution of warfare in Archaic Greece, fighting in wars was indeed a ritual activity, parallel to the ritual activity of engaging in athletic games. 1 Accordingly, the compensation for deeds of war through songs of praise, just like the compensation for deeds of athletics, can be considered a vital link of a ritual chain.
§13. But the picture is drastically affected by other developments in the history of Archaic Greek civilization. With the evolution of the polis or city-state and the concurrent evolution of the phalanx, an army of citizen soldiers, the factor of communal effort in warfare tends to counteract the factor of individual aristocratic enterprise. 1 Thus the opportunity for individual feats of war, let alone the opportunity for celebrating them, is considerably reduced. The best chance for any individual distinction would have been afforded by being killed in war. (Pindar's Isthmian7 gives us a vivid depiction.)
§14. But even here the evolution of the polis produces a drastic effect. The emerging institution of the polis discourages, often by way of actual legislation, the glorification of aristocratic individuals or individual families in the context of funerary practices in general and funerary praise poetry in particular. 1 The very art form of the poetic epigram, where the written record becomes the equivalent of performance, is at least in part a reflex of the strictures imposed by the polis against the performance of elaborate songs of praise in the context of funerals. 2
§15. Such restrictions on the glorification of the aristocratic individual are a reflex of a much larger-scale phenomenon, where the institutions of the polis are in the process of being transformed from and then conflicting with the institutions of the tribal society that preceded it. 1 It is in this historical context that we must reconsider the social function of the ainos.
§16. In the process of the detribalization of the polis, inherited ideologies and practices concerning ancestors--a key determinant of aristocratic individuality--were drastically curtailed. For one, the inherited ideologies about ancestors as encoded in genealogical traditions became differentiated into mythological genealogies of heroes and historical genealogies of immediate ancestors. 1 This process was of course intensified by a universal tendency to mythologize remote as opposed to immediate ancestry: in genealogical traditions the progressive distancing of a given ancestor from the here and now progressively reintegrates that person into the current patterns of myth making in the here and now. In any case, with the advent of the city-state heroes became differentiated from ancestors. 2 With this differentiation of inherited ideologies came a parallel differentiation of inherited practices: the institutional worship of ancestors became differentiated into two separate but related practices, the worship of heroes and the cult of immediate ancestors. 3
§17. In Archaic Greek history the gap produced by these differentiations between heroes and immediate ancestors could be bridged only by individuals who developed, or had already inherited, the wealth, power, and prestige to rise as individuals above the institutions of the city- state. A prime example of such bridging is the survival of inherited royal dynasties like the dual kingship at Sparta. It is said of the Spartans by Xenophon Constitution of the Lacedaemonians 15.9: ouch hôs anthrôpous all' hôs hêrôas tous lakedaimoniôn basileis protetimêkasin 'they have come to honor the [dead] kings of the Lacedaemonians [= Spartans] not as men but as heroes'. 1 Once dead, the kings of Sparta were exempt from distinctions between heroes and immediate ancestors because they tended to be exempt from the ongoing detribalization of the polis of Sparta. 2
§18. An equally important example of such bridging between heroes and immediate ancestors takes place in the so-called age of tyrants and thereafter, when personalities like Peisistratos of Athens, Periandros of Corinth, Polykrates of Samos, Thrasyboulos of Miletus, and Kleisthenes of Sikyon finally succeeded in making a breakthrough into our recorded history as real historical figures. 1 The public foundation of these personalities was the wealth, power, and prestige that they ideologically justified through their lineages, stretched all the way back to the age of heroes, as in the case of the Peisistratidai of Athens. Their dynasty claimed descent from the Neleidai, a lineage that extends forward in time to Melanthos and his son Kodros, two of the kings of Athens (Herodotus 5.65.3). The ancestor of the Neleidai is none other than Neleus, father of the Homeric Nestor (ibid.). The line extending all the way from Neleus down to king Kodros is given in full by Hellanicus FGH 4 F 125. The sons of Kodros are Medon and another Neleus. Myth has it that this second Neleus left Athens to become the founder of the Ionian constellation of the Twelve Cities (ibid.). In another report, Herodotus 9.97, Neleus, this younger son of Kodros, is specifically credited with the foundation of Miletus; here his name takes the form Neileôs. The ancient lineage of kings at Miletus traced themselves back to this Neileos (Aristotle F 556 Rose). As for Medon, the older son and heir of Kodros, myth has it that he remained in power at Athens, where he undergoes a transformation, according to some versions, from basileus 'king' to arkhôn 'archon' (Aristotle Constitution of the Athenians 3.3). 2 Such lineages represented not only relations in genealogy, both real and mythical: they also translated into relations in wealth, power, and prestige both within and beyond the polis.
§19. The names of these aristocratic lineages took the form of plural patronymics, with suffixes in
-adai and -idai, indicating a group that is linked by ties of common ancestry leading back to the cult of a given hero. This pattern corresponds to that of kings, as we see from the testimony of Ephorus FGH 70 F 118 (in Strabo 8.5.5 C366), who says that the two royal houses of Sparta were called Agiadai and Eurypontidai because it was the ancestors Agis and Eurypontos, not their respective fathers Eurysthenes and Prokles, whose hero cults constituted the basis of the lineage. 1 Another example, this time taken from Athens, is the powerful old lineage known as the Medontidai, who traced themselves back specifically to Medon, king of Athens (Pausanias 4.5.10), rather than to his father Kodros or to his father Melanthos (mentioned in Herodotus 5.65.3). A prominent descendant of this lineage of Medontidai is the Lawgiver par excellence of Athens, Solon (cf. Plutarch Life of Solon 1). 2 As yet another example, we may consider the Iamidai: in the only instance where Pausanias ever refers to one of his 'guides' by name, citing
'Aristarchus, the guide at Olympia' at 5.20.4, the reference concerns a living descendant of the lineage of the Iamidai, "who are attested for almost one thousand years as the priests and seers of the Eleans." 3 Still other examples include the Bakkhiadai of Corinth, stemming from Bakkhis, the fifth king of Corinth (cf. Diodorus 7.9.4, Pausanias 2.4.4); the Penthilidai of Lesbos, stemming from the hero Penthilos, son of Orestes (Pausanias 2.18.5-6, Aristotle Politics 1311b27); and the aforementioned Neleidai of Miletus, stemming from Neleus / Neileôs (Aristotle F 556 Rose). Finally there is the outstanding example of the Peisistratidai at Athens. Herodotus (5.65.4) makes it explicit that Hippokrates, the father of Peisistratos, named his son after the hero Peisistratos, son of Nestor (cf. Odyssey iii 36). It is clear from this and other indications that the lineage of the Peisistratidai (Herodotus 5.62-63 et passim) was predicated on the ancestry of this Peisistratos, son of Nestor. 4 Even more, it can be argued that this lineage of the Peisistratidai was founded on the actual hero cult of this ancestor. 5 For a clear reference to hero cult as the basis for a given lineage, I cite "Aristotle" On Marvellous Things Heard 106, describing cult practices in Tarentum, where the Atreidai 'sons of Atreus' (as well as the Tydeidai, the Aiakidai, and the Laertiadai) are recipients of cult honors that are distinct from those of the Agamemnonidai, even though Agamemnon is of course the son of Atreus. 6
§20. References to such aristocratic lineages are conventionally made in terms of oikos (or oikiâ) 'household' or 'family'. 1 A prominent example is the oikiâ of Miltiades (Herodotus 6.35.1), of the lineage Philaidai, characterized as the steady producer of four-horse teams that win at chariot races (tethrippotrophos: Herodotus ibid.; cf. Pherecydes FGH 3 F 2); Philaios was son of Ajax, son of Telamon, son of Aiakos (Herodotus ibid.). 2 Another example are the Alkmaionidai of Athens, the lineage of the celebrated Kleisthenes, Reformer of Athens, maternal grandson of the elder Kleisthenes, the tyrant of Sikyon (Herodotus 5.66-68). 3 One of the ancestors in this lineage of the Alkmaionidai, whose actual name was Alkmaion, was the very first Athenian to win the chariot race at the Olympics (Isocrates 16.25). 4
§21. Such rich and powerful families, one of whose primary means of demonstrating prestige was victory at the Panhellenic Games, could readily be perceived as a potential threat to the polis-- as potential achievers of tyrannical power. A prime example is a figure called Kylon, an Olympic victor (probably 640 B.C.), who nearly succeeded in becoming tyrant of Athens in a coup d'état attempted at a time when the Olympics were in progress (possibly 632 B.C.; cf. Herodotus 5.71, Thucydides 1.126; Plutarch Solon 12.1-3). The men who were held responsible for the guilt of murdering some of the perpetrators, perhaps including Kylon, when that group sought asylum after the failed attempt (as we read in the same sources, with varying details), were members of the Alkmaionidai, the very lineage that has just been cited as a prime example of rich and powerful families who are perceived as a threat to the polis. The Alkmaionidai, as the lineage of one Megakles, who was held primarily responsible for the murders, were officially exiled in compensation for the pollution that they supposedly inflicted on the polis (Plutarch Solon 12.3).
§22. This lineage of the Alkmaionidai was in any case notoriously suspect of potential tyranny. The son of this Megakles, Alkmaion, was the first Athenian to win the chariot race at the Olympics (again Isocrates 16.25). The chariot victory of Alkmaion is mentioned also by Herodotus, who describes him in this context as a tethrippotrophos 'producer of four-horse
chariot teams' (6.125.5) and who links the Olympic victory with an anecdote about the fabulous wealth of this same Alkmaion, acquired from none other than the ultimate representative of tyranny, the tyrant Croesus of Lydia (6.125.1-4). This anecdote is pertinent to the conventional theme that stresses the corruption of aristocratic society by a surfeit of riches and the resulting dangers of tyranny. 1 A son of Alkmaion, another Megakles, married the daughter of the tyrant of Sikyon, Kleisthenes (Herodotus 6.130.2). 2 As Herodotus concedes, it was for this reason (cf. 6.131.1), as well as many others (e.g., 1.59-61), that the Alkmaionidai throughout their history were perceived as potential tyrants. 3 In this context, we may note that another Megakles, whose father was a younger brother of Kleisthenes the Reformer and who won the chariot race at the Pythian Games in Delphi at 486 B.C., was ostracized from Athens in that same year, according to Aristotle Constitution of Athens 22.5; 4 this chariot victory by Megakles of the Alkmaionidai was celebrated by a victory ode of Pindar, Pythian7, a composition in which the allusive use of phthonos 'envy' (19) apparently refers to the ostracism and exile of Megakles. 5 The mother of Alcibiades was descended from the Alkmaionidai (Isocrates ibid.); so too was the mother of Pericles of Athens (Thucydides 1.127.1; cf. Herodotus 6.131.2). Moreover, the tyrant Peisistratos had been married to the daughter of Megakles, son of the Olympic winner Alkmaion (Herodotus 1.61.1-2).
§23. In the so-called age of tyrants, such personalities "represent a force for innovation in Greek political history and step upon its stage as Greece's first true individuals." 1 To overreach the polis is to become an individual, at least in public memory. Before the age of tyrants, such a pattern of standing out in the community could be achieved only by the likes of kings, who literally embodied the community through their status as the very incarnation of the body politic, and who maintained their status in public memory through the institution of dynasty, a continuum of power visibly expressed in the genetics of prestigious alliances through various strategies of intermarriage. In the age of tyrants, the royal patterns of embodying and thus potentially overreaching the community were further extended, in line with the dictum of Aristotle that the way to maintain a tyranny is to make it ever 'more royal' (turannidos sôtêria poiein autên basilikôteran Politics 1314a10). Whatever the policies of a tyrant may be, he must act the part of the king, says Aristotle (Politcs 1314a39 and following). And the building of dynasties was energetically pursued: thus, for example, the tyrant Pittakos of Mytilene married into the royal house of the Penthilidai, descended from the Atreidai by way of Orestes (Diogenes Laertius 1.81). 2 Various tyrants claimed the title of king, as in the case of Periandros of Corinth (e.g., Herodotus 3.52.4) and Gelon of Syracuse (e.g., Herodotus 7.161.1). 3 Still more, the tyrant would claim a special relationship with the chief god of the community: thus, for example, Peisistratos of Athens, as personal protégé of the goddess Athena, was an occupant of the acropolis (Herodotus 1.59.6; Aristotle Constitution of Athens 14.1; Plutarch Solon 30), the traditional abode of the ancient kings of Athens (cf. Iliad II 547-549). 4
§24. Most important of all for the present argument, however, Peisistratos and the Peisistratidai, by virtue of controlling the acropolis of Athens, thereby controlled the central repository of oracular wisdom (Herodotus 5.90.2; cf. 5.72.3-4). Such oracular wisdom took the form of poetry (a fundamental passage is Herodotus 7.6.3-5). 1 And here we come to a point of central concern:
the possession of poetry was a primary sign of the tyrant's wealth, power, and prestige.
§25. When Kleomenes, king of Sparta, managed to penetrate the acropolis of Athens for a brief period after the expulsion of the Peisistratidai (Herodotus 5.90.2; 5.72.3-4), he expressly took possession of the khrêsmoi 'oracular utterances' that had been stored there by the family of tyrants in the hieron 'temple':
ektêsato de ho Kleomenês ek tês Athênaiôn akropolios tous chrêsmous, tous ektênto men proteron hoi Peisistratidai, exelaunomenoi de elipon en tôi hirôi. kataleiphthentas de ho Kleomenês anelabe
Kleomenes had taken possession [= verb kektêmai] of these oracular utterances [khrêsmoi], taking them from the acropolis of the Athenians. Previously, the Peisistratidai had possession [= verb kektêmai] of them, but, when they were driven out of Athens, they left them in the temple. It was there that Kleomenes found them and took them.
It seems clear from the context that the poetry in question is private property: it is literally possessed (verb kektêmai), previously by the tyrants of Athens and subsequently by the king of Sparta.
§26. I draw attention to a detail that explains what turns this poetry into private property: the words of such compositions have been written down. This detail, however, does not prove that writing was the actual key to the composition, let alone performance, of oracular poetry, the kind that we see here falling into the possession of tyrants and kings. In fact oracular poetry, like all the poetry of the Archaic era, was activated not through writing but through actual performance. Even as late as the second century A.D., the era of Plutarch, we can find indications of this inherited set of priorities:
kai gar ei graphein edei mê legein tous chrêsmous, ouk an oimai tou theou ta grammata nomizontes epsegomen hoti leipetai kalligraphiai tôn basilikôn
Plutarch The Oracles at Delphi No Longer Given in Verse 397c
For if it were necessary to write the oracles, rather than say them, I do not think that we would consider the handwriting to be the god's and find fault with it as falling short of the calligraphic standards of royal scribes.
§27. Turning to evidence from the earlier times, let us begin with an explicit reference by Herodotus to the performance of oracular poetry: a figure called Onomakritos, described as a khrêsmologos 'speaker of oracular utterances [khrêsmoi]' (7.6.3), is pictured in the act of 'singing oracular utterances [khrêsmoi]' for the purpose of persuading the Great King of Persia
(chrêsmôideôn 7.6.5), with the active support of the now-exiled Peisistratidai of Athens and the Aleuadai of Thessaly, 1 who reinforce what he sings by presenting, through their own speeches, their supporting judgment (gnômas apodeiknumenoi 'presenting judgments' ibid.). 2
§28. Even when the utterance of an oracle is written down, being written down does not make it private property. Throughout the narrative of Herodotus, it is normal procedure for the official emissaries who consult an oracle to write down the poetic utterances they hear (e.g., 1.47-48, 7.142.1, 8.135.2-3; cf. Aristophanes Birds982). Still, the force of the oracular statement is not activated, the words do not become a completed speech-act, until they are performed before the audience for whom it was intended. Let us take for example the case of the Athenian emissaries who consulted the Delphic Oracle about their impending fate in the Persian War: having written down what the oracle told them, they returned to Athens and apêngellon es ton dêmon 'announced it to the people' (Herodotus 7.142.1). In fact there are surviving reports of severe punishments visited upon an emissary who would reveal the message of the oracle, once transcribed, to anyone other than the intended audience (Suda s.v. ta tria). 1
§29. With this added perspective let us return to the story of Herodotus about the oracular utterances kept by the Peisistratidai on top of the acropolis (5.90.2). 1 To repeat, the writing down of the oracular utterances makes it possible for the tyrants to possess this poetry as their private property. But this poetry is private property only because the tyrants, as Herodotus implies with the details about the storage of poetry on the acropolis, have the power not to make all such poetry public property, by withholding public performance. 2
§30. This negative attitude toward tyrants, as reflected in the story of Herodotus, contrasts with the positive attitude fostered by the tyrants themselves as the owners of poetry. It is a recurrent theme in the public image of the tyrant that he makes it possible for the community to possess, as its own public property, the poetic heritage that had been usurped for private gain by a degenerate aristocracy. A fundamental passage in this regard is "Plato" Hipparchus, where Socrates describes Hipparkhos, here presented as the oldest of the sons of Peisistratos, as wishing to educate the citizens of Athens (boulomenos paideuein tous politas 228c) by introducing the public performance of the epics of Homer at the Feast of Panathenaia (228b), by sending a ship to fetch the poet Anacreon from Teos (228c), and by keeping in his company the master of choral lyric poetry, Simonides of Keos (ibid.). In doing these things, Hipparkhos showed that he was generous in sharing his sophiâ, his own understanding of poetry, with the community (ouk oiomenos dein oudeni sophias phthonein 228c). 1 After having 'educated' the people in the city proper, he turned his attention to the population of the countryside (228c-d), where he erected public inscriptions of poetry reflecting his sophiâ:
kapeita tês sophias tês hautou, hên t' emathen kai hên autos exêuren, eklexamenos ha hêgeito sophôtata einai, tauta autos enteinas eis elegeion hautou poiêmata kai epideigmata tês sophias epegrapsen
He then selected what he considered to be the most skillful things [sopha] from his own understanding of poetry [= sophiâ], both what he had learned [from others] and what he had invented for himself, 2 and personally put these things into the elegiac meter, 3 inscribing them as poems of his own [on the herm-statues] and as public displays [epideigmata] of his understanding of poetry [= sophiâ]. 4
The language of the two epigrams that are quoted and attributed to Hipparkhos in "Plato"
Hipparchus 229a-b matches that of an actual inscription on a herm-statue from the era of the Peisistratidai (CEG 304). 5
§31. It is made explicit in this Platonic passage that the poetic utterances of the tyrant were intended to rival those that are attributed to the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi (Hipparchus 228e). Moreover, it is implicit that the public display of these poetic utterances, by way of inscriptions set up in public, is the equivalent of public performance. Such equivalence is the essence of the epigram. I draw attention to the wording that introduces the accomplishments of Hipparkhos, starting with his organization of Homeric performances, continuing with his patronage of such figures as Anacreon and Simonides, and concluding with the public display of his epigrams: in doing all these things, Socrates is quoted as saying, Hipparkhos 'presented publicly the beautiful accomplishments connected with his understanding of poetry [sophiâ]' (kala erga sophias apedeixato 228b). Such a stance of sharing with the public is what lies behind the public gesture recorded in Gorgon FGH 515 F 18 (by way of the scholia to Pindar Olympian7, I, p. 195 Drachmann), where a victory ode of Pindar, Olympian7, commissioned to celebrate the Olympic victory of Diagoras of Rhodes in 464 B.C., is inscribed in gold letters and dedicated in the temple of Athena Lindia in Rhodes. We are dealing here with a public gesture. 1 So also in the case of the poetry attributed to the tyrant Hipparchus, where the words are ostensibly written down as a public inscription, not as a private transcript of secret documents to be hoarded in some treasure chest. 2
§32. The notion of 'public presentation', as in the Platonic description of the poetry attributed to the tyrant Hipparchus, is expressed by way of the verb apo-deik-numai (apedeixato Hipparchus 228b). 1 Similarly in the case of Onomakritos, described in the act of 'singing oracular utterances [khrêsmoi]' to persuade the Great King of Persia (chrêsmôideôn Herodotus 7.6.5): the narrative makes it clear that the performance of these oracular utterances is being authorized by the Peisistratidai (along with the Aleuadai), who in this instance even reinforce what Onomakritos sings by publicly presenting in their own speeches their supporting judgment (ibid.). Again, the notion of 'public presentation' is expressed here by the verb apo-deik-numai (apodeiknumenoi ibid.). 2
§33. That oracular poetry, in order to have effect, requires public performance is made clear by the semantics of the words prophêtês 'declarer' and theôros 'emissary'. 1 Let us begin with prophêtês, designating a figure in society whose hereditary role is to formalize in poetry the inspiration received by the mantis 'seer', as we see from the explicit wording of Plato: hothen dê kai to tôn prophêtôn genos epi tais entheois manteiais kritas epikathistanai nomos 'and for this
reason it is customary to appoint the lineage of declarers [prophêtês pl.] to be judges [kritês pl.] over the inspired [entheos pl.] mantic utterances [manteia pl.]' (Plato Timaeus 72a). As such, the prophêtai are hupokritai 'actors', in that they act out the mantic utterance, with its ainigmoi 'enigmatic words' (tês di' ainigmôn houtoi phêmês kai phantaseôs hupokritai Timaeus 72b). 2 The prime example is the official prophêtês of the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi (cf. Herodotus 8.36, 37). 3 The prophêtês declares, formalizes as a speech-act, the words of the inspired mantis. 4 In the case of the Oracle at Delphi, the office of the inspired mantis was traditionally held by a priestess, known as the Puthiâ 'Pythia' (cf. Plutarch The Oracles in Delphi No Longer Given in Verse 397b-c; Strabo 9.3.5 C419). 5 From stories about famous attempts to bribe the Pythia (e.g., Herodotus 6.66.3, 6.75.3), 6 we know that it was the Pythia, not the prophêtês, who controlled the content of the mantic utterance. I infer that the prophêtês controlled the form. The standard transmission of this form, as we see most clearly in the numerous quotations of the Delphic Oracle in Herodotus, was the poetic form of dactylic hexameter. Accordingly, I see no reason to doubt that the prophêtês was involved in the poetic formalization of prophecy. 7
§34. The mantis, then, is the middle man between the source of inspiration and the prophêtês, the recomposer of the inspired message in poetic form. Alternatively, in the realm of myth, there are situations where we see no middle man. Thus the seer par excellence, Teiresias, who declares the will of Zeus, is the 'prophêtês of Zeus' (Pindar Nemean1.60). Here we are witnessing a relic of an earlier and undifferentiated stage, in that Teiresias is generally known as a mantis (e.g., Odyssey xi 99). In other words the figure of Teiresias represents a stage where the prophêtês is the mantis. 1 The diction of poetry preserves further relics of such an undifferentiated stage, where the prophecy of the mantis and the poetry formulated by the prophêtês are as yet one: there are instances where the word prophêtês designates the poet as the one who declares the voice of the Mousa 'Muse' (Bacchylides Epinician 8.3). A particularly striking example is Pindar F 150 SM: manteueo moisa prophateusô d' egô 'be a mantis, Muse, and I shall be the prophêtês'. 2
§35. There is yet another pertinent use of prophêtês: this word also designates the herald who declares the winner at athletic games (e.g., Bacchylides Epinician 9.28: in this case the reference is to the Isthmian Games). This usage is crucial for our understanding of another word, theôros 'emissary', meaning literally 'he who sees [root hor-] a vision [theâ]', in the specific sense of designating the official delegate of a given polis who is sent out to observe the athletic games and to bring back the news of victory ( Herodotus 1.59.1, 8.26: in this case the reference is to the Olympic Games). Thus the prophêtês is the one who declares the message of victory at the Games, while the theôros is the one who witnesses the message and takes it back to the polis, where he declares it to the polis.
§36. Similarly the theôros is the official delegate of a given polis who is to bring back the message of the oracle: there are many examples, the most famous of which is Kreon in Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannus 114. Thus the prophêtês is the one who declares the message of the Oracle at Delphi, while the theôros is the one who witnesses the message and takes it back to the polis, where he declares it to the polis. 1
§37. After the consultation at Delphi, the theôros was to deliver to his community the communication of the Oracle, and there were severe sanctions against any emissary who would divulge the message of the oracle to outsiders before returning home (again Suda s.v. ta tria. 1 This message was a privileged kind of communication. As Heraclitus declares (22 B 93 DK), the god at Delphi neither legei 'speaks' nor kruptei 'conceals': rather he sêmainei 'indicates'. 2 The verb sêmainô 'indicate' is derived from the noun sêma, which means 'sign' or 'signal' and which derives from a concept of inner vision (as attested in the Sanskrit cognate dhyâma, derived from the verb dhî-). 3 Correspondingly the word theôros means literally 'he who sees [root hor-] a vision [theâ]'. Thus the god Apollo of the Oracle at Delphi, when he sêmainei 'indicates', is conferring an inner vision upon the theôros, the one who consults him. Both the encoder and the decoder are supposedly operating on the basis of an inner vision. Greek usage makes it clear that the prophêtês, who communicates the words of Apollo to those who consult the god, likewise sêmainei 'indicates' (cf. Herodotus 8.37.2). In this relationship, where the god of inspiration sêmainei 'indicates' to the theôros the inner vision of the poetry, we see the hermeneutic model for the processes of encoding and decoding the ainos. Moreover, this relationship between the words sêmainô 'make a sign [sêma]' and theôros 'he who observes the vision' is pertinent to the usage of the modern lexical creations semantics / semiotics and theory.
§38. In Greek usage someone sêmainei 'indicates', that is, 'makes a sign [sêma]', when speaking from a superior vantage point, as when a scout goes to the top of a hill and then comes back down to indicate what he saw ( Herodotus 7.192.1, 7.219.1). 1 By extension, someone sêmainei 'makes a sign [sêma]' when he or she speaks from a metaphorically superior vantage point, as when an authoritative person makes a pronouncement that arbitrates between contending points of view (Herodotus 1.5.3). But the ultimate voice of authority belongs to the god of the Oracle at Delphi, whose supreme vantage point confers upon him the knowledge of all things, even the precise number of all grains of sand in the universe (Herodotus 1.47.3; cf. Pindar Pythian9.44-49).
§39. Thus it is most appropriate for poets, when speaking with the voice of authority, to compare themselves to a theôros, one who consults the Oracle and to whom the Oracle sêmainei 'makes a sign [sêma]' through the intermediacy of the priestess of Apollo, the Pythia: 1
tornou kai stathmês kai gnômonos andra theôron euthuteron chrê <emen> Kurne phulassomenon, hôitini ken Puthôni theou chrêsas' hiereia omphên sêmênêi pionos ex adutou:
oute ti gar prostheis ouden k' eti pharmakon heurois oud' aphelôn pros theôn amplakiên prophugois
Theognis 805-810
A man who is theôros must be more straight, Kyrnos, being on his guard, than a carpenter's pin and rule and square
--a man to whom the priestess [i.e., the Pythia] of the god at Delphi makes a response,
as she indicates [sêmainei] the Voice [= omphê 'sacred utterance'] 2 from the opulent shrine. For you would not find any remedy if you add anything,
nor would you escape from veering, in the eyes of the gods, if you take anything away.
§40. Just as the priestess, through her intermediacy, sêmainei 'indicates' the message of the god, so also the poet speaks authoritatively, as if a lawgiver. Again I quote from Theognis: 1
chrê me para stathmên kai gnômona tênde dikassai
Kurne dikên, ison t' amphoteroisi domen, mantesi t' oiônois te kai aithomenois hieroisin, ophra mê amplakiês aischron oneidos echô
Theognis 543-546
I must render this judgment, Kyrnos, along [the straight line of] a carpenter's rule and square, and I must give to both sides their equitable share,
with the help of seers, portents, and burning sacrifice, so that I may not incur shameful reproach for veering.
By implication the poet is a theôros who sêmainei 'indicates' to the community what the god indicates to him. To be a theôros, as he declares, you may not change for your audience one iota of what the god had imparted to you, just as the man who consults the Oracle must report to the community exactly what the priestess had told. In these examples from Theognis, there is no middle man, no prophêtês, between the Pythia and the theôros, because the theôros is the prophêtês as well. The poetry here collapses the attested differentiation between the one who formulates the inspired word as poetry and the one who takes it back to the community.
§41. That the poet is truly speaking here in the mode of a lawgiver is clear from the traditions reported by Herodotus 1.65.4 about Lycurgus, the lawgiver of Sparta: it is the Pythia of the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi who indicates (phrasai) to Lycurgus the law code of Sparta. 1
§42. We have seen the following patterns of semantic differentiation in words that designate the transmitters of oracular poetry:
mantis: 'he who is in a special mental state', that is, 'he who is inspired [entheos = having the god within]' (cf. Plato Timaeus 72a), he who communicates in a sacred medium
prophêtês: either mantis (e.g., Teiresias) or more specifically one who communicates the message of the mantis in a poetic medium (e.g., the official who turns the inspired message of the Pythia into dactylic hexameters or the poet who turns the inspiring message of the Muse into a variety of meters)
theôros: either prophêtês (e.g., Lycurgus or Theognis in the stance of a lawgiver) or, more specifically, one who is officially delegated by the polis to communicate the message of the mantis / prophêtês 1 to the polis 2
§43. The essence of oracular poetry is that it serves to uphold the existing social order; it derives
its authority from such ultimate sources of authorization as Apollo's Oracle at Delphi. For this reason, the two kings of Sparta were the official safekeepers of oracular poetry (Herodotus 6.57.4), sharing their knowledge with four officials, two appointed by each of them, whose duty it was to be emissaries to the Oracle at Delphi and who were known as the Puthioi (6.57.2, 4). These Puthioi were public figures, taking their meals with the kings at the public expense (6.57.2). The existence of these officials at Sparta makes it clear that the poetry of oracular utterances, just like other poetry, was considered to be the possession of the polis.
§44. In Sparta the use of poetry for private gain, even on the part of a king, was a symptom of tyrannical tendencies, of usurpation: thus, for example, in the story told by Thucydides concerning the downfall of the Spartan king Pausanias--whose meteoric rise in personal prestige as a result of the Persian War led to his eventual downfall--the charges brought against the king included the fact that he had an epigram inscribed on the victory tripod dedicated at Delphi celebrating the defeat of the Persians, an epigram commissioned 'for his private purposes' (idiai Thucydides 1.132.2). The poet who was commissioned to compose this epigram, as quoted by Thucydides (ibid.), was none other than Simonides of Keos (Simonides EG 17; on the authority of Pausanias 3.8.2), whom we have already seen described as a member of the inner circle of Hipparkhos, tyrant of Athens ("Plato" Hipparchus 228c). 1 In this case even the mention of a privately owned name is enough to raise suspicions that the poetry in which the name is mentioned is being used for private purposes, though the dedication on which the epigram is inscribed happens to be a public offering at Delphi.
§45. In the story told by Herodotus about the possession of oracular poetry by the Peisistratidai, the misuse implied by the narration is analogous. Here the public possession of poetry to be performed is implicitly being diverted to private possession, the private gain of tyrants, by way of writing: when Herodotus says that the Peisistratidai of Athens ektênto 'had possession [= verb kektêmai]' of the oracles (5.90.2), he is in effect talking negatively about the private usurpation of public performance meant for the polis. But the force of an oracular statement is not activated, the words do not become a completed speech-act, until they are performed before the audience for whom it was intended, as in the story about the Athenian emissaries who consulted the Delphic Oracle about their impending fate in the Persian War: having written down what the Oracle told them, they returned to Athens and apêngellon es ton dêmon 'announced it to the
people' (Herodotus 7.142.1). 1
§46. This Herodotean outlook on tyrants, as reflected by his story about the Peisistratidai and their private possession of oracular poetry, may be contrasted with the outlook of Thucydides, whose wording nevertheless reflects similar patterns of thought concerning the contrast of private and public possession of discourse. Let us consider the expression ktêma...es aiei 'a possession [ktêma, derivative of verb kektêmai] for all time' used by Thucydides (1.22.4) in talking positively about his own private preservation of knowledge about affairs of state. Thucydides here is setting up a choice between a private possession of knowledge on the one hand, which is in his power to transmit to the one who possesses the text, and on the other hand the public display or performance of such knowledge, which would be conditioned by the vicissitudes of public performance in the polis, and which he describes as a 'competitive effort [agônisma, derivative of agôn] meant for hearing in the here and now' (agônisma eW to parachrêma akouein ibid.). This negative image of public performance, which is meant to serve as a foil for the work
of Thucydides, is equivalent to the medium represented by Herodotus. 1 From the standpoint of Herodotus, by contrast, the possession of his own medium is open to the public: his medium is in fact presented as a public possession, so that whatever he writes can be equated with whatever he would say publicly. 2
§47. This positive notion, that a piece of writing can in fact become a public possession, brings us back to the corresponding negative notion, that writing had encouraged the private possession of the public media of singing or making speeches: for Herodotus, such private possession by way of writing is a characteristic of tyrants. In the Histories of Herodotus, the very act of writing letters is typical of tyrants and the kind of power that they exercise (e.g., Polykrates of Samos at
3.40.4 in the general context of 3.40- 43; cf. 2.123.1). 1 The secretiveness of this kind of writing is best symbolized in the story about a stratagem contrived by the tyrant Histiaios of Miletus. He had a secret letter written on top of the shaven scalp of a faithful slave, whose hair was then allowed to grow back before he was finally sent off to deliver his message (Herodotus 5.35.2-4). The hair that grows over the letter--the cover that hides the message--must be removed for both the encoding and the decoding. 2
§48. To return to the story about the private possession of oracular poetry by the Peisistratidai (Herodotus 5.90.2): as long as private interests control the public medium, there is the ever- present danger of premeditated selective control over the content of poetry, leading to stealthy distortions or perversions of the poetic truth. This is the point made by Herodotus when he narrates how Onomakritos was once 'caught red-handed, by Lasus of Hermione, in the act of putting his own poetry, an oracular utterance [khrêsmos], inside the wording of Musaeus' (ep' autophôrôi halous hupo Lasou tou Hermioneos empoieôn es ta Mousaiou chrêsmon 7.6.3). The protection against such tampering can be visualized as a sphrâgis 'seal', such as the one that is figuratively placed on the poetry of Theognis (19-20), which prevents any stealthy changes to the genuine wording (21). 1 Similarly the words of the Oracle, as received from the Pythia (Theognis 807) and delivered by the theôros to his community (805), must resist any and all stealthy changes (809-810). 2 In the language of inscriptions, we can see that the literal placing of a sphrâgis on a ratified speech-act is tantamount to making it public:
labontes tode to psaphisma para tou | grammateos diapempsasthôn Knidiôn prostai[t]ais kai [tô]i damôi [sph]ragixamenôn tôn tamiian tai [dam]osiai sphragidi
DGE 226.3-6 (Thera iii/ ii B.C.)
...taking this resolution from the scribe, let them send it to the presidents and dêmos of the Knidians, after the treasurers [tamiai] have sealed it with the public seal [sphrâgis].
§49. The mention of Musaeus at Herodotus 7.6.3, where his oracular utterances are being stealthily reshaped by Onomakritos, should be compared with another passage, at 8.96.2, where Herodotus goes out of his way to stress the authority that he attaches to the oracular utterances of
Musaeus and a figure called Bakis. 1 The inspiration of Bakis reportedly comes from the nymphs (Pausanias 4.27.4, 10.12.11; cf. Aristophanes Peace1070-1071); he is reputed to have predicted many of the crucial moments of the Persian War ( Herodotus 8.20.2, 8.77, 8.96.2, 9.43). According to the scholia to Aristophanes Peace1071 and the Suda (s.v.), Bakis was a name assumed even by the tyrant Peisistratos himself. In the Knights of Aristophanes, the Kleon-figure possesses the oracles of Bakis in order to keep Demos under control (109-143, 195-210,
960-1096, 999 and following). It has been said about the "quotation," at Knights 1015-1016, of one of the oracles of Bakis, that "if Kleon had not said that his [oracles] were oracles of Bakis we would say that this purported to be a Delphic response." 2 In this oracle of Bakis, there is mention of the logiôn hodon 'path of oracles [logia]' (again Knights 1015) that Apollo himself proclaimed from Delphi (1015-1016).
§50. In this same passage from the Knights of Aristophanes, I draw attention to the challenge, issued by Demos, that the disguised Kleon-figure should 'read out loud' the oracles (anagnôsesthe moi 1011), which are contained in a kibôtos 'box' (1000). In this image we see a metaphor for the making public of what is potentially kept private by the tyrannical mentality. The word for 'read out loud' in Knights 1011, ana-gignôskô, means basically 'know again, recognize' (cf. also 118, 1065). To 'read' is to 'know again' by reperforming to oneself and potentially to others the last in a series of preexisting performances--this last one having been written down rather than spoken, whereas the previous ones had been spoken. The act of reading here is a metaphor for the activation, through public performance, of the composition. To know again the composition, that is, to recognize it, is to be performing it. Such a recognition takes place in the mind of both performer and audience as one hears the words being read out loud. 1 In Pindar's Olympian10, the song starts with the command to 'read out loud' (verb ana-gignôskô: anagnôte 10.1) the Olympic winner, who is 'written down' inside the phrên 'mind' (pothi phrenos emas gegraptai 10.2-3). Thus the image of reading out loud can even serve as the metaphor for the public performance of a composition, and the image of writing, as the metaphor for the composition itself. 2 Moreover, the image of writing here conveys the fixity of the composition in the mind of the composer, with the implication that it will not be recomposed in the process of performance by the chorus. The notion of fixity in composition is also illustrated by the very essence of State Theater in Athens, where the public is not supposed to affect directly, and thereby recompose, the action ongoing in the drama as acted by the actors. 3 To this extent the image of writing is again appropriate in conveying the fixity of the composition: the composition of drama in Athenian State Theater is metaphorically a text, a script. 4 But the matching performance of drama is metaphorically not just any kind of reading as we know it, but specifically reading outloud: in essence the process of reading out loud is a speech-act, like performance itself, and it is public, not private. We may note the expression drama anagignôskein 'to read out loud [ana-gignôskô] the drama', referring to the function of producing a drama, in the scholia to Aristophanes Clouds510. 5
§51. In contrast with reading out loud, the process of silent reading is decidedly not a speech-act: thus for example in the Hippolytus of Euripides, the figure of Theseus, when he reads silently the tablet left behind by the dead Phaedra, does not activate the force of these words until he sums up their contents publicly to the chorus (856- 886). 1 Similarly in the Knights of Aristophanes, we
see the figure of Nikias engaged in the silent reading of the oracles of Bakis while conversing with the figure of Demosthenes, who comically misunderstands pieces of his interlocutor's conversation as if they were portions of the oracles being read out loud; instead of reading out loud, however, Nikias simply summarizes for Demosthenes what he had already grasped through an instantaneous silent reading (115-146). 2 Such silent reading is symptomatic of the tyrant's power to control the performance of a composition. We have already noted the image, occurring later in the Knights, of a kibôtos 'box' that stores the oracles of Bakis (1000). These oracles can be taken out by the Kleon-figure and 'read out loud' to Demos (1011), but we know that the reader of the oracles also has the power to read ahead, silently, and then intepret his reading, with a voice that is accepted as the authority of the oracles (again 115-146). In these images of storing oracles in a box and then taking them out either to be read out loud to Demos or, alternatively, merely to be interpreted, we see the ultimate metaphor for the control of performance by the State. 3
§52. With these considerations in mind, let us return to the story of confrontation between Onomakritos and the poet Lasus of Hermione: as a result of this confrontation, Herodotus goes on to say, Onomakritos had been publicly exiled by his own patrons, the Peisistratidai themselves (7.6.4); yet in the here and now being narrated, we see him back in their good graces as he performs before the Great King of the Persian Empire, once again distorting the truth by way of premeditated selectivity (7.6.4-5). The context of this same passage (7.6.3-4), however, makes it apparent that Lasus of Hermione, as a rival of Onomakritos, was also under the patronage of the Peisistratidai. In fact we have explicit testimony that even a figure like Simonides, master of choral lyric poetry, had once been under the patronage of the Peisistratidai ("Plato" Hipparchus 228f, where Simonides is mentioned along with Anacreon). 1 From the standpoint of Herodotus it is clear that the patronage of tyrants discredits a poet. Yet, from the standpoint of the tyrants themselves, it seems just as clear that this same patronage must have been expected to serve as a public guarantee of the poet's truthfulness. Thus the discrediting of one rival poet by another could still have served to validate the tyrant's legitimacy, even if Herodotus can then reuse that same discrediting of the poet to expose the perceived illegitimacy of the tyrant. Such is the narrative strategy of Herodotus in his story about the public exposure of Onomakritos by Lasus of Hermione, who happens to be, like Simonides, a master of choral lyric poetry. 2 In fact, a passage in Aristophanes Wasps1410-1411 alludes to a historical occasion where the poetic compositions of Lasus and of Simonides were entered in competition with each other, and where the medium of competition is clearly that of choral lyric poetry (antedidaske 1410). Similarly the Herodotean story about the exposure of Onomakritos by Lasus implies an occasion where the two poets are publicly competing in the performance of poetry, and where one poet can discredit another by making manifest what is incorrect, untrue, stealthily falsified: through the public performance of rival poets the truth can come to light. We may compare the comic competition between oracular poems assigned to Bakis and those of his mock rival, the "older brother" Glanis, in Aristophanes Knights998 and following.
§53. In sum, the story about the exposure of Onomakritos by Lasus illustrates a fundamental theme concerning tyrants and poetry. Both tyrants and antityrants can agree that the public performance of poetry is a possession of the polis, a forum where the truth is expected to come to light. In contrast the private possession of poetry by tyrants, despite their self-proclaimed status as
public benefactors, can be perceived by antityrants as a threat to the truth of poetry, a threat that can be exposed by poetry itself in the light of public performance. As long as the tyrant possesses a poem before it is activated in performance, the danger of distortion is there. For Herodotus, who represents an antityrannical attitude, the tyrant's possession of poetry is at issue in the story about the public discovery that Onomakritos tampered with the oracular utterances of Musaeus (7.6.3). 1 In the same context Onomakritos is described as a diathetês 'arranger' of the khrêsmoi 'oracular utterances' of Musaeus in the era of the Peisistratidai (diathetên chrêsmôn tôn mousaiou Herodotus ibid.). This possession of Musaeus by the Peisistratidai is parallel to their possession of Homer: there is a report that Onomakritos, along with three others, was commissioned in the reign of Peisistratos to supervise the 'arranging' of the Homeric poems, which were before then 'scattered about' (diethêkan houtôsi sporadên ousas to prin Anecdota Graeca 1.6 ed. Cramer). 2
§54. Toward the end of this Archaic phase of Greek civilization, the so-called age of tyrants, when important families were generating public personalities that could and did overreach the institutions of the polis, and when the public medium of poetry was coming under the threat of being possessed by the private power of tyrants, enters the figure of Pindar, master of choral lyric poetry. From here on I argue that Pindar and his contemporaries or near-contemporaries, figures like Simonides and Bacchylides, made their own breakthroughs as individuals, as historically verifiable persons whom we may call authors, by virtue of being protégés of powerful families of tyrants or quasityrants who forged their individuality through such public media as poetry itself. As a prime example of tyrants as patrons of Pindar, I cite the referent of Pindar's Olympian1, Hieron of Syracuse, 1 whom Pindar addresses as basileus 'king' (e.g., Olympian1.23) as well as turannos 'tyrant' (in a nonpejorative sense: Pythian 3.85). 2 As a telling example of quasityrants, I cite the pointed reference in Pindar Pythian7.1-8 to the oikos 'house' and patrâ 'lineage' of Megakles of Athens, of the geneâ 'lineage' of the Alkmaionidai. 3 Another such example is the case of Diagoras of Rhodes, celebrated in Olympian7: this composition is explicitly directed toward praising the island state of Rhodes, the native place of Diagoras, in the context of praising the lineage of this victor, the Eratidai:
Eratidan toi sun charitessin echei | thalias kai polis
Through the beautiful and pleasurable acts of reciprocity [= kharis {plural}] 4 by the Eratidai, the city too is making merry with festivities.
This lineage of the Eratidai, descended from the royal line of Argos and extending all the way back to Herakles (20-24), had a history of dominating Ialysos, one of the three sectors of Rhodes, and in fact all of Rhodes. 5 And we have the explicit testimony of Oxyrhynchus Papyri 842 (x col. xi 1-34 and col. iii 23-26) that the family of Diagoras was eventually deposed as "tyrants." Certainly the importance of the family within the society at large is illustrated by the very words of Pindar, quoted immediately above, with the emphasis on the nobility and generosity of the Eratidai in sharing their epinician experience with the polis. We have historical evidence that this
family considered the composition of Pindar that they commissioned, Olympian7, as their precious personal possession, which they had generously shared with the public through the medium of public choral performance, in the public spirit described in the words of Pindar: according to Gorgon FGH 515 F 18, the words of this victory ode were inscribed in gold letters and dedicated in the temple of Athena Lindia in Rhodes. 6 The public sharing through the medium of public choral performance was in this case reinforced by another stage of public sharing, that is, public display through the medium of a lavish inscription, comparable to the public displays of inscribed poetry self-attributed to Hipparkhos, tyrant of Athens. 7
§55. My present line of interpretation, which connects Pindar's patronage with the political power of tyrants or quasityrants, may seem unsettling in light of the commonly-held and comforting assumption that poets like Pindar were simply protégés of aristocrats in general and that their association with tyrants like Hieron developed from their already-established prestige in smaller aristocratic circles. Such an assumption, glossing over the fact that many of Pindar's most famous compositions were commissioned by tyrants or tyrantlike personalities, is based on an implicit argument from silence: many other compositions, the reasoning goes, were commissioned by aristocratic figures about whom we have no explicit historical evidence pointing to anything specific like the power of tyrants. Yet the first impressions that one might have formed about these aristocratic figures are in the end deceiving.
§56. I start with the most difficult case, the aristocratic families of victors from the island-polis of Aegina as celebrated in the victory odes of Pindar. There seems at first little evidence that would even suggest the presence of tyrants or tyrantlike personalities. 1 It is a daunting task indeed to find direct evidence that would help us weigh their relative power. Even in the case of Aegina, however, there are indirect indications that the patrons of Pindar tend to be a closed and specially privileged group within their own aristocratic communities. Among these indications is the special use of patrâ 'patriliny' in all attestations of the word as applied to the lineages of Aegina in the Aeginetan odes of Pindar. In each case there is a pointed mention of the Aiakidai 'descendants of Aiakos', or of the hero Aiakos himself, elsewhere in the same composition: the word patrâ designates the Theandridai at Nemean 4.77 (Aiakidai at 11), the Bassidai at Nemean6.35 (Aiakidai at 17), the Euxenidai at Nemean7.70 (Aiakidai at 10), the Psalukhiadai at Isthmian6.63 (Aiakidai at 19, 35), and the Meidulidai in Pythian8.38 (Aiakos at 99). As for non-Aeginetan contexts, in contrast, patrâ can take on the default meaning of 'homeland' (e.g., Pindar Pythian11.23). This consistency in the pattern of referring to Aeginetan lineages, and in associating them with the Aiakidai, suggests a closed and specially privileged group. The very name Aiakidai may serve as implicit evidence in this regard. Such a patronymic formation suggests a group that is linked by ties of common ancestry leading back to the cult of a given hero. 2
§57. The cult of the hero Aiakos is native to Aegina, as we see most clearly from the explicit testimony of Pausanias (2.29.6-9). The relationship of Aiakos to the Aiakidai of Aegina is illuminated by one passage in particular, in Herodotus 8.64.2: at the battle of Salamis a ship is sent back to Aegina to fetch 'Aiakos and the other Aiakidai' (epi de Aiakon kai tous allous Aiakidas nea apestellon es Aiginan; cf. also Herodotus 8.83.2, 8.84.2). This mention of 'Aiakos and the other Aiakidai' is generally interpreted to mean some sort of sacred simulacra of the hero,
1 but decisive parallels are lacking, and the reference to 'the other Aiakidai' remains puzzling. 2 As an alternative explanation, the acceptance or rejection of which does not affect my overall argument about the significance of the Aiakidai, we may interpret 'Aiakos' here as the reputed bones of the hero, the centerpiece of his worship as a cult hero. In support of this possibility I cite a central feature of Archaic Greek hero cults, namely, the belief that the bones of a hero are a talisman of fertility and good fortune for the community that worships him, and of sterility and bad fortune for its enemies. 3 A clear example of this tradition is the story in Herodotus 1.67-68 about the bones of Orestes, the recovery of which by Sparta leads the Spartans to victory in their war with the Tegeans. 4 Another is the report by Plutarch (Life of Kimon 8, Life of Theseus 36) about the official transplanting of the bones of Theseus, in 476 B.C., from Skyros back to his "home" at Athens. 5 It is also in a parallel sense that we may possibly interpret the mention of Aiakidai in Herodotus 5.80.2: when the Aeginetans send the 'Aiakidai' to the Thebans, who had asked their allies for help in their war with Athens, they may be sending the bones of Aiakos, possibly accompanied by living representatives of the current lineage of Aiakidai, who would function as the ceremonial bearers of the ancestral relics. When the Thebans fail in their campaign against the Athenians, they send back the Aiakidai to the Aeginetans, saying that they would rather have as allies not the Aiakidai but andres 'men' (Herodotus ibid.). In other words, they request an army of fighting men, not cult objects.
§58. The notion of Aiakidai as a totality consisting of the body of the ancestor Aiakos and an unbroken succession of descendants fits the pattern of a grammatical formation known as the elliptic plural, where plurality consists not of A+A+A+A...but of A+B+C+D..., and where A is the defining and dominant principle, while B+C+D...are extensions thereof. 1 As a vivid example I cite the singular patêr 'father' and the plural pateres 'ancestors' (as in Pindar Pythian8.45), that is, a primordial father followed by an unbroken succession of fathers; or again, singular toxon 'bow' (e.g., Iliad IV 124) and elliptic plural toxa 'bow plus arrow plus arrow plus arrow...' = 'bow and arrows' (XXI 502). The ellipsis is made explicit in Herodotus 8.64.2: Aiakon kai tous allous Aiakidas 'Aiakos and the other Aiakidai'; elsewhere, as at 5.80.2, it is implicit: Aiakidas '[Aiakos and the other] Aiakidai'. We may compare Sophocles Philoctetes 652, where toxa refers to the arrows, not the bow.
§59. To return to the subject of hero cults: we may further speculate whether in the story of Herodotus the Thebans might have been using the bones of Aiakos against the Athenians much as the Athenians apparently used the bones of Oedipus against the Thebans. We are reminded of the myth about Oedipus at Colonus, as dramatized by Sophocles, 1 where Oedipus is exiled from Thebes on account of his blood guilt and is thereafter purified at Athens, in response to which the hero donates to the Athenians his own corpse as the talisman of his represented hero cult at Colonus. 2 In Oedipus at Colonus 1545-1546, 1761-1763, the precise location of the corpse of Oedipus in the precinct of the Eumenides at Colonus is represented as a sacred secret. 3 Similarly with the cult of the hero Aiakos on the island-polis of Aegina, it is specified in Pausanias 2.29.9 that the identification of a specific bômos 'altar' with the tomb of Aiakos was a sacred secret. Just as Oedipus was a native Theban who turned against Thebes, Aiakos could have been perceived by the Thebans, though not by the Aeginetans, as a native "Athenian" who turned against Athens. We may note the testimony of Herodotus 5.89.2 on the existence of a temenos 'precinct' for the
cult of Aiakos at Athens, instituted by the Athenians for the purpose of neutralizing Aeginetan power. 4
§60. To pursue the topic of the lineage known as the Aiakidai of Aegina: we may be witnessing a category of lineage that includes such specific patrilinies as the Theandridai, Bassidai, Euxenidai, Psalukhiadai, and Meidulidai. 1 Still I suggest that this category of Aiakidai, seemingly inclusive from the standpoint of an outsider, is in turn relatively exclusive from the standpoint of native Aeginetans. 2
§61. We may compare the case of the Aigialeis in the polis of Sikyon. Although the political pattern here differs in many ways, the actual naming pattern of the Aigialeis seems parallel to that of the Aiakidai. Just as the Aiakidai are predicated on the hero Aiakos, the ancestry of the Aigialeis goes back ostensibly to the hero Aigialeus, who is son of the hero Adrastos of the Seven against Thebes tradition and who figures as the archetype of the old aristocracy of Sikyon (Herodotus 5.68.1-2). 1 The Aigialeis count as a phûlê, one of the four major subdivisions of Sikyonian society, 2 the other three phûlai being the traditional Dorian categories of Dymanes, Hylleis, and Pamphyloi (Herodotus ibid.). Of these four subdivisions, the phûlê of the Aigialeis represents ostensibly an aristocratic pre-Dorian lineage, integrated into the Dorian system of three phûlai. 3 In the account of Herodotus, the four phûlai of Sikyon were renamed by Kleisthenes, tyrant of the polis, in pursuit of his anti-Argos policy, and the name Aigialeis, establishing connections with Aigialeus and his Argive father, Adrastos, was at that point changed to Arkhelaoi (5.68.1-2). 4 This name reflects a closed and specially privileged group: Arkhelâoi means 'they who rule the host of fighting men [= lâos]'. 5
§62. Having merely raised the possibility that the Aiakidai of Aegina were a closed and specially privileged group, and that Pindar's references to their name reflect his acknowledgment of their patronage, let us leave this particularly difficult case behind and proceed toward firmer ground, following the main argument that such poets as Pindar ultimately achieved their definitive identities as authors through the authority and patronage of powerful families of tyrants or quasityrants. Here and in the chapters that follow, I rely not only on external evidence in making this argument but also the internal evidence of the traditional themes inherent in the medium of Pindar's self-expression, the ainos. This medium of ethical discourse, as an inherited instrument of social criticism, consistently warns against the emergence of tyranny from an aristocracy that it can blame for losing its ethical foundations. Since the ainos presupposes an idealized community of aristocrats with whom it can communicate, it is important to add that the historical reasons for the emergence of tyrants and quasityrants are indeed to be found in the social context of aristocratic circles. 1 In other words the social context of aristocracy in the polis is the breeding ground of would-be tyrants both from the external standpoint of history and from the internal standpoint of the ainos as an instrument of social criticism that warns against tyranny.
§63. Let us consider in some detail the testimony of Pindar's choral lyric poetry, as a medium of ainos. In Pindar Pythian2.87-88, the polis is represented as capable of three forms of government, described as a tyranny (turannidi); a democracy, 'wherever there is a host of men intemperate' (chôpotan ho labros stratos); or an aristocracy, 'when the wise [sophoi] watch over
the city' (chôtan polin hoi sophoi têreonti). Such a view of society reflects a poetic tradition, also attested in Theognis39-52, where again we find an ideological representation of an aristocracy. Yet despite the ideological approval, this aristocracy is pictured as a potential breeding ground of degeneration, and the ethical teaching of the poem is to warn against such destruction of the aristocracy from within, which is said to be the harbinger of tyranny (39- 40, 51-52). 1
§64. This tradition recurs, with a twist, in the celebrated Debate of the Constitutions, Herodotus 3.80-87, where the future Great King of the Persians is represented as cynically restating the poetic tradition: he too describes the Greek polis as capable of three forms of government, that is, democracy, oligarchy, and 'monarchy'. 1 The Persian king unrestrainedly refers to aristocracy as oligarkhiâ 'oligarchy' (3.82.1). He is more restrained about tyranny, which he calls monarkhiâ 'monarchy' (3.82.1, 3), the superiority of which over oligarchy is proved, he says, by the regular pattern of a gradual shift from any oligarchy into a 'monarchy' (3.82.3). The Great King's description of this shift, however, shows that this arch-villain of the Hellenes has been tricked by the narrative of Herodotus into becoming a teacher of ethics, in that he is in effect unwittingly warning the aristocracy against the temptations of degeneracy and tyranny. In the Persian king's words the supposedly predictable shift from oligarchy to 'monarchy' stems from the quest for personal advantage, which leads to a movement toward 'monarchy' in three stages: (1) stasis (plural) 'social conflicts', (2) phonoi 'killings', and, finally, (3) monarkhiâ 'monarchy' (3.82.3). These categories mark the very same concepts that are cited by the native traditions of Hellenic poetry as the stages of degeneracy and incipient tyranny, as in Theognis50-52. 2 In this passage the notion of private or personal interest is expressed by way of kerdos 'gain, advantage,
profit' (Theognis 50). Private gain that entails public detriment leads to (1) stasis 'social conflict' (Theognis 51), 3 (2) phonoi 'killings' (51), 4 and finally (3) tyranny, a notion that is attenuated here again as monarkhoi 'monarchs' (52). These three stages of degeneracy, as the poetry makes clear, are symptomatic of hubris (Theognis 40, 44). In the debate passage of
Herodotus, the notion of tyranny that underlies monarchy is made clear: the Great King's speech
is preceded by an earlier speech containing a calculated equation of the attenuated word
monarkhos 'monarch' with the explicit turannos 'tyrant' (Herodotus 3.80.2 / 4).
§65. There is a striking parallel to the theme of tyranny as generated by a degenerate aristocracy in a myth retold by Herodotus about the powerful lineage known as the Bakkhiadai of Corinth. 1 Herodotus stresses that the Bakkhiadai were an oligarkhiâ 'oligarchy' and that their exclusiveness was manifested in their practice of endogamy (5.92 b. 1). The native Corinthian myth has it that Labda, a female in the lineage of the Bakkhiadai, was born lame and was consequently forced to marry outside the lineage; the outsider husband, Eetion, is described as one of the Kaineidai, descendants of the Lapith Kaineus (5.92 b. 1). This aberrant episode of exogamy within the already aberrant endogamous lineage of the Bakkhiadai leads to the birth of Kypselos and thus generates as it were the dynasty of tyrants at Corinth known as the Kypselidai (5.92 passim; 6.128.2). 2 The quasi-incest inherent in the practice of endogamy by the Bakkhiadai is a traditional poetic theme suggestive of tyranny. 3 So too are the lameness of Labda and the illegitimacy, from the standpoint of the Bakkhiadai, of the tyrant Kypselos. We may compare a theme recorded in Plutarch Lysander 22.6, where the statement is made that the royal house of Sparta will be lame if
bastards are allowed to reign instead of the "Sons of Herakles," the Herakleidai. 4
§66. The theme of genuine Dorian kingship, as legitimated by the title Sons of Herakles, recurs as a central theme in the poetry of Theognis, that is, in the characterization of the boy called Kyrnos, the main recipient of advice in the "Mirror of Princes" tradition that distinguishes much of this poetry. 1 The very name Kurnos is identified by Servius (on Virgil Eclogues 9.30) as a son of Herakles. 2 On the other hand the word kurnos means 'bastard' (Hesychius s.v. kurnoi: nothoi), in line with a theme central to the poetry of Theognis: excessive wealth leads to degeneration and debasement (e.g., Theognis183-192). 3 In other words the very concept of Kyrnos has a two- sided message, like an ainos: this fickle youth loved by Theognis is simultaneously a bastard and a prince of the lineage of the Herakleidai 'Heraclids'.
§67. The Bakkhiadai are described in the utterance of the Delphic Oracle quoted at Herodotus
5.92 b. 2 as monarkhoi 'monarchs', an attenuated designation for tyrants. There is a clear parallel at Theognis 52, where it is claimed that a degenerate aristocracy will lead to such social ills as monarkhoi. 1 To repeat, the Bakkhiadai are described by Herodotus as an aristocratic oligarkhiâ 'oligarchy' (5.92 b. 1). In the same utterance where the Bakkhiadai are described as monarkhoi, the Oracle, here addressing Eetion, describes the future tyrant Kypselos as someone who will make Corinth dikaios 'just' (ibid.). Again we can see a clear parallel in the same passage of Theognis (39-40): the degenerate aristocracy, as the voice of the poet prophesies, may one day yield to a man who will be an euthuntêr 'straightener' of the social ills caused by his predecessors. The theme of 'straightening' is a prime symbol of dikê 'justice' (e.g., Solon F 36.19 W). 2 This 'straightener' who brings justice is described as being literally born to the polis, pregnant in its degeneracy (kuei, Theognis 39), just as the future champion of dikê in Corinth is described by the Oracle as being born to the pregnant Labda (kuei, Herodotus 5.92b. 2), whose very lameness symbolizes the tyrannical potential within her lineage. 3 In sum, according to this utterance by the Delphic Oracle, favorable to the Kypselidai, the Bakkhiadai are quasityrants who will generate the ultimate rulers of Corinth, the Kypselidai. Similarly in Theognis39-52, the passage that we have been comparing, the future tyrant is presented in attenuated terms as a potential reformer and champion of dikê (again Theognis40). 4
§68. Another oracular utterance, however, where the Delphic Oracle is addressing the other party, the Bakkhiadai, describes the future tyrant Kypselos as a lion that is ômêstês 'eater of raw
flesh' (Herodotus 5.92 b. 3). In this utterance, unlike the other, the tyrant generated by the degenerate aristocracy is treated negatively: the theme of eating raw flesh is a prime symbol of hubris 'outrage', the opposite of dikê 'justice' (e.g., Theognis541-542). 1 Again we can see a clear parallel in the poetry of Theognis: in 1081- 1082b, a passage closely similar in form but strikingly different in content from the passage that we have already considered concerning the birth of a future tyrant (39-52), the polis is again described as pregnant (kuei, Theognis 1081), but this time it generates a champion not of dikê but of hubris (1082). 2 Thus the response of the Delphic Oracle to the dynasty of tyrants at Corinth, the Kypselidai, is ambivalent. When it addresses the side of the Kypselidai, it stresses the potential dikê 'justice' that can come from this dynasty. When it addresses the side of the Bakkhiadai, it stresses the potential hubris 'outrage'. Herodotus
in 5.92 d. 1 takes this side, to the extent that he stresses the negative aspects of tyrants: bad things will 'sprout' (anablastein) for Corinth from Eetion. As the Oracle affirms in yet another utterance, quoted at Herodotus 5.92 e. 2, the dynasty of the Kypselidai will be short-lived. 3
§69. Like the Delphic Oracle, the poetry of Theognis assumes the stance of predicting the advent of tyrants, as we have seen in the two poems about the pregnant polis, Theognis39-52 and
1081-1082b. 1 Like the Oracle, the poetry of Theognis can be ambivalent about the tyrant, describing him as an exponent of either dikê 'justice' (cf. 39-40) or hubris 'outrage' (cf. 1082). In this light we may consider the meaning of Theognis 'he whose breeding [genos] is from the god (s)', which is parallel to the meaning of Theâgenês, the name of the historical tyrant of Megara (on whom see Aristotle Politics 1305a24, Rhetoric 1357b33). 2 On the basis of Theognis39-42, where the emerging tyrant is presented as a potential champion of dikê 'justice', I offer the following observation: 3
It is as if the words of Theognis could have been, in one phase of the poetic tradition, the words of Theagenes the tyrant. Verses 39-42 of Theognis would represent a later phase, of course, in that the poet and the tyrant are here distinct. Still, although the poet deplores the emergence of tyranny in these verses, the social corrections undertaken by the tyrant are described in words that could just as well have described the social corrections undertaken by Solon.
The social corrections of Solon the Reformer, as expressed in the poetry of Solon, have close parallels in the poetry of Theognis. 4 Both Lycurgus the lawgiver of Sparta and Kypselos the tyrant of Corinth take control of their respective cities after consulting the Oracle at Delphi (Herodotus 1.65.2-5 and 5.92 e. 1-2, respectively). 5 We may note too the self-representation of Theognis as a theôros (805), 6 and the remark by Aristotle Politics 1310b that one of the ways to achieve tyranny in a polis was through occupying the office of theôros.
§70. If indeed the figure of Theognis is ambivalently a tyrant or a lawgiver, depending on the
political circumstances of Theognidean transmission, we may compare the figure of Pittakos, a lawgiver from the standpoint of the Seven Sages tradition but a tyrant from the standpoint of the lyric poetry of Alcaeus (as in the explicit declaration of F 348 V). Given that the name of Alcaeus
= Alkaios bears Heraclid connotations (e.g., Herodotus 1.7.2), 1 like that of Kyrnos (Servius on Virgil Eclogues 9.30), 2 I suggest that the attitude of Kyrnos toward Theognis, if the Heraclid prince were given a voice, would be perhaps parallel to the attitude of Alcaeus toward Pittakos in the lyric poetry of Alcaeus.
§71. When it predicts or at least warns about future ills, the poetry of Theognis speaks in the language of ainigma 'enigma', as in Theognis681, quoted above. 1 So too does the Delphic Oracle, as we see in Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannus 393, 1525. Moreover, the figure of Theognis can actually assume the stance of speaking like a theôros, that is, one who consults the Oracle (805). 2
§72. Like Theognis, Pindar speaks with a voice that can warn about the dangers that loom over
the polis, not the least of which is tyranny. And the medium for Pindar's message, in Pindar's own words, is the ainos; it is from this word, to repeat, that ainigma is derived.
§73. What then gives Pindar the occasion to warn against tyranny, if indeed the social circles of his patronage are the very breeding ground of tyranny? It can be argued that the epinician or victory odes of Pindar are indeed an appropriate occasion, in that there was a pervasive thematic parallelism between the reality of an athlete's victory and the potential of a tyrant's power, as dramatized by the Olympic victor Kylon when he chose the season of the Olympics for his attempt at a coup d'état in Athens. 1 The ainos of Pindaric choral lyric poetry has the built-in ideology of warning about this potential. If the potential has already become a reality, the poetry can shift to a stance of praising the turannos 'tyrant' as a basileus 'king' while all along maintaining a condemnation of tyranny. We have noted that the voice of Pindar can refer to the tyrant Hieron of Syracuse as basileus 'king' (e.g., Olympian1.23) as well as turannos 'tyrant' (in a nonpejorative sense: Pythian3.85). 2 We may note as well that the Oracle of Delphi, as quoted at Herodotus 5.92 e. 2, refers to the tyrant Kypselos of Corinth as a basileus 'king', while the prose narrative that frames the poetry of the oracular utterance characterizes him as a turannos (ibid.).
§74. My argument is not that we can point to actual tyrants in each and every case of Pindaric patronage; hence my use of the expression tyrants or quasityrants. Rather the point is simply that there was a pervasive thematic parallelism between the reality of an athlete's victory and the potential of a tyrant's power. The function of Pindar's epinician lyric poetry was to praise the reality of victory and to warn against the potential of tyranny (cf. Pythian11.52-53). 1 We can see that potential also in a later era, as when Alcibiades, in a speech of 415 B.C., is represented by Thucydides (6.16.2) as boasting of his seven entries in the Olympic chariot race of 416 B.C., where he won the first, second, and fourth prizes. Alcibiades goes on to say: kai talla axiôs tês nikês pareskeuasamên 'and I made the rest of my arrangements worthy of my
victory' (Thucydides ibid.); these arrangements included the commissioning of an epinician performance, with Euripides as composer (Plutarch Alcibiades 11.2). 2
§75. In sum, the songs that celebrated the figures who commissioned the likes of Pindar were occasional, potentially exempt from the process of ongoing recomposition in performance that would have characterized any composition transmitted solely through the ever-evolving polis. While the poets of such occasional songs owe their fame as historical individuals to their patrons, the tyrants owe their corresponding fame at least partly to these same poets, who enhance the breakthrough of their patrons into the remote past of the heroes. The poet Ibycus says this explicitly, as he tells the tyrant Polykrates of the everlasting kleos that is to be conferred on him by the poet's song, which is also called kleos:
kai su, Polukrates, kleos aphthiton hexeis hôs kat' aoidan kai emon kleos
You too [i.e., you as well as the heroes just mentioned in the song],
Polykrates, will have kleos that is unfailing [aphthiton], in accordance with my song, my kleos. 1
The double use of kleos here reenacts the notion of reciprocity built into the word: the patron gets
fame from the praise of the poet, whose own fame depends on the fame of a patron in the here and now. 2 The Indo-European heritage of this convention is evident from a comparison with Old Irish traditions of reciprocity between poet and patron: "The Irish king is certified by the poet; reciprocally, the poet is maintained by the king and tribe." 3
§76. As long as the patronage of the audience is ideologically conferred by the community at large, a reciprocal relationship between poet and patron can be maintained. Thus even a tyrant like Polykrates can in theory fit the Indo-European model of poetic patronage, as long as he succeeds in being perceived as the embodiment of community, the body politic. This is the essence of kingship. If on the other hand the tyrant is perceived as overreaching the community, the polis, in his maintenance of power, then the very concept of tyranny sets off a crisis in the poetic ideology of reciprocity. We have seen that the notion of compensating a poet for the "ordeal" of composing a poem is part of a ritual chain of reciprocity, where the value of the compensation owed the poet, even if it takes the shape of material gifts, is still transcendent inasmuch as it is considered sacred. If, however, the community loses its trust in the powers that be, then the compensation owed to the poet sponsored by those powers stands to lose its sacral status. Thus the poet must not only praise the patron: the poet must maintain the trust of the community by reasserting the transcendent nature of his compensation as proof of links to the community as the audience. For such reassertion to be successful, the poet can set up, as a foil for the transcendent compensation, a negative value for the kind of compensation that is purely material in nature.
§77. Granted, the notion of material compensation for the composition of a Pindaric song is generally treated as a positive value by the song, as in Isthmian2.1-13 and elsewhere. 1 Still the picture of a Muse who is philokerdês 'lover of profit [kerdos]' and ergatis 'working for wages' at Isthmian2.6 is a negative value, serving as a foil for the positive value of a transcendent reciprocity between the poet and his subject. 2 For Pindaric song making, the true misthos 'wage' of compensation for song is equated with kharis, the beauty and pleasure of reciprocity between the poet and the subject of his praise:
areomai | par men Salaminos Athênaiôn charin | misthon, en Spartai d' <apo> tan pro Kithairônos machan
I will earn, as my wage [misthos], the kharis of the Athenians concerning Salamis, and of Sparta, concerning the fighting at the foot of Mount Kithairon [= Plataia]. 3
This more positive value of compensation is simultaneously materialistic and transcendent for the
simple reason that it is sacred: inside the framework of Pindaric song, the notion of compensation for composition is sacred as long as it stays within the sacred context of such occasions as an
epinician celebration.
§78. Outside the framework of Pindaric song, in the real world of Pindar, compensation is becoming a purely monetary value. 1 It is this outside reality that makes it possible for Pindaric song to set up the "mercenary Muse" as a foil for its own transcendence. In this real world the system of reciprocity within the community at large, as represented by the polis, is breaking down. It is an era when individuals can achieve the economic power to overreach the polis itself, and the pattern of overreaching extends to the realm of song. In this real world the craft of song is in danger of shifting from an expression of community to an expression of the individual whose power potentially threatens the community. This shift has been aptly described as a diverting of the poetic art: 2
Before the end of the [fifth] century choral poetry was divested of its traditional connections with the festivals of cult, probably by Ibycus, certainly by Simonides, and diverted to the praise of the great. The change meant that the expense of the poet's fee and the choral production was assumed by a wealthy patron, with whom lay the power of decision in regard to all questions relating to the performance of the ode. The Muse, in Pindar's phrase, had grown fond of money and gone to work for a living.
In the real world, the "great" men who are being praised are the potential tyrants and quasityrants that are being generated by the aristocracy. For the ideological world of Pindar, in contrast, the aristocracy remains an ideal that must resist the degeneration that breeds tyrants. 3 And it is the real world that makes it possible for Pindaric song to set up the "mercenary Muse" as a foil for its own transcendence.
§79. In this connection I cite Pindar Isthmian1.47-51, with a brief catalogue of different kinds of
work that earn different kinds of misthos 'wages' (47): in each case the worker is working in order to feed his hungry gastêr 'stomach' (49); such a misthos is a foil for the ultimate kerdos 'profit' of being praised by song (51). In Homeric and Hesiodic poetry as well, the hungry gastêr is a foil: it serves as a symbol for the dependence of the poet, as itinerant artisan, on the patronage of a localized audience (Theogony26-28, in the context of Odyssey xiv 124-125 and vii 215-221). 1 The juxtaposed ideal, for which the gastêr 'stomach' serves as foil, is the ostensibly absolute truth of Panhellenic poetry. 2
§80. The Greek word misthos 'wages' is cognate with Indic mî[ddot ]ha- 'competition' or 'prize won in competition', and its inherited meaning must be something like 'honorific compensation for deed performed'. 1 There is an important adjustment, however, to be made in the context of historical developments in Archaic Greece: even in the early evidence this sense is already becoming limited to the work of artisans, becoming ever less appropriate for designating any 'service' performed by a citizen for the polis. 2 This emerging split leads to the specialized notion of 'wages for an artisan' and tends to put misthos into a negative light from an aristocratic standpoint. 3 Hence the Pindaric use of misthos is a foil for the ultimate kerdos 'profit' of being praised by song (Isthmian1.51). 4
§81. Since the praise inherent in poetry, as represented by Archaic poetry, is held to be a transcendent value, it follows that a deed worthy of praise by poetry is incompatible with wages suitable for artisans. Thus we read in Apollodorus 2.5.5 that the taskmaster Eurystheus tries to invalidate one of the Labors of Herakles, the cleaning of the stables of Augeias, on the grounds that the hero had performed it for a misthos 'wage'; conversely, Augeias refuses to pay Herakles when he learns that the hero's labor was at the behest of Eurystheus, in other words, that this labor was one of the Labors (ibid.). 1
§82. To return to the poem of Ibycus in praise of the tyrant Polykrates, we have noted that the poet effects the fame of his patron not merely by recording the subject's accomplishments or qualities in the here and now but also by linking him with the heroes of the past. This kind of linking can even be directly genealogical. Thus, for example, the praise poetry of Pindar confirms the political claim of the tyrant Theron of Akragas, to the effect that Theron is descended from Polyneikes, a hero of the Seven against Thebes epic tradition (Pindar Olympian2.41-47). 1
§83. The situation is different with the poetry of epic. By the age of tyrants, the epic traditions of the Greeks, as represented by the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, were reaching a Panhellenic and thereby canonical status, exempt from the political exigencies of tyrants. The universalism of the Homeric poems is the consequence not of a single event, such as the writing down of the poems, but rather of an evolutionary process whereby the Panhellenic diffusion of the Homeric traditions, concomitant with ongoing recomposition in performance at international (that is, inter-polis) festivals, led gradually to one convergent Panhellenic version at the expense of many divergent local versions. While the divergence of localized versions might be to the occasional advantage of the localized concerns of tyrants, the convergent Panhellenism of the Homeric performances could in the end become an obstacle to the tyrants' current political ideologies: we recall the testimony of Herodotus (5.67.1) to the effect that Kleisthenes, tyrant of Sikyon, banished the public performances of "Homer" in his city on the grounds that the contents were partial to Argos, a city that was at that point an enemy of Sikyon. 1 With its Panhellenic stature, then, the poetry of "Homer" would become ever less capable of accommodating the occasional and localized needs of the audience; we cannot expect it to be overtly responsive to such ad hoc considerations as the genealogies of powerful patrons. 2 In the epic poetry of Homer the gap that separates the heroes of the past and the men of the present could not and would not be bridged. 3 Little wonder, then, that heroes could lift stones that not even two of us 'today' could even manage to budge (Iliad XII 445-449).
§84. As for the praise poetry of Pindar, it does more than just confirm the extension of the genealogies of powerful families into the heroic past: the kleos of victorious athletes who come from such families is pointedly equated with the kleos of heroes as they are known from epic. 1 But the praise poetry of Pindar does not claim to be descended from the epic of Homer--a stance that would have matched the way in which his patrons may claim to be descended from heroes praised by the narration of epic poetry. The kleos of Pindar praises not only the victors of the present but also the heroes of the past, and this praise of heroes is treated as intrinsic to the medium of praise poetry. In the words of Pindar the medium of epinician praise poetry existed even before the Seven against Thebes: by implication, praise poetry was praising heroes even
before the events recorded by epic (Nemean8.50-51). 2 In the praise poetry of Pindar, Homer figures as but one in a long line of poets who are masters of kleos. In other words, the kleos of Homer is treated as an offshoot of the kleos that survives as the praise poetry of Pindar. Unlike the kleos of Homer, however, the kleos of Pindar extends into the here and now, linking the heroes of the past with the men of the present. In the diction of Pindar the very concept of nea or neara 'new things' applies not to poetic innovations but to poetic applications of the past glories of heroes to the present glories of men who are being praised in the here and now. 3
§85. The built-in conceit of Pindaric choral lyric poetry, that its praise collapses the distinction between heroes of the past and men of the here and now, accentuates the occasionality of his medium. This point brings us back to the self-definition of Pindar's medium as ainos--a self- definition not shared by Homeric poetry. Contemporary feats of athletics are particularly appropriate for celebration by the ainos as a form of expression that purports to close the gap between the heroic past and the historic present, in that the very activity of athletics is from the standpoint of religious ideology a present-day ordeal that reenacts, in a perpetual series of seasonally recurring festivals, the primordial ordeal of the hero. We see the same ideology depicted in the Funeral Games of Patroklos in Iliad XXIII, where the Games are instituted as compensation for the death of the hero Patroklos and where, as Cedric Whitman has noticed, the athletic activity of each character in some way reenacts the martial activity appropriate to his own heroic character. 1
§86. Contemporary feats of war would have been equally appropriate for celebration by praise poetry, had it not been for the evolution of the polis. Moreover, even if we discount for the moment the emphasis that the polis placed on the communal effort as opposed to individual aristocratic enterprise, any celebration of martial feats still raises the problem of inter-polis politics: what counts as a success for one polis will be a failure for another, so that it becomes difficult for any military victory to achieve Panhellenic recognition in poetry or song. In contrast the victories of athletes at the four great Panhellenic Games are by definition recognized by all Hellenic city-states. It should come as no surprise, then, that in the case of military victories, the one notable exception meriting Panhellenic recognition in poetry and song was in fact a supposedly Panhellenic victory. I refer to the Greek victory over the Persians in 479 B.C., as, for example, celebrated by Pindar in Isthmian8 alongside the supposedly central topic of that composition, an athletic victory by an Aeginetan in the Isthmian Games of 478 B.C. 1 The special appropriateness of athletics to praise poetry is best illustrated by Pindar's claim that epinician praise poetry had existed even before epic (Nemean8.50-51). 2 The Seven against Thebes, in the same Pindaric context, are represented as having engaged in an athletic contest specifically before they embarked on their famous war (e.g., Bacchylides Epinician 9.10-24 SM). 3 This athletic contest, serving as prototype for the Nemean Games, would have been celebrated by the prototype of Pindar's current Nemean Ode in honor of the current victor at the Nemean Games. 4
§87. The ideology of the athletic games, as expressed in the epinician praise poetry of Pindar, may even be said to be a sort of compensation for the historical differentiation between heroes and ancestors in that the kleos of the hero and the kleos of the ancestor converge precisely in the context of praising the athlete's immediate ancestors. By upholding the values of the epic heroes,
the victor is represented as simultaneously upholding the values of his own immediate ancestors. In one particularly striking passage Pindar expresses this simultaneity in the actual words of a dead hero, who is represented as speaking from the dead about the martial victories of his son. The son, who from the standpoint of his father's words is still a living hero, is Alkmaion, one of the Epigonoi, the sons of the Seven against Thebes who succeeded in destroying Thebes. The father is Amphiaraos, son of Oikles, one of the original Seven against Thebes who had failed in what their sons were later to succeed. The theme of these heroes is introduced in the context of praising the athlete Aristomenes of Aegina for his victory in wrestling at the Pythian Games of 446 B.C. I begin the quotation with the words of the poet in praise of the victorious Aristomenes for the glory that this athlete has conferred upon his immediate ancestors, the lineage of the Meidulidai:
auxôn de patran Meidulidan logon phereis, | ton honper pot' Oikleos pais [...] ainixato [...] | 43 hôd' eipe marnamenôn: | "phuai to gennaion epiprepei | ek paterôn paisi lêma..." i55 toiauta men | ephthenxat' Amphiarêos. chairôn de kai autos | Alkmana stephanoisi ballô.
Making great the house of the Meidulidai, you win as a prize 1 the words that once the son of Oikles said [= said as an ainos]. [...] Thus he spoke about those who fought: "The will of the fathers [pateres] shines through from them, in the very thing that is inborn in the nature of their sons." Thus spoke Amphiaraos. And I also take joy in casting a garland at Alkmaion.
§88. The gesture of casting a garland at the hero Alkmaion is a stylized act of hero cult. 1 The voice of the poet, in saying that he "met" the hero on the way to Delphi (Pythian8.56-60), is in effect saying that he experienced an epiphany of the hero, which is the inspiration, as it were, of Pindar's words. 2 The theme of epiphany is relevant to my interpretation of phuai to gennaion epiprepei | ek paterôn paisi lêma 'the will of the fathers [pateres] shines through from them, in what is inborn in the nature of their sons' (43-44). The word pateres in this passage means not only 'fathers' but also 'ancestors'. 3 The latter meaning emerges more clearly as the ode progresses:
epameroi: ti de tis; ti d' ou tis; skias onar | anthrôpos. all' hotan aigla diosdotos elthêi, | lampron phengos epestin andrôn kai meilichos aiôn.
Creatures of a day. 4 What is a someone, what is a no one? 5 Man is the dream of a shade. But when the brightness given by Zeus comes, there is at hand the shining light of men, and the life- force [aiôn] gives pleasure. 6
I interpret skiâs onar 'dream of a shade' as a recapitulation of the earlier words of the dead
Amphiaraos about his living son. In Homeric usage the word skiâ 'shade' can designate a dead person. 7 I suggest that the shade of the dead person is literally dreaming--that is, realizing through its dreams--the living person. In other words the occasion of victory in a mortal's day-to- day lifetime is that singular moment when the dark insubstantiality of an ancestor's shade is translated, through its dreams, into the shining life-force of the victor in full possession of victory, radiant with the brightness of Zeus. 8 It is as if we the living were the realization of the dreams dreamt by our dead ancestors. 9 We may recall the words of Walt Whitman, in Crossing Brooklyn Ferry: 10
I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence, Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,
Just as you are refresh'd by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refresh'd,
Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood yet was hurried
...
I too and many a time crossed the river of old
...
Closer yet I approach you,
What thought you have of me now, I had as much of you--I laid in my stores in advance, I consider'd long and seriously of you before you were born.
...
Who knows, for all the distance, but I am as good as looking at you now, for all you cannot see me?
§89. In Pindaric song the link of the victorious athlete to his ancestors is celebrated through the kleos of heroes. In this case the kleos of heroes is not epic but ainos. Alternatively, however, the kleos of heroes can even be ainos as represented by epic. I think of Iliad IX, when old Phoenix gives his admonition to Achilles in the format of an ainos (specifically the format qualifies as a par-ain-esis 'instructive speech'): 1 he refers here to his own discourse as tôn prosthen...klea andrôn | hêrôôn 'glories [klea] of men of the past, heroes' (IX 524-525). In the story of Phoenix a prime example of 'men of the past' is Meleager, a hero. The story is aimed at a man of the present, Achilles, whom the Iliad presents as a hero in the making. The actual message of the story told by Phoenix to Achilles turns out to be--from the standpoint of the Iliad(emthe very name of Patroklos, Patro-kleês 'he who has the glories [klea] of the ancestors'. 2 In the Homeric theme of Patroklos the differentiation between heroes and ancestors has not yet happened. In this theme the praise of ancestors and the praise of heroes are as yet one. So too in the songs of Pindar in praise of athletes, the praise of their ancestors is realized in the praise of heroes.
§90. The Iliadic theme of Patroklos, as conveyed by the ainos told by Phoenix to Achilles, is an instance where epic refers to the format of the ainos without actually identifying itself with it. We can find other instances as well, especially in the Odyssey (e.g., xiv 508), 1 and each time we may observe the same pattern: whereas epic can refer to the format of the ainos, it is not an ainos
itself.
§91. This point brings us back one more time to the self-references of ainos as praise poetry. Praise poetry both calls itself kleos and explicitly identifies itself with the kleos of epic. It is as if occasional poetry, particularly praise poetry, were the primordial form of epic. 1 This is what Aristotle says, that epic is descended from poetry praising gods and men (humnoi and enkômia, respectively: Poetics 1448b27, 32-34). 2 It is also what epic itself seems to be saying in situations where one character, in praising another, predicts that this praise will become the kleos heard by future audiences (e.g., Odyssey xxiv 192-202). 3 Even the sporadic instances in Homeric poetry where a hero is addressed in the second person give the impression that the third-person narrative of epic is but a transformation of the second-person direct address of praise poetry (e.g., Iliad XVI 787). Still, however we may want to formulate the transformation of epic poetry as a derivative form from occasional poetry, including praise poetry--which would count as a parent form--we must keep in mind that while the derivative form was evolving into the generalized and universally accessible medium of Homeric poetry, the parent form was in the meantime evolving into the specialized and restrictively difficult medium attested in the epinician lyric poetry of Pindar. 4
§92. Earlier we had seen an idealized vision of compensation as conveyed by the medium of the epinician or victory ode, where the athlete's deed literally demands to be requited in song, and the realization of the song in turn demands to be requited by way of a kharis, a beautiful and pleasurable reciprocity that is simultaneously material and transcendent in nature. Such a vision is also preserved in epic, where epic indirectly refers to its evolution from occasional poetry and song. The idealized description in Odyssey ix 3-11 of the singer's performance at an evening's feast, with its programmatic reference to the spirit of euphrosunê 'mirth, merriment' that holds sway on such an occasion (ix 6), serves as a signature for the evolution of poetic performance from the occasionality of the ainos to the universalism of the epic of Homeric poetry. 1 In the medium of Pindar, which calls itself ainos, the word euphrosunê 'mirth' (as in Nemean4.1) refers programmatically to the actual occasion of performing poetry and song. 2 In the Odyssey it is said about the euphrosunê generated by the singer's performance at the feast that there is no telos, that is, no social act to be performed and duly completed, with more beauty and pleasure in its reciprocity than such an occasion. And the beauty and pleasure of this reciprocity finds expression in the concept of kharis: 3
ou gar egô ge ti phêmi telos chariesteron einai
I say that there is no act to be performed and completed that has in it more kharis. The ideal of such kharis lives on in the ainos of Pindar.
Notes
§1n1. In using the term praise poetry I consistently mean poetry in the broadest sense, to include the lyric poetry of song.
§2n1. See also Ch.13 on Athenian Theater as heir to Panhellenic poetics.
§2n2. More at Ch.14. Cf. also Intro. §6.
§3n1. Examples of ainos: Pindar Olympian2.95, 6.12, 11.7; Nemean1.6. An example of
epainos: Pindar F 181 SM. Cf. Detienne 1973.21.
§3n2. In examining the regularities typical of the Epinikion, the epinician poetic tradition shared by Pindar and Bacchylides, Bundy concludes that they are "not mannerisms of a given poet but conventions protecting the artistic integrity of a community of poets working within well- recognized rules of form and order" ([1986] 3). He goes on to say: "I have observed and catalogued a host of these conventions and find that they point uniformly, as far as concerns the Epinikion, to one master principle: there is no passage in Pindar and [Bacchylides] that is not in its primary intent en[c]omiastic--that is, designed to enhance the glory of a particular
patron" (ibid.).
§3n3. Commentary in N 1979.223; cf. also Steiner 1986.47-48.
§3n4. A xenos is someone who is bound by the ties of reciprocity between guest and host. Such ties are presupposed to exist between poet and patron. For other Pindaric passages concerning the theme of poetic xeniâ 'being xenos', see Woodbury 1968. 537n14. Fundamental discussion of xeniâ in Benveniste 1969 I 341 = 1973.278; cf. N 1979.232-237, Watkins 1976c, Martin
1984.35. As Herodotus says expliticly at 7.228.4, the poetic tribute of Simonides to Megistes, one of the fallen at Thermopylae, is based on the relationship of xeniâ between them.
§3n5. On the use of etumos/etêtumos 'genuine, noble' as a touchstone for the truth-value of poetic traditions, see Ch.14§21 and following.
§3n6. On the traditional metaphor of kleos as an unfailing stream, primarily of water, see N
1974.244 on the expression kleos aphthiton, as in Iliad IX 413. The notion of unfailing is conveyed by aphthito- (ibid.; also Risch 1987.4-5); on the vegetal symbolism also inherent in this epithet, see N 1979 ch.10 and Steiner 1986.38.
§4n1. See, for example, Iliad II 486, XI 227, as discussed in N 1979.15-18.
§4n2. The fable of "The Hawk and the Nightingale" is explicitly designated as an ainos in Hesiod Works and Days202 (quoted at Ch.9§7). This reference, however, applies to the whole discourse of the Works and Days only by extension. In any case, I see no compelling reason to assume that Hesiodic poetry is epic.
§5n2. For example, Pindar Olympian2.83-86, Isthmian2.12-13; note too the discussion in N
1979.236-238. I use poetry here in the broadest sense, to include song.
§5n3. For example, Pindar Pythian2.81-88; cf. further at the end of the same poem, lines 94-96; also Pythian10.71-72, at the end of another poem.
§5n4. For example (again), Pindar Pythian2.81-88. Cf. Pindar Nemean7.61-63, quoted immediately above. Note too the discussion in N 1979.238-242.
§6n1. Cf., for example, Jakobson 1960.353.
§6n2. For a defense of the manuscript reading kakon--as opposed to the emendation kakos--and for general commentary on the entire passage: N 1985.22-26.
§7n1. On par-ain-esis as an instructive and edifying speech that warns about proper moral behavior, see N 1979.238-239, with reference to Pindar Pythian6.23 and Isthmian6.68. See further at Ch.6§89n1.
§7n2. For example, Archilochus F 174 W.
§7n3. Cf. Ch.13§23 and following. See also N 1979.250, 281-288. My interpretation, at p. 250, of Pindar F 181 SM ho gar ex oikou poti mômon epainos kirnatai 'for praise is by nature mixed with blame' is criticized by Kirkwood 1984.169- 171, who argues that ex oikou, bracketed by ho...epainos, is attributive; his interpretation, however, does not account for poti mômon, which is likewise bracketed by ho...epainos, and which is clearly nonattributive. I fail to see how Kirkwood's general argument, that Pindar's poetry praises the noble only and blames the base only (e.g., p. 179 on Pindar Nemean8.39), goes beyond what I too have argued throughout my discussion in N, pp. 222-288. The difference between Kirkwood's position and mine is that I view this pattern of restriction on the range of blame as a specialization from earlier phases of ainos. For me, a passage like Pindar Olympian6.74-76, where mômos 'blame' looms over the successful, is a self-reference to an earlier and less differentiated phase of the medium, where one man's praise proved to be another man's blame.
§7n4. Note the self-reference to the given poem by way of the word ainos in Archilochus F 174
W. The recited meter of this particular composition is a combination of iambic trimeters and dimeters.
§7n5. Note the self-reference to the given poem by way of the word ainissô in Theognis681-682 (quoted immediately above).
§8n1. Consider the use of the verb kleiô, derivative of kleos, at, for example, Odyssey i 338,
Homeric Hymn32.19. Cf. Iliad XI 227, as discussed in N 1979.15-18.
§8n2. This is not the case with all poetry normally described as epic: cf., for example, Radloff 1885.xviii-xix (and Svenbro 1976.17-18). Cf. also Zumthor 1983.109 and Martin 1989.6-7.
§11n1. Woodbury 1968 gives a useful survey of the more extreme statements to the effect that
Pindar is simply a poet for hire. Woodbury's own attitude is best reflected by what he says at p. 531 about Pindar Isthmian 2.1-13: "An obsession with fees is the least likely of themes for a Pindaric poem."
§11n2. For a better appreciation of this concept, a good start is to read carefully the searching analysis in Gernet 1968.93-137; cf. also Laum 1924.
§12n1. Brelich 1961; cf. Connor 1988. On the theme of kratos 'superior power' as it applies to both warrior and athlete: N 1979.90.
§13n1. Burnett 1985.173n25 notes: "As an emblem of the new anonymity in battle note the disappearance of the shield design in the early classical period." She cites Beazley 1954.79; another discussion that could be cited is Lévêque and Vidal-Naquet 1964.57-61, especially p. 61 (cf. Roussel 1976.60n26). Burnett connects (ibid.) "the collectivity of hoplite war and the disappearance of recognized deeds of [aristeiâ]," citing the discussion of Pritchett 1974.276-290.
§14n1. Alexiou 1974.13, 18-19, 104, 106, 108; cf. N 1979.116.
§14n2. Alexiou, pp. 104, 106. Cf. Ch.1§5n1.
§15n1. Cf. Ch.5§13 and following.
§16n3. Ibid. On the parallelism in the formalities of worshipping heroes and immediate ancestors, see Rohde 1898 I 165.
§17n1. Commentary on this passage by Cartledge 1988.
§17n2. Cf. Hartog 1980.166-170 (especially p. 170), with reference to the customs connected with the funerals of Spartan kings. On patterns of gradual detribalization in the polis, cf. N 1987.
§18n1. For background: Berve 1967 and Petre 1975.
§18n2. Commentary by Rhodes 1981.100-101.
§19n1. Cf. Brelich 1958.150. In this same context, Ephorus FGH 70 F 118, is a reference to the hero cult of the lawgiver Lycurgus. On the genealogies of the kings of Sparta, the prime testimony is Herodotus 7.204 and 8.131.2. Cf. Calame 1987. Cf. also Ch.10§34.
§19n2. The name of Medon, ancestor of Solon's lineage, is significant: see, for example, Benveniste 1973.404 on the participle medôn 'ruler' (e.g., Iliad II 79; singular in I 72), corresponding to the name Medôn: "in medôn we feel primarily the notion of authority and [secondarily...], the notion of a directing 'measure'."
§19n3. Habicht 1985.146, with further discussion.
§19n4. Shapiro 1983. See especially p. 89, where he argues that the Peisistratos who was archon in 669/668 B.C. was an ancestor of Peisistratos the tyrant. Note too the discussion (ibid.) of an early Archaic relief pithos with the figure of a warrior labeled 'Antilokhos', presumably identified with the son of Homeric Nestor (cf. Odyssey iii 112).
§19n5. Cf. Mossé 1969.72 on the hero cult established in honor of the ancestors of the Peisistratidai.
§19n6. Cf. Pfister II 469.
§20n1. For a list of powerful oikoi or oikiai, 'families' whose influence extended beyond their native polis, see Roussel 1976.60n19. On the poetics of this concept of oikoi or oikiai, I cite the pathfinding work of Kurke 1988. On the sacral meaning of oikos as a cult place where a given hero is worshipped, see Ch.9§27.
§20n2. This passage in Herodotus 6.35.1 stresses that the genealogy of the Philaidai is to be localized at Aegina for the sequence of Aiakos to Telamon to Ajax to Philaios, from which point onward it is to be relocalized at Athens. In Pausanias 1.35.1-2 there is an intermediary stage in the genealogy, in that the son of Ajax is Eurysakes, whose son in turn is Philaios; it is made explicit here that the colonization of Salamis by Telamon is an enterprise that must be credited to Aegina, and that the turning over of Salamis to Athens from Aegina is associated with the figure of Philaios, who thereby 'becomes Athenian' (genomenon...athênaion ibid.). In the version recorded by Plutarch Life of Solon 10, Philaios and Eurysakes are brothers, and they both surrender Salamis to Athens; Philaios settles in the region of Brauron, where the dêmos 'deme' of the Philaidai is named after him (for a parallel naming of a dêmos 'deme', the new unit of social subdivision at Athens after the Reform of Kleisthenes, see Ch.5§15n3 on the deme called Boutadai). On the concept of the Aiakidai at Aegina, as descended from Aiakos, see Ch.6§57.
§20n3. The Reform of Kleisthenes left traces of special privileges for the Alkmaionidai: cf. Lanza 1977.171n1.
§20n4. Cf. Pausanias 2.18.8-9, where the Alkmaionidai are traced to an Alkmaion descended from Nestor of the Neleidai; on the Neleidai see Ch.6§18.
§22n1. Cf. Ch.10§19 and following.
§22n2. Another of the descendants of Alkmaion may be the Athenian Kroisos = Croesus, memorialized in an inscription at the base of a kouros-statue, which refers to his death in battle and his sêma 'tomb' (CEG 27); this statue may have been carved sometime after 530 B.C., but the date of the battle in which this Athenian man died may be as early as 547 (Ridgway 1977.8). There is a possibility that our Athenian Croesus belonged to the lineage of the Alkmaionidai and may have been a direct descendant of the ancestor of this lineage, the Alkmaion who reputedly collaborated with Croesus, Tyrant of the Lydian Empire, in the story retold by Herodotus 6.125.2; see Jeffery 1962.144 (I owe this reference to M. J. Rein); cf. Ch.9§23n1. This narrative in Herodotus concerning the alleged alliance of Alkmaion with Croesus of Lydia helps motivate the naming of a descendant of Alkmaion after the Tyrant of the Lydian Empire; cf. Ch.9§23n1. T. J. Figueira draws my attention to the name of one of the descendants of the lineage of the Kypselidai
at Corinth: Psammêtikhos = Psammetichus, Tyrant of Corinth after the rule of Periandros, his paternal uncle (Aristotle Politics 1315b26; in the text of Nicolaus of Damascus FGH 90 F 60, his name is given as Kypselos). This name corresponds to Psammêtikhos = Psammetichus, Pharaoh of Egypt, as in Herodotus 1.105.1, 2.2, and so on. For more on the Kypselidai of Corinth, see Ch.6§65. On the political contacts of Psammetichus with the Greeks, cf. especially Herodotus 2.154.
§22n3. As Roussel 1976.62 points out, there is an exceptional instance in the attested Athenian ostraka of the Archaic period where the candidate for ostracism is not only named but also specified as a member of a certain lineage; that lineage happens to be the Alkmaionidai ([Alk] meon[idon | Kal]lichsen[os | Ar]isto[numo 'Kallixenos, son of Aristonymos, of the Alkmaionidai': Meiggs and Lewis 1975.40). The reference to the Alkmaionidai as misoturannoi 'tyrant-haters' at Herodotus 6.121.1 has to do with their well-known enmity with the Peisistratidai, who had in fact already achieved tyranny. The designation of tyrant-haters is a politically understandable stance for those who are themselves potential tyrants. On the partiality of Herodotus toward the Alkmaionidai, see Gillis 1969.
§22n4. See Rhodes 1981.274-275.
§22n5. Kirkwood 1984.178.
§23n1. Most 1982.83; cf. Farenga 1981.
§23n2. Cf. Page 1955.150. For these and other examples, see Petre 1975.564.
§23n3. For these and other examples, see Petre, pp. 564-565.
§23n4. Further discussion in Petre, p. 568.
§24n1. Cf. also Herodotus 1.62.4, 8.96.2, and the remarks of Fontenrose 1978.157- 159.
§27n1. At Herodotus 7.6.2, the Aleuadai are described as basilees 'kings' of Thessaly.
§27n2. The interactive presentation of poetry and bracketing speech by singers of oracular utterances and by tyrants respectively is a negative version of the medium inherited by Herodotus himself (in terms of this medium, we may equate speech with prose): see Ch.11§24.
§28n1. Cf. Fontenrose 1978.217n27.
§29n2. There is a story reported by Diogenes Laertius 9.6 (Heraclitus 22 A 1 DK) that Heraclitus deposited his writings in the temple of Artemis at Ephesus so that only the powerful might have access to it (hopôs hoi dunamenoi <monoi> prosioien autôi kai mê ek tou dêmôdous eukataphronêton êi); in the same context there is a report that Heraclitus belonged to the royal lineage of Ephesus, and that he at one point resigned his hereditary "kingship" in favor of his brother (Diogenes ibid.). Members of the royal lineage of Ephesus, descended from Androklos son of Kodros of Athens, were entitled to be called basileis 'kings', to occupy the front seats at
the games, to wear purple robes as a sign of their royal descent, to carry a staff called a skipôn (as distinct from a skêptron), and to be in charge of the sacred rites of Eleusinian Demeter (Pherecydes FGH 3 F 155 by way of Strabo 14.1.3 C633 = Heraclitus 22 A 2 DK) .
§30n1. Cf. Theognis769-770 and the commentary of Ford 1985.92, Edmunds 1985.106-107.
§30n2. In other words some poems are so ad hoc as to be considered Hipparkhos' own compositions while others are thought of as recompositions of the compositions of others.
§30n3. By implication a composition can be switched from one meter to another in the process of recomposition in performance. The available epigraphical evidence suggests that the Peisistratidai played a major role in the evolution of the elegiac distich as the canonical meter of the epigram: see Wallace 1984, especially p. 315.
§30n4. The translation here closely follows that of Ford 1985.90.
§30n5. For parallelisms in diction with, for example, Theognis753-756, see Ford 1985.91 §17n1.
§31n1. Cf. Ch.6§54. We may contrast this gesture with that of Heraclitus, as described at Ch. 6§29n2, where the depositing of a transcript in the temple of Artemis at Ephesus is interpreted as a way of restricting access.
§31n2. On the symbolism of hiding poetry away in a box, see Ch.6§50 and Ch.6§51.
§32n1. Cf. the collocation of apo-deik-numai 'present publicly' with sophiâ 'skill in discourse' at Herodotus 4.76.2. More on this verb apo-deik-numai at Ch.8§4n1, Ch.8§5 and following, Ch. 8§10 and following.
§32n2. See the previous note.
§33n1. More below on the meaning of theôros; for the moment, I find it useful to cite the working definition of Delcourt 1955.69: "chargé d'une mission religieuse."
§33n2. For another such explicit definition, I cite the scholia A to Iliad XVI 235: prophêtas gar legousi tous peri ta chrêstêria ascholoumenous kai tas manteias tas ginomenas hupo tôn hiereôn ekpherontas 'declarers [prophêtês pl.] is the name for those who officiate at oracles and bring forth the mantic utterences [manteia pl.] that take place through the agency of the priests'.
§33n3. Fontenrose 1978.218 argues that the official title of the prophêtês of the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi was not prophêtês but simply hiereus 'priest'.
§33n4. Cf. Ch.6§45n1. It is the fact that he is the actor of a speech-act that qualifies the
prophêtês 'declarer' as a hupokritês 'actor' (again Plato Timaeus 72b).
§33n5. For a minimalist survey of the Pythia's role, see Fontenrose, pp. 196-228.
§33n6. For a collection of such testimonia, see Fontenrose, p. 224, referring to entries Q137,
Q124, and H7 in his Catalogue of Delphic Responses.
§33n7. Pace Fontenrose, pp. 218-219.
§34n1. It is this kind of undifferentiation that is being discussed in Plato Timaeus 72b.
§34n2. The very form Mousa/Moisa (from *mont-[isubcirc]a; possibly *month-[isubcirc]a) may well be derived from the same root *men- as in maniâ. This possibility, along with others, is discussed by Chantraine DELG 716. If this etymology is correct, then the very word for "Muse" reflects an earlier stage where not only the one who is inspired and the one who speaks the words of inspiration are the same, but even, further, the type of mental state marked by maniâ is not yet differentiated from the type of mental state marked by formations with *men-t- and *men-
[schwa ]2- 'remember, have the mind connected with'.
§36n1. For an overview of the function of the theôros as an official emissary of the polis, see Delcourt 1955.68-70.
§37n1. Cf. Delcourt 1955.68-70 and Fontenrose 1978.217n27.
§37n2. Further details at Ch.8§27.
§37n3. Extensive discussion in N 1983.
§38n1. See Hartog 1980.368-369.
§39n1. Extensive commentary in N 1985.36-41.
§39n2. Cognate with English song.
§40n1. Extensive commentary in N 1985.36-41.
§41n1. In contrast with this particular Spartan version, Herodotus also gives the contemporary version, also ascribed by him to the Spartans, according to which Lycurgus got the code from Crete (again 1.65.4); more on this contemporary Spartan version in N 1985.31-32.
§42n1. Or in the case of athletics the sacred message of the victory itself.
§42n2. At Herodotus 1.29.1, Solon the lawgiver of Athens gives theôriâ as the pretext (pro- phasis) for his travels, but his other motive, as made explicit in the narrative, is to prevent his being compelled to undo any aspect of his law code. At 1.30.1, it is made clear that theôriâ was indeed also his motive. So there are two motives, but only one is made explicit by Solon to his audience; the other motive is kept implicit by Solon but made explicit by Herodotus to his "audience."
§44n1. Cf. Ch.6§30. After the fall of the Peisistratidai, Simonides did not become a persona non grata with the new democratic government at Athens. According to the anonymous Life of Aeschylus (8), prefixed to the corpus of Aeschylus, Simonides defeated Aeschylus for the state commission of composing an epigram in honor of those who fell at Marathon (doubts about the
credibility of this tradition in Podlecki 1984.185-187). Also Simonides EG 75 is an epigram marking the sêma 'tomb' of Megakles of the Alkmaionidai, the same figure who is the subject of praise in Pindar's Pythian7 (on whom see Ch.6§22). On Simonides and Themistokles, see Bowra 1961.356.
§45n1. On angeliâ 'announcement' as speech act in the poetics of Pindar, cf. Nash 1976. Another particularly revealing passage is Herodotus 8.135.3, concerning the prophêtês 'declarer' of the oracular voice of Apollo at the shrine known as the Ptoön of the Thebans; the official who is actually inspired by Apollo has the title pro-mantis (8.135.2). The story has it that the pro- mantis on one particular occasion made utterances in a non-Greek language (ibid.; it is made explicit that the utterances were normally in Greek). These utterances were then declared by the prophêtês (ta legomena hupo tou prophêteô 8.135.3), but they were not understood by those present (ibid.). At this point, one Mys takes the initiative of writing the words down on a tablet that he impulsively seizes from the Thebans who officially accompanied him to consult the oracle (ibid.). The wording apograpsomenous and sungrapsamenon here at Herodotus 8.135.3, where the compound verbs of graphô 'write' are used in the middle voice, implies that those who consult the Oracle may not only take notes but also commission someone to write a definitive transcript, to be brought back home to their native city for "publication," through public performance. The written word, then, can serve as intermediary for that ultimate speech-act. It is clear from this passage that the prophêtês does not interpret the message of the mantis: he simply formalizes it. The prophêtês 'declarer' can be described as a hupokritês 'actor' (Plato Timaeus 72b). The verb hupokrînomai, from which hupokritês 'actor' is derived, conveys a secondary formal speech-act, consistent and true, in response to a primary formal speech-act. For this reason, hupokrînomai can be translated either as answer or in other contexts as interpret, where the object of the verb is a dream or omen (cf. Thomson 1946.181-182 and Svenbro 1987.37-39, with special reference to Odyssey xv 167-170). To intepret is really to formalize the speech-act that is radiating from the dream or the omen or, let us say, the mantis. As for the translation of hupokrînomai as answer, it applies to situations where one speech-act is a formal answer to a preceding speech-act, which is a formal question. In one Archaic inscription (CEG
286) the voice of the inscribed letters promises that it 'answers' (hupokrinomai) the same thing to all men who ask their questions. My intepretation here of hupokrînomai differs from that of Svenbro (1987.37-39), though I agree with his argument that this inscription illustrates the function of the written word as a substitute for the formalization of performance (p. 39): "The statuette is a 'speaking object' because of the vocal implications of hupokrînomai. It is in fact our earliest clear example of an inscription using, with regard to itself, the metaphor of the voice." In such a case the inscription is the hupokritês, the actor, and therefore it is the prophêtês, the formalizer of the speech-act.
§46n1. For more on the medium of Herodotus, see Ch.11§24. Cf. Havelock 1963.54n8.
§46n2. For more on writing as a performative substitution, in the medium of Herodotus, for
saying publicly: Ch.8§3n3 and Ch.8§6.
§47n1. Hartog 1980.287-288.
§47n2. What the message says under the cover of the hair is expressed by way of the verb
sêmainô 'make signs, indicate' sêmainonta 5.35.2; sêmênai bis, esêmaine 5.35.3), on which see
§48n1. For more on the seal of Theognis, see Ford 1985; cf. N 1985.33.
§48n2. See Ch.6§39. We may compare the tradition according to which the Pythia communicated to Lycurgus, lawgiver of Sparta, the law code of Sparta (Herodotus 1.65.4); cf. Ch.6§41. On the ideology of unchangeability as affirmed by the law code itself, cf. N 1985.31-34, especially p. 32: "Inside the ideology of narrative traditions about a given lawgiver, his code is static, unchangeable; outside this ideology and in reality, however, the code is dynamic, subject to modifications and accretions that are occasioned by an evolving social order."
§49n1. For more on Bakis, see Fontenrose 1978.158-162.
§49n2. Fontenrose, p. 159.
§50n1. This point is stressed by Svenbro 1987.32-33, who also points out that the Ionian word epi-legesthai 'read' (as at Herodotus 8.128.3) implies that the reader adds (hence epi-) the sounds of the words to the letters that he sees (p. 32). For more on the semiotics of reading as recognizing, see N 1983, especially p. 39; also Pucci 1987.87.
§50n2. For other instances of the metaphor of writing as inscribed in the phrên 'mind', see Svenbro, p. 46n27, who cites, for example, Aeschylus Libation-Bearers 450, Eumenides
273-275; Sophocles Philoctetes 1325. On the Platonic notion that ordinary writing is an eidôlon 'simulacrum' of metaphorical writing (Phaedrus 276a), see Svenbro, p. 46n26, following Derrida 1972b.172.
§50n3. This point is elaborated by Svenbro, p. 35. On State Theater as the creation of tyrants, see
Ch.13§6 and following.
§50n4. It is pertinent to bring to mind again the frequent use in drama of the metaphor of writing as inscribed in the phrên 'mind', as cited at Ch.6§50n2. Cf. also Svenbro, pp. 42-45 on Athenaeus 453c-454a.
§50n5. As Pickard-Cambridge 1968.84n4 notes, such an expression cannot refer literally to the reading of a drama in the theater.
§51n1. Svenbro, pp. 31, 40, following Knox 1968.433.
§51n2. Svenbro, p. 31.
§51n3. It does not necessarily follow, however, that the implicit metaphor for Athenian State Theater is an act of silent reading, as argued by Svenbro, p. 35 and following. Again I note the expression drama anagignôskein 'to read out loud [ana-gignôskô] the drama', referring to the function of producing a drama, in the scholia to Aristophanes Clouds510. We may also compare Plato Laws 817d, a passage implying that each drama, in competition with other dramas, had to be approved by the archons, on the basis of some kind of audition, before a chorus could officially be constituted for its production (cf. Pickard-Cambridge 1968.84); I stress that there is no reference in this passage to a written text, a script. On the notion that the dialogues of Plato
amount to an internalization of Theater inside the Book, see Svenbro, p. 41, following, for example, Derrida 1972b.264.
§53n1. On Musaeus, see Ch.6§49.
§53n2. Quoted by Allen 1924.232-233. For a parallel myth concerning the reassembling of the Homeric poems by Lycurgus, lawgiver of Sparta, see Ch.2§42n2.
§54n2. The latter passage is quoted at Ch.10§12.
§54n3. Cf. Roussel 1976.60n19; for more on this Megakles, see Ch.6§22.
§54n4. On kharis as a 'beautiful and pleasurable compensation, through song or poetry, for a deed deserving of glory', see Ch.2§28n1.
§54n5. Details, with bibliography, in Bresson 1979.149-157.
§56n1. Cf. Davison 1968.306.
§57n1. See Powell 1939.108.
§57n2. Powell ibid. points to the remark of Pausanias 2.29.2 that the only king ever to rule Aegina was Aiakos himself, on the grounds that none of the three sons of Aiakos remained a resident of the island: one of the three, Phokos, was killed by the other two, and his sons went to Phokis, while the other two brothers, Peleus and Telamon, went into exile for the murder (Pausanias ibid.; cf. Pindar Nemean5.14 and following, with scholia). Peleus went to Phthia (Apollodorus 3.13.1) and Telamon, to Salamis (Pausanias 2.29.10; Apollodorus 3.12.7). The assertion, however, that Telamon is not a hero of Aegina, with the implication that he had no Aeginetan descendants to claim him, seems to reflect a pro-Athenian and anti-Aeginetan version. The pro-Athenian slant become more clear in another passage, where Pausanias reports that Philaios of Salamis, son of Eurysakes son of Ajax son of Telamon, handed over the island of Salamis to the Athenians and was adopted by Athens as an Athenian (2.35.2); this Philaios is the ancestor of the Athenian Philaidai, on whom see Ch.6§20n2. Which brings us back to the remark at Herodotus 8.64.2 about 'Aiakos and the other Aiakidai': the full context of this remark is that the Greeks at Salamis resolved, in their moment of crisis, to invoke the spirits of the cult heroes of Salamis, Telamon and Ajax (autothen men ek Salaminos Aianta te kai Telamôna epekaleonto
Herodotus 8.64.2), while they sent a ship to Aegina to get Aiakos and the other Aiakidai (epi de Aiakon kai tous allous Aiakidas nea apestellon es Aiginan). For Herodotus, then, the designation of Aiakidai not only includes the heroes of Salamis, Telamon and Ajax: it also links them with Aegina, not Athens. This attitude is also apparent from the remarks of Herodotus at 6.35.1, on which see Ch.6§20n2.
§57n3. Fundamental discussion in Rohde 1898 I 159-166 (cf. II 242-245) and Pfister I 196-208; also Bérard 1982 and Snodgrass 1982. Cf. Hartog 1980.149-153; also Brelich 1958.129-131;
Henrichs 1983.94.
§57n4. Cf. Hartog 1980.151n6; also Calame 1987.177.
§57n5. Rusten 1983.293n15 argues that if the bones of Themistokles were credited with heroic powers, "their public return to Athens [Pausanias 1.1.2] would be as effective politically as the stories of Orestes' and Theseus' returns."
§58n1. See the discussion of elliptic plurals in N 1979.55-56§20n6; also Muellner 1976.70.
§59n2. Cf. Edmunds 1981, especially p. 223n8; also Brelich 1958.40, 69-73.
§59n4. Cf. Herodotus 5.66.2: Kleisthenes the Reformer considers Ajax, as cult hero, a
summakhos 'ally'.
§60n1. Perhaps we may compare the agglomerate lineage in Archaic Athens known as the Eupatridai, as it existed before the complex reshapings of the polis under the tyranny of the Peisistratidai and thereafter; in Anecdota Graeca 1.257 ed. Bekker, the Eupatridai of Athens are described as those who lived in the city proper, were of royal birth, and controlled the rituals of the polis. Cf. Roussel 1976.67-68.
§60n2. Even if the entire population of Aegina may in certain contexts be designated as Aiakidai (cf. Slater 1969.15 s.v. aiakidaW category "c"), such a designation could still amount to an elliptic recognition of the power of one lineage. (On the question, whether the Aiakidai may be described as a ruling lineage, cf. Kirsten 1942.296, 303; for a related discussion that concentrates on distinctions between real and mythical genealogies in Aegina, see Figueira 1981.299-303.) In other words the term Aiakidai could serve to designate the whole community by way of a prominent part of the whole. To outsiders Aiakidai could represent an inclusive category designating all Aeginetans, while to insiders they could represent the exclusive lineage who trace themselves back to the hero Aiakos. Cf. Tyrtaeus F 11.1 W, where the sum total of Spartans is addressed as hêraklêoW...genoW 'the race of Herakles' (cf. Tyrtaeus F 2.12-15W). Clearly not all Spartans are in fact Herakleidai 'Heraclids'. On the concept of Herakleidai as the basic lineage of the Dorian royal dynasties, see Pindar Pythian1.61-66, 5.69-72; also Apollodorus 2.8.4-5; cf. ">Herodotus 9.26, 27.1-2. I see another possible parallel in the case of the name Spartê 'Sparta', which is apparently connected with the Theban concept of Spartoi, warriors "sown" in the earth when Kadmos planted the dragon's teeth; the fully grown and armed Spartoi began killing each
other as soon as they were generated from the earth, and the five Spartoi who survived this mutual slaughter became ancestors of the Theban aristocracy (e.g., Apollodorus 3.4.1, Pausanias 9.10.1; cf. Pausanias 8.11.8 on Epameinondas as a descendant of the Spartoi). The key to the connection between Spartoi and Sparta is a lineage at Sparta known as the Aigeidai (on which see Herodotus 4.149.1); tradition has it that they were connected by marriage to the royal line of the Herakleidai, in that Theras, an ancestor of the Aigeidai, whose father had fled in exile from Thebes to Sparta, was the maternal uncle of Eurysthenes and Prokles, the two Herakleidai who became the ancestors of the two royal houses of Sparta (Herodotus 6.52.2); cf. Vian 1963.218n4. Now these Aigeidai traced themselves to the Spartoi of Thebes (the mother and wife of Oedipus, Iokaste, is descended from Ekhion, one of the Spartoi who married Agaue, daughter of Kadmos), and, according to Timagoras FGH 381 F 3, the Spartoi who fled from Thebes to Sparta (these Spartoi were the Aigeidai: Vian, p. 223) actually gave their name to Sparta.
§61n1. On Aigialeus and the Aigialeis, see Roussel 1976.252.
§61n2. It is misleading to translate phûlê as 'tribe'. This word ordinarily designates the major subdivision of a given Archaic polis; the subdivision itself is a tribal heritage, but the functional heir of the tribe is not the phûlê but the entire polis itself. Full discussion in N 1987.
§61n3. Roussel 1976.256n27. Cf. Herodotus 4.149.1-2, who uses the word phûlê in referring to the Aigeidai, an important lineage at Sparta that claimed pre-Dorian origins from a lineage by the same name at Thebes. See Ch.6§60n2. The Aigeidai of Sparta traced themselves, by way of their ancestor Aigeus (Herodotus ibid.), all the way back to Polyneikes, son of Oedipus (4.147.1-2). That the Aigeidai of Sparta originate from Thebes is proudly proclaimed in the words of Pindar Isthmian7.14-15. There is an argument to be made that Pindar himself was a descendant of the original Theban branch of the Aigeidai: see Ch.12§80. On the restructuring of the family tree of the Aigeidai in the context of Spartan political history, see Vian 1963.219. Aside from the Herodotean mention of the Aigeidai as a phûlê at Sparta, this polis is known for its three standard Dorian phûlai of Dymanes, Hylleis, and Pamphyloi (e.g., Tyrtaeus F 19.8 W). In the account of a famous battle in the series of campaigns known as the Messenian Wars, Pausanias 4.7.8, there is a description of the battle line of the Spartans, where the left and the right wings are each commanded by one of the two Spartan kings, while the center is reserved for a descendant of the Aigeidai (4.7.8).
§61n4. The tyrant's model, featuring the primacy of the phûlê Arkhelaoi and suppressing the names Dymanes / Hylleis / Pamphyloi for the other three phûlai, was changed at around 500 B.C. to a model where the name Arkhelaoi was replaced by Aigialeis and where the names Dymanes / Hylleis / Pamphyloi for the other three phûlai were restored: see Herodotus 5.68.2 and the commentary of Roussel 1976.252, who argues that, by this time, Sparta rather than Argos was the Dorian city par excellence, and Sikyon would no longer be threatened by an Argive model of Dorian society. It is even possible that the fourth phûlê had been created by the tyrants as an addition to the Dymanes / Hylleis / Pamphyloi, and that the name of this fourth phûlê, Aigialeis, represents simply a reformation of the name given by the tyrants, Arkhelaoi. As for the Spartan model as a threat to other Dorian societies, we may note what happened after the Battle of Leuktra in 371 B.C.: the liberated Messenians rejected the phûlê-divisions of the Spartans, Dymanes/ Hylleis/Pamphyloi, choosing instead Kresphontis/Daiphontis/Aristomakhis/Hyllis/Kleolaia (IG 5.1.1433). As Roussel argues (p. 256n29), all these Messenian designations are appropriate to the
"Sons of Herakles," the Herakleidai, and they thus reaffirm the Dorian identity, however distinct, of the Messenians. On the concept of Herakleidai 'Heraclids' as the basic lineage of the Dorian royal dynasties, see again Tyrtaeus 2.12-15W; Pindar Pythian1.61-66, 5.69-72; Isthmian9.1-3; Apollodorus 2.8.4-5; cf. Herodotus 9.26, 27.1-2.
§61n5. Herodotus 5.68.1 thinks that the meaning of the name Arkhelâoi 'they who rule the lâos' indicates that the phûlê to which Kleisthenes belonged was the lineage of the tyrant. I would argue further that the name also proclaims, in wording that avoids Argive connections, the inherited standing of this particular phûlê in relation to the others. On lâos 'host of fighting men' as a designation for the community at large, see N 1979.69§1n3 and 114§26n1 (following Benveniste 1969 II 91-95), with special reference to the derivative lâiton, native to the people of Achaea, which Herodotus 7.197.2 describes as a word meaning prutaneion 'presidential hall'. For a semantic parallel to Arkhelâoi 'they who rule the lâos', I cite the Messenian phûlê called Kleolaiâ 'whose lâos has glory [kleos]', as mentioned in the note immediately above. Moreover, the meaning of Arkhelâoi, where the component lâos 'host' refers to the primordial society that was divided into phûlai, is comparable to the meaning of stratos 'host' in Pindar Isthmian9.2-3, referring to the Dorian occupation of Aegina: Hullou te kai Aigimiou Dôrieus [...] stratos 'the Dorian host [stratos] of Hyllos and Aigimios'. Hyllos, eponymous ancestor of the Hylleis, was the adopted son of Aigimios, son of Doros, the eponymous ancestor of the Dorians, while Aigimios had two sons of his own, Dyman and Pamphylos, eponymous ancestors of the Dymanes and Pamphyloi (Ephorus FGH 70 F 15; cf. Strabo 9.4.10 C427 and Apollodorus 2.8.3). This compressed Pindaric reference to the three basic Dorian phûlai of Dymanes / Hylleis / Pamphyloi in terms of a stratos 'host' at Aegina can be compared with the mention of a startos 'host' of the Aithaleis at Gortyn in the Law Code of Gortyn (5.5 Willetts), from which group the chief magistrates of the polis, the kosmoi, were to be selected at a given period (cf. DGE 185.1, again with mention of the Aithaleis as kosmoi at Gortyn). Gortyn, a polis on the island of Crete, is Dorian, like Aegina. As Aristotle points out, the kosmoi of Crete were traditionally chosen only from a few specially privileged lineages (Politics 1272a), and their rotation of political power was subject to the tyranny-prone dangers of factionalism among aristocrats vying for power (1272b). Since there is also evidence that the kosmoi of a specific period are in some instances designated as belonging to a specific phûlê, such as the Dymanes (Inscriptiones Creticae 182.21- 22), it is possible that the members of a specially privileged lineage like the Aithaleis tenuously shared power, through the rotating office of kosmoi, with representative lineages selected from the Dorian phûlai, that is, the Dymanes, Hylleis, and
Pamphyloi (cf. Roussel p. 257). In any case the startos Aithaleus 'host of the Aithaleis' seems to be a specially privileged group in the polis of Gortyn (Roussel, p. 258). Such points of comparison from Crete suggest that the stratos of Dorian society at Aegina, as mentioned in the ode of Pindar, may be hierarchically integrated with a preeminent stratos of Aiakidai. See further at Ch.6§65n2.
§62n1. Cf. again Petre 1975; also Loraux 1986.282n24.
§63n1. Commentary in N 1985.42-46.
§64n1. Further discussion at Ch.10§43.
§64n2. Commentary in N 1985.42-46.
§64n3. Cf. N, pp. 22 §2n2, 36, 41, 46, 52, 59. Cf. the use of stasis at Xenophanes F 1.23 W = 21 B 1.23 DK, where the theme of social strife is represented as a poetic subject typical of the here and now, as distinct from stories about Titans (1.21) or Centaurs (1.22), subjects typical of the remote past.
§64n4. An example of such 'killings' is the story of Kylon, on which see Ch.6§21.
§65n1. On whom see Ch.6§19.
§65n2. Pausanias 2.4.4 reports the tradition that one Melas, ancestor of Kypselos, had joined Aletes, first Dorian king of Corinth, in conquering Corinth and was accepted as their sunoikos 'co-inhabitant'. By implication the Kypselidai are understood to be non-Dorian or perhaps pre- Dorian. In contrast the Bakkhiadai trace themselves to Bakkhis, fifth in the lineage of kings starting with Aletes (ibid.). Eumelus of Corinth, to whom the fundamental poetry about the foundation of Corinth is ascribed, was one of the Bakkhiadai (Pausanias 2.1.1, who implies at
2.2.2 that he has read Eumelus). Similar to the pattern in Corinth is what we find in Aegina: the Dorians who conquered the island of Aegina are described as sunoikoi 'co-inhabitants' of the arkhaioi 'ancients' who were already there (Pausanias 2.29.5). By implication these arkhaioi, whom we may equate with the primordial Aiakidai, were the lineage of local rulers. That the Aiakidai, from the standpoint of the newcomer Dorians, supposedly never became a formal dynasty of kings is confirmed by the report that there were no kings of Aegina, except for Aiakos himself (Pausanias 2.29.2). Similarly there is a report that the Bakkhiadai were not kings but prutaneis 'presidents' (2.4.4).
§65n3. This point is argued in detail by Vernant 1982, following Gernet 1953.
§65n4. Cf. Vernant, p. 35n16a. On the concept of Herakleidai 'Heraclids' as the criterion of Dorian kingship, see Ch.6§61n4. Further discussion of the Kypselidai of Corinth: Sourvinou- Inwood 1988.
§66n1. On the "Mirror of Princes" tradition in the poetry of Theognis, in the Hesiodic Works and Days, and in the Odyssey, see the crucial article of Martin 1984.
§66n2. Further discussion in N 1985.33.
§66n3. Extensive examples and commentary in N, pp. 51-60.
§67n1. See the commentary in N 1985.42-46. For a calculated equation of the attenuated word monarkhos 'monarch' with the explicit turannos, see again Herodotus 3.80.2/4 as discussed at Ch.6§64 and following.
§67n2. Commentary in N 1985.43.
§67n3. This parallel is noted by Vernant 1982.35-36n22, following a suggestion by N. Loraux.
§67n4. Commentary in N 1985.41-46.
§68n1. Commentary in N 1985.51.
§68n2. Commentary in N, p. 46.
§68n3. Further discussion of this theme: Sourvinou-Inwood 1988.
§69n2. Cf. the overview in N 1985.35-36.
§69n3. N 1985.51 §39n1.
§69n4. See N, pp. 43, 50. In this connection we may take note again of Solon's ancestry, the lineage of the Medontidai, as mentioned at Ch.6§19.
§69n5. I am grateful to S. Bartsch for pointing out this connection to me.
§69n6. On which see Ch.6§39.
§73n1. Cf. Ch.6§21. In Thucydides 4.121.1 we read that the people of Skione enthusiastically greeted the Spartan general Brasidas as the liberator of Hellas, crowning him with a golden wreath and decorating him with a headband as though he were an âthlêtês 'athlete' (etainioun te kai prosêrchonto hôsper athlêtêi); there is a similar anecdote about Pericles on the occasion of his having delivered his Funeral Oration (Plutarch Life of Pericles 28.5). On the symbolism of headbands as decoration for victorious athletes, see Sansone 1988.80-81.
§73n2. See Ch.6§54. In this connection we may note the testimony of Timaeus FGH 566 F 133 (by way of Clement Stromateis 1.64.2), who was a historian of Sicily, that Xenophanes was a contemporary of Hieron of Syracuse (whose reign is dated from 478 to 467 B.C.). In the words of Xenophanes, the prestige of the athletic victor is but a foil for what is achieved through the poetic sophiâ 'skill' of the poet himself (F 2.12, 14 W = 21 B 2.12, 14 DK); in a catalogue of various kinds of athletic accomplishments, the feat that is placed closest to that of the poet is a victory in chariot racing (2.12).
§74n1. On the balance of praise and admonition in Pindar, see in general Ch.1 of Hubbard 1985.
§74n2. Cf. Kirkwood 1982.7.
§75n1. I read kai as marking apposition here; on the appositional usage of kai, see Denniston
1954.291. For a commentary, with extensive bibliography, on Ibycus SLG 151, see Woodbury 1985.
§75n2. Cf. N 1974.250-251 and Watkins1976c; also Martin 1984.35.
§75n3. Martin, p. 35.
§77n1. Woodbury 1968; cf. also Descat 1981.25-27 and Hubbard 1985.158-162.
§77n2. Cf. Kurke 1988.194-209, who argues that the contemporary model of a "mercenary Muse" at the beginning of Isthmian2 is transformed by the end into a positive value through the appropriation of the idealized old-fashioned model of the nonprofessional Muse. For more on the idealization of the nonprofessional Muse in Isthmian2, see Ch.12§5 and following.
§77n3. On kharis as the beauty and the pleasure of reciprocity, see Ch.2§28n1.
§78n1. Cf. Descat 1981.26-27.
§78n2. Woodbury 1968.535.
§78n3. Cf. Ch.6§63 and following.
§79n1. See N 1982.47-49.
§79n2. Ibid.
§80n1. Benveniste 1969 I 163-169.
§80n2. Will 1975.
§80n3. See Will, p. 437, who also notes the efforts of Plato and Aristotle to rehabilitate the word. We may compare the contemporary semantics of service: besides such materialistic contexts as we see in phrases like room service, there are also transcendent usages, such as unselfish service to the community.
§80n4. This transcendent kind of 'profit' from the praise of song is parallel to the theme of olbos 'bliss' in the sense of a simultaneously materialistic and transcendent kind of well-being, as captured by the discourse of the ainos: see the discussion at Ch.8§45 and following.
§81n1. Commentary by Loraux 1982.190-191.
§82n1. More precisely the claim being made is that Theron is descended from Thersandros, son of Polyneikes. The process of derivation evidently starts with Thersandros rather than Polyneikes because the lineage is founded on the hero cult of Thersandros. See also Herodotus 2.43 on the genealogy of Herodotus' predecessor and rival, Hecataeus. For a list of other comparable claims of lineage, see Brelich 1958:148-150: Andocides as descended from Odysseus (Plutarch Alcibidades 21.1), Socrates from Daidalos (Plato Alcibiades 121a), Alcibiades from Eurysakes (Plato ibid.), and Peisistratos from Neleus (Herodotus 5.65.3). In the case of the descent of
Alcibiades from Eurysakes, son of Ajax, we may note that it is Eurysakes, not Ajax, who has a cult in Athens (Pausanias 1.35.3). For a similar situation in the case of the Peisistratidai, the family of the tyrants at Athens, see Ch.6§19.
§83n1. On the contents of these "Homeric" performances at Sikyon, see Ch.1§11.
§83n2. The tendency to avoid genealogical connections between the characters of epic and the audience of the here and now is a characteristic of Homeric poetry, not necessarily of epic poetry in general: see Ch.6§8n2. In this connection I note the observation of Roussel 1976.31 that names with the suffix -adês and -idês, conventionally used in the plural to express lineages (such as Aiakidai), are regularly confined to the singular in Homeric diction, designating persons and not groups (such as Atreidês = Agamemnon, Aiakidês = Achilles). Note too the campaign against family group-namings of the type -adai and -idai in the context of the reforms of Kleisthenes of Athens: cf. Aristotle Constitution of the Athenians 21.4 and the comments of Roussel 1976.56; also p. 62 concerning the fact that some Alkmaionidai had the personal name Alkmaionides (for the occurrence of which on ostraka indicating the ostracism of "tyrannophiles," see Meiggs and Lewis 1975.41 on Hippokrates Alkmeônido Alopekethen. In contrast, we note that Pindar in Nemean2 celebrates Timodemos of Akharnai (timodême 14) as one of the Timodemidai (timodêmidai 18).
§83n3. The closest thing to such bridging in Homeric poetry is the survival of names, within the epic tradition, that are matched by historical personages. Shapiro 1983.89 notes: "Almost without exception, historical Athenians of the Archaic and Classical periods did not bear the names of epic heroes, as their descendants often do in Greece today; Peisistratos is the one exception." I interpret this exception as resulting from the nonerasure of the name and identity of the hero Peisistratos (e.g., Odyssey iii 36) from the Homeric tradition, despite the historical presence of the tyrant Peisistratos. In other words it could be argued that the prestige of the tyrant is what preserved a pattern of identification that is otherwise by and large erased by the Homeric tradition.
§84n1. Pindar Nemean9.39-42, as discussed at Ch.6§9.
§84n2. Cf. Köhnken 1971.34-35; N 1979.227-228.
§85n1. Whitman 1959.169. Cf. Ch.5§8n2. In Ch.7 I offer a detailed case in point, centering on the figure of Antilokhos in Iliad XXIII.
§86n1. The theme of Panhellenic victory in Pindar's Isthmian8 may be compared with the compositions of Simonides known as The Sea-Battle of Artemisium (PMG 532-535) and The
Sea-Battle at Salamis (PMG 536). The second of these compositions was possibly commissioned to be sung and danced at the Feast of the Panathenaia (Bowra 1961.344). As for the first, it seems to have featured prominently the theme of the divine intervention of Boreas the North Wind and his consort Oreithyia in the Battle of Artemisium (cf. PMG 534). Herodotus reports explicitly that the Athenians on this occasion sacrificed and prayed to Boreas and Oreithyia to scatter the fleet of the Persians (7.189). Herodotus also reports that the same wind that scattered the fleet of the Persians was called the Hellêspontiês 'the one from the Hellespont' by the natives of the locale
(7.188.2). By implication the wind that thwarted the Persians came from the Hellespont, the site of the tomb of Achilles (e.g., Odyssey xxiv 80-84; cf. N 1979.344); their shipwreck at Cape Sepias, where Thetis had been abducted by Peleus (Herodotus 7.191.2), was interpreted as a sign of the anger of the mother of Achilles, Thetis, who was then supplicated by the Magi (ibid.). For more on Thetis, see Slatkin 1986.
§86n4. Cf. N 1979.227-228.
§87n1. On pherô in the sense of 'win as a prize', see Kurke 1988.228 with n93 (following Gildersleeve 1899.330); cf. Pindar Pythian4.278 ( Ch.7§5n1).
§88n1. This point is argued by Kurke, pp. 221-225.
§88n2. On Pindar's mystical encounter with the epiphany of the hero in Pythian8.58-60 as "both a transition and a source of inspiration for this song," see Kurke, p. 225n87. For an overview of the allusions to the hero cult of Alkmaion in this poem, see Rusten 1983; cf. also Pòrtulas 1985.213, 220. In a forthcoming work, T. K. Hubbard argues that the epiphanic hero in this context is Amphiaraos himself, not the hero's son, Alkmaion.
§88n3. On pateres 'fathers' as 'ancestors', see Ch.6§58.
§88n4. Race 1986.100: "Men are creatures of a day, 'ephemeral' [...] We cannot know from day to day who we are, or if we will even contine to exist."
§88n5. See Giannini 1982 for the arguments in favor of the interpretation given here and against the intepretation "What is man, what is not man?"
§88n6. On aiôn 'life-force' as an expression of both material security and the transcendent concept of eternal return, see N 1981.114-116, following Benveniste 1937.110, 112.
§88n7. This usage is stressed by Lefkowitz 1977.216, who translates "man is a shadow's dream," noting that skiâ "means both shadow and shade of the dead, a partial reflection of a living being." She interprets the saying "man is a shadow's dream" as an expression of insubstantiality, "but at the same time it can be said to denote significant appearances that presage victory, Amphiaraus' vision of Alcmeon with his shield, Pindar's encounter with Alcmeon on his way to
Delphi" (ibid.).
§88n8. Kurke, p. 229, cites Gildersleeve 1899.191 on Pindar Olympian 7.91-93: "The oracle of Diagoras is the wisdom of his ancestors, which is personated in him." As Kurke points out (ibid.), the oracle of Diagoras in Olympian7 is parallel to the oracle of Alkmaion in Pythian 8.60, which that hero had inherited from his father Amphiaraos. We may compare the Fijian notion that poet-seers have personal contact with the ancestors, from whom they receive their songs directly (Finnegan 1977.111). Perhaps these themes are pertinent to the expression patria ossa 'ancestral voice' in Pindar Olympian6.62, applied to the words of Apollo as he speaks to his son Iamos, the
primordial seer who is ancestor of the Iamidai. On the relationship between dead ancestors and the athletic victors whose deeds are witnessed by them, see Segal 1986, especially p. 207 on Pindar Pythian5.94-103.
§88n9. We may compare the Australian Aboriginal notion of the ancestral past as "dream time": see Clunies Ross 1986.244.
§88n10. Whitman 1892 [1980] 144-147.
§89n1. On the function of the expression houtô at Iliad IX 524 as a marker of the beginning of an ainos, see Fraenkel 1950 II 339. Cf. also Maehler 1963.47. On the par-ain-esis of Phoenix, see further at Ch.7§6. For more on par-ain-esis, see Ch.6§7.
§89n2. N 1979.111, 114-115. On pateres as 'ancestors', see Ch.6§58.
§90n1. Cf. N 1979.234-237
§91n1. There is no attempt in praise poetry, however, to describe itself explicitly by way of features that characterize the current performance of epic poetry. For example, when heroes are said to be getting kleos from praise poetry in Isthmian5.24-28, it is specified that there is musical accompaniment by both lyre and reed. This detail suggests that the performance is along the lines of contemporary lyric poetry or song, not epic (on the nonmelodic recitation of epic, see Ch.1§8 and following).
§91n2. At least in this context we find no mention by Aristotle of Pindar or of any other such poets of praise.
§91n3. N 1979.36 (§13n1), 255-256.
§91n4. It goes without saying that the evolution of the parent form, as represented by Pindaric praise poetry, is crystalized much later than that of the derivative form, as represented by Homeric poetry. For a valuable discussion of epic and praise poetry in early Indic society, see Dillon 1975.54.
§92n1. Cf. N 1979.18-19, 91-92, 236, 260. So also in Xenophanes F 1 W = 21 B 1 DK, the occasion of performance (1.12 and following) is represented as a setting of euphrosunê 'mirth' (B 1.4). I interpret ainein at Xenophanes 1.19 as 'follow in the tradition of' (cf. N, pp. 98
§6n4, 260 §10n3).
§92n2. Bundy 1986.2.
§92n3. On kharis as a 'beautiful and pleasurable compensation, through song or poetry, for a deed deserving of glory', see Ch.2§28n1.
Pindar and Homer, Athlete and Hero
§1. Having observed how epic and the ainos of praise poetry can converge as well as diverge, we have begun to appreciate how the convergent kleos of Pindar's epinician lyric poetry may momentarily collapse the distinction between hero and victorious athlete. Perhaps the clearest example that we have seen so far is Nemean9.39-42, where the kleos of the hero Hektor and the kleos of the victorious athlete are drawn into an explicit parallel. 1 The link between hero and athlete can also be achieved by the formal mention of the athlete's immediate ancestors, who are treated by the ainos of epinician lyric poetry as if they were a logical extension from the world of heroes. The continuum of the ancestors is made conveniently open-ended by the epinician as it reaches back in time, extending far back to the world of heroes. We can see that same kind of open-endedness in the speech of Phoenix to Achilles, spoken in the mode of an ainos and introduced by the following phrase: 2
houtô kai tôn prosthen epeuthometha 3 klea andrôn hêrôôn
For thus 4 we have learned the klea of men who came before, 5
In this Homeric case the klea andrôn, the 'glories of men' who came before, does not have to reach very far back in time since the discourse is already happening in the world of heroes. For heroes in the world of heroes, the 'men who came before' are their ancestors. Still, the reference is open-ended in its vagueness, and the vagueness helps emphasize the unbroken continuum of the 'men who came before' for men of the present. And the name of the person who is the hidden subject of the ainos told by Phoenix, Patroklos or Patro-kleês 'he who has the klea of the ancestors', reinforces the notion that the 'men of the past' are indeed the ancestors for men of the present. 7
§2. In the diction of Pindar's ainos, however, the 'men who came before' are not only the heroes who receive the kleos but also those who give the kleos to the heroes. Thus, for example, the proteroi 'men of the past' at Pindar Pythian3.80 are clearly the actual tellers of the tradition, not its subject matter: manthanôn oistha proterôn 'you know, learning from men of the past'. 1 The same sort of ambiguity is attested in other poets as well:
ou men dê keinou ge menos kai agênora thumon toion emeu proterôn peuthomai, hoi min idon Ludôn hippomachôn pukinas kloneonta phalangas Hermion am pedion, phôta pheremmeliên.
That one's strength [menos] and proud spirit [thûmos], as I learn from men who came before me,
were not like this [= what I see in my own time]. They [= the men who came before me] saw him rushing tempestuously at the strong battle-lines of the horse-riding Lydian warriors,
along the Plain of the River Hermos. 2 A spear-carrying man was he. 3
There is reason to think, then, that the phrase klea andrôn 'glories of men' inherits a neutrality of active / passive diathesis in the genitive plural andrôn 'of men': in other words the genitive in this phrase seems to carry with it both an objective and a subjective function. The glories are being told simultaneously about and by the men of the past. There is a presupposition of an unbroken succession extending from the men of the past to the men of the present, both those men who are the subjects of the glory and those men who perpetuate the glory through song. These glories, these klea, are evidently the shared property throughout time of both the patrons and the poets who sing about them. As we have seen in the words of the poet Ibycus addressed to his patron, the tyrant Polykrates, your glory, your kleos, is my kleos (Ibycus SLG 151.47-48). 4
§3. The kleos that is given by the poet is ultimately given by the hero in the sense that the hero is the source of inspiration to the poet. When the voice of Pindar says that he experienced, on his way to Delphi, the epiphany of a hero (Pythian8.56-60), we are in effect witnessing an equation of the hero's message with the poet's message. 1 To the extent that the message belongs to the hero as well as the poet, klea andrôn is potentially the glorification sung by as well as about heroes. When Achilles is represented as singing the klea andrôn in the Iliad (IX 189), he is a model for the hero's possession of kleos. The possession of epic, as in the subtitle of this book, can be read as both an objective and a subjective genitive construct: not only does the poet possess the kleos of epic, but the kleos of the epic hero can possess the poet to sing it, just as the hero had once sung it.
§4. There is comparative evidence for the objective / subjective neutrality of the genitive in klea andrôn: in the diction of the Rig-Veda, the expression sámso naram 'glory of men' allows either an objective or a subjective function for the genitive plural naram 'of men': the emphasis can thus shift back and forth from the glory due the patron of the sacrifice to the glory due the composer of the sacred hymn that activates the sacrifice. 1 The neutralization of objective / subjective diathesis is not clearly attested in the case of srávo...n[vocalr][ndot ][macr ]áam 'glory of men' at Rig- Veda 5.18.5, where we see a direct cognate of klea andrôn: here the genitive plural seems to be specialized in the objective sense. In this connection, however, I draw attention to the contrast between singular srávas- in Indic and plural klea in Greek: the singular conveys the notion of a single given composition, while the plural seems to emphasize a given tradition of composition. 2 When Achilles is singing the klea andrôn in the Iliad (IX 189), Patroklos is described emphatically as the only one who is listening to him (190). Presumably Patroklos will take up where Achilles left off: degmenos Aiakidên, hopote lêxeien aeidôn 'he was waiting for whatever moment the Aeacid would stop singing' (191). The name of Patroklos seems appropriate to this theme: it is only through Patrokleês 'he who has the klea of the ancestors' that the plurality of performance, that is, the activation of tradition, can happen. As long as Achilles himself sings the
klea andrôn, these glories cannot be heard by any audience except Patroklos. 3
§5. The theme of reciprocity between the kleos of heroes in the past or of patrons in the present on one hand and the kleos of poets from past to present on the other hand finds direct expression in Pindaric song, where the idealized poet of the past can be represented as "Homer" while the implicit poet of the present is Pindar:
tôn d' Homêrou kai tode sunthemenos | rhêma porsun': angelon eslon epha timan megistan pragmati panti pherein: | auxetai kai Moisa di' angelias orthas
Of all the words of Homer, understand and apply the saying that I now tell you: the best messenger, he said, wins as a prize [= verb pherô] 1 the greatest honor [tîmê] for everything. And the Muse too becomes greater [= verb auxô] 2 by way of the correct message.
In other words, just as the Muse of poetry and song gives the greatness of tîmê 'honor', 3 so also she receives it. 4 Just as the poet, whether it is the "Homer" of the past or the Pindar of the
present, 'wins as prize' [= verb pherô] for his subject the honor [tîmê] as conferred by the words
of poetry, thereby 'making great' [= verb auxô] both the subject of the and the poetry itself, 5 so also the person who happens to be the subject of the poetry, as a man of the present who has performed a glorious deed, can 'win' the honor conferred by the words of poetry in an unbroken continuum extending from the world of heroes to the world of the here and now, thereby 'making great' the immediate ancestry that produced him. Such was the case of the victorious athlete Aristomenes of Aegina, glorified by Pindar in Pythian8:
auxôn de patran Meidulidan logon phereis, | ton honper pot' Oikleos pais ... ainixato ... | 43 hôd' eipe marnamenôn:i "phuai to gennaion epiprepei | ek paterôn paisi lêma..."i 55 toiauta men | ephthenxat' Amphiarêos. chairôn de kai autos | Alkmana stephanoisi ballô.
Making great [= verb auxô] the house of the Meidulidai, you [= Aristomenes] win as a prize [= verb pherô] 6 the words [logos] that once the son of Oikles said [= said as an ainos]. ...Thus he spoke about those who fought: "The will of the fathers [pateres] shines through from them, in what is inborn in the nature of their sons." Thus spoke Amphiaraos. And I also take joy in casting a garland at Alkmaion. 7
To extend the stories of heroes into the present, with a contemporary deed implicitly worthy of the
kleos that the heroes had earned through the klea andrôn, is to 'win as a prize [= verb pherô] the words [logos]', as in this passage (Pythian8.38). As we also see in this passage, such words take
the form of an ainos (8.40).
§6. Conversely the past deeds of heroes, worthy as they are of kleos, may be said to extend all the way to the present, if the contemporary deed is worthy of kleos, and this too is to 'win as a prize [= verb pherô] the words [logos]', as we see from the Pindaric description of the heroic legacy of Achilles:
ton men oude thanont' aoidai <ep>elipon, | alla hoi para te puran taphon th' Helikôniai parthenoi stan, epi thrênon te poluphamon echean. | edox' êra kai athanatois, | esthlon ge phôta kai phthimenon humnois thean didomen.| to kai nun pherei logon, essutai te Moisaion harma Nikokleos | mnama pugmachou keladêsai
Even when he [Achilles] died, the songs did not leave him, but the Heliconian Maidens [= the Muses] stood by his pyre and his funeral mound, pouring forth a song of lamentation [thrênos] that is famed far and wide. And so it was that the gods decided to hand over the worthy man, dead [phthi-menos] as he was, to the songs of the goddesses [= Muses]. 1 And this, even now, wins as a prize [= verb pherô] the words [logos], as the chariot team of the Muses starts moving on its way to glorify the memory of Nikokles the boxer.
The thought expressed here has been paraphrased by one critic as follows: "This handing over of
a brave man [= Achilles] and his achievements to poetry even today brings fame (as it formerly did with Achilles)." 2 In other words the death of Nikokles, by virtue of his deeds in the contemporary world, merits the same tradition of song that the death of Achilles had once merited and still merits in the here and now by virtue of his deeds in the heroic world. The name of Nikokles, Nîkoklês 'he who has the glory [kleos] of victory [nîkê]', is made appropriate to the themes of Pindar's Isthmian8 in that the death of this Nikokles, cousin of the Isthmian victor Kleandros who is the primary honorand of this composition, is said not to impede the glory that he merited as a victorious boxer: rather the death is said to be the key to the continuation of the boxer's glory, just as the death of Achilles was the key to the extension of the glory of heroes in the present. The name of Kleandros, Kleandros 'he who has the glories of men [klea andrôn]', is thus likewise made appropriate to the themes of Isthmian8 in that the 'glories of men', the klea andrôn, are more specifically 'the glories of men who came before, heroes' tôn prosthen...klea andrôn | hêrôôn (Iliad IX 524-525), 3 that is, the glories of dead men of the past, as we saw from the implicit ainos narrated by Phoenix to Achilles. 4 In that particular instance the message carried by the ainos of the old man Phoenix, from the overall standpoint of the Iliad, is also carried by the very name of Patroklos, Patro-kleês 'he who has the glory [kleos] of the ancestors'. 5 The thematic appropriateness of the honorand's name, Kleandros, as indicating the klea andrôn 'glories of men', is underlined by its placement as the first word of Isthmian8. In all the attested epinician poems of Pindar, Kleandros stands out as the only victor whose name begins the composition. 6 Even the inherited reciprocity of the concept of klea andrôn 'glories of men', in that the 'men' may be either the poets or the subject of the poets, is recapitulated in the composition of Isthmian8: the poet, Pindar of Thebes, and the subject, Kleandros of Aegina, are represented as
mythological relatives in that the nymphs Thebe and Aegina are twin sisters, both sired by the river Asopos (Isthmian8.15-23). The son of Zeus and Aegina is none other than Aiakos (8.21-22), ancestor of the Aiakidai, while the Aigeidai, who represent the patriliny of Pindar
himself (Pythian5.75), 7 are elsewhere described as the descendants of Thebe (Isthmian7.15). In view of this relationship Pindar of Thebes offers the flower of the Kharites 'Graces', personifications of reciprocity, 8 to Aegina, the community of the honorand (8.16-16a). 9
§7. In Iliad IX, the klea andrôn 'glories of men' is dramatized both as an ainos told by Phoenix to Achilles (524) and as an epic sung by Achilles to his one-man audience (189). 1 The audience of the epic is also the hidden subject of the ainos: he is Patro-kleês 'he who has the kleos of the ancestors', whose name conveys both the medium of the epic and the medium of the ainos. In Iliad IX the kleos of the ainos about the implicit subject of Patroklos is appropriated by the epic, which is a kleos that is aphthiton 'unfailing, unwilting' (413). The situation is the opposite in Pindar's Isthmian8, where the kleos of the epic about the explicit subject of Achilles is appropriated by the kleos of the ainos, in that the never-ending kleos of Achilles is presented as extending all the way into the kleos of the victor. 2 Here too, as in Iliad IX, the kleos of the ancestors plays a role. This time, however, the kleos of the ancestors is realized not in the theme and the name of Patroklos but rather in the actual kleos of the victor's own ancestors as celebrated by the lyric poetry of Pindar. In this particular case, moreover, the kleos of the victor's ancestors is realized in the victor's own name, Kleandros. The victor Kleandros is living proof that the kleos, the very identity, of his family is predicated on the achievements of its members. The victor of Isthmian8 was planned from the start, from the very time that he was named, to become what he, to his good fortune, became through his athletic victory. A person's name, which he is given at birth on the basis of his ancestry, commits him to his identity. In the case of Kleandros, we see that a historical person--and even his identity as defined by his name--can fit the themes of the epinician. This can happen because the family's prestige and their very identity depend on the traditional institution of glorification by way of poetry and because this institution is preserved by epinician lyric poetry.
§8. Let us consider another example of the potential close relationship between a man's good name and his kleos as conferred by epinician lyric poetry. The name in question is to be found in Pindar's Pythian6. This time, instead of withholding the name till the final stages of the argument, as in the case of Kleandros I begin immediately with the given person's name and with the implications built into it. The man in question is called Thrasuboulos. At first the two components of this compound strike us as an oxymoron: thrasu- implies rashness or impetuousness, while -boulos implies deliberation or wise counsel. 1 But such a combination represents a traditional theme, as we find it in a lesson given by Nestor. The lesson takes place in Iliad XXIII, where the old hero instructs his son Antilokhos how to win a prize in a chariot race. The chariot race in question happens to be the centerpiece of the Funeral Games for Patroklos. As we shall see, Nestor's lesson is appropriate to the specific theme of funeral games and even to the general theme announced by the very name of Patroklos.
§9. As we unravel the story of Antilokhos in Iliad XXIII, I argue that the very identity of our victor, Thrasuboulos (henceforth spelled Thrasyboulos), has been planned, presumably from birth onward, by virtue of his name to participate in the epic themes of the Antilokhos story--
though not necessarily the Antilokhos story of Iliad XXIII in particular. To put it another way, I argue that Thrasyboulos was named after the Antilokhos story, as an expression of the hopes and ambitions of his family--hopes and ambitions that centered on success in the Games and on a glorification of this success by way of poetry and song. It is as if Thrasyboulos, given the themes surrounding his name, had been bred not only for success at the Games but also by extension for immortalization by epinician lyric poetry, which is what formalizes such success. 1 Such hope and ambition should not surprise us, if indeed it was founded on the traditional belief that epinician poetry was so venerably ancient as to exist already when the Seven marched against Thebes. 2 We find this belief expressed in the epinician lyric poetry of Pindar, but surely Pindar did not privately invent it, any more than he privately invented the epinician tradition.
§10. The connections between Antilokhos and Thrasyboulos are unmistakable. 1 Antilokhos, the focus of our attention in Iliad XXIII, enters the chariot race in the Funeral Games of Patroklos, driving his father's chariot in place of Nestor, who is too old to compete as an athlete (621-623, 627-645). So also the young Thrasyboulos, the victor in Pythian6, is represented as driving the chariot for his father Xenokrates, the official victor (cf. Olympian2.14-20). According to one interpretation of line 19 of Pythian6, Thrasyboulos is pictured as driving the victorious chariot while his father is riding on his right. 2 In the epic tradition Antilokhos not only drives the chariot for his father Nestor but also rescues the old man from death by giving up his own life. He is struck down by Memnon, after the father's chariot is immobilized when Paris shoots Nestor's horse with an arrow (Pindar Pythian6.28-42; cf. Odyssey iv 186-188). 3 Given such a prominence of chariots in the epic career of Antilokhos, it would be well to look closely at the lesson on chariot driving given by Nestor to Antilokhos in Iliad XXIII. We find in this lesson a traditional theme corresponding to the oxymoron built into the name of Thrasyboulos.
§11. Nestor's lesson on chariot driving amounts to a lesson on how to think for oneself in a moment of crisis. The key to the lesson, which Nestor calls a 'signal' or sêma (XXIII 326), is what Antilokhos should do when he reaches the terma 'turning point' in the parabola-shaped course of the chariot race. Let us picture the trajectory of the racecourse as a counterclockwise movement around the turning point (cf. XXIII 336), which is at the twelve-o'clock position: as the driver approaches the turning point, he prepares to round it as closely as possible by restraining with the reins his horse-team on the left side while impelling them with a goad on the right side (XXIII 336-341). As Douglas Frame has pointed out to me about this passage, the key to success here is a blend of opposites: impulsiveness on one side, restraint on the other. 1 The noos 'mind' of Antilokhos, which we may define for the moment as his ability to "read" a sêma 'sign, signal', 2 responds to this lesson (noeonti XXIII 305) by finding an occasion to apply the principle. The occasion comes earlier than the situation described by Nestor, which is at the turning point. Before Antilokhos ever reaches the turning point, he impulsively seizes an opportunity to pass the chariot of Menelaos, thereby nearly "fishtailing" the older hero and thus nearly killing them both (XXIII 402-441). This seemingly reckless act of Antilokhos is in reality a rational application of the principle taught by Nestor, as we see at the moment that Antilokhos decides to take the risk: he does so by recourse to his noos (noêsô at XXIII 415, picking up noeonti at XXIII 305). 3 What Menelaos thinks is a matter of reckless adolescent driving, an act lacking in noos (nun aute
noon nikêse neoiê XXIII 604), is in reality a deliberate and rational move. 4 Though Antilokhos risks everything, his risk is a calculated one nevertheless, and the overarching principle of rational behavior is underscored by the restraint with which Antilokhos handles the angry Menelaos in the following scene: the two disputing contestants finally come to terms, with Menelaos generously allowing Antilokhos to keep the prize that should rightfully have been his own (XXIII 586-611). 5 This restraint of Antilokhos, which leads to his success in keeping the prize, complements the earlier impulsiveness when he nearly "fishtailed" Menelaos (XXIII 418-441). 6
§12. In the case of Antilokhos his noos enables him to win because he understands and can apply what Nestor had taught him, particularly through the sêma 'sign, signal' (XXIII 326) about what to do at the turning point. In other words Antilokhos "reads" the sêma 'sign' of Nestor, and this reading is a matter of noos. 1 The verb noeô 'recognize', derivative of noos, is practically synonymous with "read" in the sense of "read the sign." In view of Nestor's specifically saying that the sêma 'sign' of victory (XXIII 326) centers on the way in which Antilokhos is to make his turn around the turning point, and in view of Nestor's explicitly linking this sêma 'sign' and this terma 'turning point', it is noteworthy that the narrative goes on to indicate that the terma is itself a sêma. But now (XXIII 331) the word sêma has the specific meaning of 'tomb', which is conventionally visualized as a mound of earth, such as the tomb of Patroklos (at XXIII 45):
ê teu sêma brotoio palai katatethnêôtos,
H>'ê to ge nussa tetukto epi proterôn anthrôpôn, kai nun termat' ethêke podarkês dios Achilleus.
It is either the tomb [sêma] of a man who died a long time ago,
or it was a turning point [nussa; i.e, in racing] of men who came before 2
Now swift-footed brilliant Achilles has set it up as the turning point [= terma plural].
The two distinct alternatives set up by this Homeric passage, either a turning point or a tomb, correspond to one and the same thing in the institution of chariot races as attested in the Panhellenic Games, where the turning points of chariot racecourses were conventionally identified with the tombs of heroes. 3 According to Pausanias the spirit of such a hero, called Taraxippos 'he who disturbs the horses', often causes the racing chariots to crash as they round the turning point (6.20.15-19). Similarly, in the chariot race in honor of the dead hero Patroklos, it is the turning point where Antilokhos must take care, according to Nestor, not to let his chariot crash (XXIII 341-345).
§13. Despite the collapsing of distinctions between turning point and hero's tomb in the institution of chariot racing within the framework of the Games, the narrative of the Iliad overtly maintains their distinctness: the turning point for the chariot race in honor of Patroklos had been in the past either just that, a turning point, or else a sêma 'tomb' of a hero, of one who came before (XIII
331-332). But here too is a collapsing of distinctions, though this happens only latently, by way
of the double use of sêma in the sense of both 'sign' (XXIII 326) and 'tomb' (XXIII 331). 1 The emphasis on one alternative interpretation, that the object in question is the tomb of a hero, is expressed by a word that points to the other alternative interpretation, that the object in question is a turning point: the word is sêma, which conveys not only the notion of 'tomb' (XXIII 331) but also the 'sign' of Nestor (XXIII 326) concerning precisely how to make a turn at a turning point (XXIII 334-348; cf. 309, 318-325). Thus the ostentatiously presented alternative of a sêma 'tomb' (XXIII 331), in view of the sêma 'sign' of Nestor to his son only five verses earlier (XXIII 326), bears its own message: not only the tomb is a sign but the very mention of the tomb may be a sign. Thus the sêma is a reminder, and the very use of the word is a reminder. In a more detailed study of sêma, I have characterized the attitude of this narrative concerning Nestor's lesson as one of take it or leave it: "If you reject the alternative that the turning point is a sêma 'tomb' of a dead man, then the sêma 'sign' of Nestor to Antilokhos has a simplex message about
how to make a turn; if you accept it, on the other hand, then the same sêma 'sign' has an additional message about the sêma 'tomb' as a reminder of kleos." 2
§14. Moreover, in the case of Antilokhos this sêma is a reminder not just of kleos in general but of Patro-kleês 'he who has the klea of the ancestors' in particular. After the death of Patroklos, Antilokhos takes over from Patroklos the role of ritual substitute, so that the sêma 'sign' for Antilokhos is about a role model who will set the pattern, from the standpoint of the Iliad, of stories in the future epic career of Antilokhos.
§15. As I have argued at length elsewhere, the role of Patroklos as ritual substitute of Achilles is conveyed by his characterization as therapôn of Achilles. 1 This word therapôn, normally translated as 'attendant' or 'companion in arms', is apparently a borrowing of an Anatolian word, attested in Hittite as tarpa[schwa ]s[schwa ]sa-/tarp(an)alli- 'ritual substitute'. 2 This sense of therapôn is latent in most Homeric contexts, but it comes to the surface in the application of the word to Patroklos in the context of his dying in place of Achilles. As long as Patroklos behaves as an attendant of Achilles, his identity is subsumed under that of Achilles and he is safe from harm; once he ventures on his own, however, he is doomed to die in place of Achilles. This two- way relationship of Patroklos to Achilles, passive as an understudy and active as a ritual substitute, is conveyed by the word therapôn. 3 A primary function of Patroklos, as an attendant of Achilles, was to be his hêniokhos 'chariot driver' (XXIII 280). One Automedon, who had served as chariot driver for Patroklos when Patroklos ventured off on his fatal quest, takes over from Patroklos as chariot fighter after Patroklos dies, while one Alkimedon takes over from Automedon as chariot driver (XVII 474- 483). Both Automedon and Alkimedon are described as therapontes 'attendants' of Achilles (XXIV 573-574), whom the hero honored more than all his other hetairoi 'companions in arms' after the death of Patroklos (XXIV 574-575). Another hetairos 'companion in arms' who is very dear to Achilles is Antilokhos (XXIII 556), and he is described in this way specifically in the context of his winning a prize from Achilles as a result of his success as a chariot driver in the Funeral Games of Patroklos. In the Odyssey, when the spirits seen in Hades by the newly killed suitors are enumerated, Antilokhos ranks high enough to be the third hero mentioned, immediately after Achilles himself and Patroklos (xxiv 16). This parallelism of Antilokhos with Patroklos is also to be found in the Aithiopis, where Achilles avenges the death of Antilokhos at the hands of Memnon (Proclus summary, p. 106 lines 4-6 Allen), much as he avenges the death of Patroklos at the hands of Hektor in the Iliad. Antilokhos, then, is a
potential therapôn of Achilles in traditional epic narrative, and he is acknowledged as such in the
Iliad (again XXIII 556). 4
§16. If indeed the sêma 'signal' given to Antilokhos by his father, Nestor, conveys the name of Patro-kleês 'he who has the klea of the ancestors', then the relevance of the message may be that Antilokhos, like Patroklos, is to become a therapôn, a ritual substitute. Yet Antilokhos dies not in place of Achilles but rather in place of his own father. Antilokhos not only drives the chariot for his father but also rescues the old man from death by giving up his own life when Nestor's chariot is immobilized (cf. Pindar Pythian6.28-42). 1
§17. Which brings us back to the name of Thrasyboulos, combining the themes of rashness (Thrasu-) and prudence (-boulos). The same themes are combined in the actions of Antilokhos when he rashly swerved past the chariot of Menelaos and then, showing due restraint, prudently talked his opponent out of a prize. The same themes are also combined in the instructions of Nestor, ostensibly concerning the proper way to make a turn around the turning point in the chariot race: applying impulse on the right-hand or dominant side of the horse-team must be counterbalanced by applying restraint on the left-hand or recessive side. 1 The key to understanding the synthesis of these themes is to have noos just as Antilokhos had noos.
§18. In Pindar's Pythian6, honoring the young charioteer Thrasyboulos, a direct connection is established between the noos of Thrasyboulos and that of Antilokhos. After a reference to the par-ain-esis 'instructive speech' of Cheiron to Achilles (parainein 6.23), where the old Centaur instructs the young hero that one must honor one's parents in the same way that one honors Zeus most of all (6.23-27), the lesson for the present is applied directly to Antilokhos, who had died on the battlefield as a substitute for his father:
egento kai proteron Antilochos biatas | noêma touto pherôn, | hos huperephthito patros, enarimbroton | anameinais stratarchon Aithiopôn | Memnona. Nestoreion gar hippos harm' epeda | Parios ek beleôn daïchtheis: ho d' ephepen | krataion enchos: Messaniou de gerontos | donêtheisa phrên boase paida hon, | chamaipetes d' ar' epos ouk aperipsen: autou | menôn d' ho theios anêr | priato men thanatoio komidan patros, | edokêsen te tôn palai geneai | hoploteroisin ergon pelôrion telesais | hupatos amphi tokeusin emmen pros aretan. | ta men parikei: tôn nun de kai Thrasuboulos | patrôian malista pros stathman eba, | patrôi t' eperchomenos aglaian [lxub ]edeixen [rxub ] hapasan. | noôi de plouton agei, | adikon outh' huperoplon hêban drepôn, | sophian d' en muchoisi Pieridôn: | tin t', Elelichthon, archeis hos hippian esodôn, | mala hadonti noôi, Poseidan, prosechetai.
In the past [proteron] 1 as well, there was a man, Antilokhos, a man of violent strength [biê], who won as his prize this thought [= this piece of instruction: noêma, from noos]. 2 | 30 He died for his father, standing up to the man-killer, the war-lord of the Aethiopians, Memnon. Nestor's horse, struck down by the arrows of Paris, got in the way of his chariot, while Memnon was
wielding his powerful spear. The mind of Nestor, the old man from Messene, was stung, and he shouted for his son. The word that he uttered did not fall, useless, to the ground. This godlike man [= Antilokhos] made his stand, right there, and he paid the price for the saving of his father from death. | 40 To the young people of that time long gone, he was manifestly the foremost when it comes to achievement [aretê] concerning parents. He had accomplished a mighty deed. But those things are in the past. As for the present, Thrasyboulos stands up to the standard of the ancestors [= adjective patrôio-] better than anyone else. He has clearly measured up to his uncle [= Theron of Akragas] in every manner of excellence. By way of his thinking [noos] does he bring about wealth, 3 reaping the benefits of a youth that is neither without dikê nor overweening. Rather he reaps a skill [sophiâ] that is to be found in the recesses of Pieria [= the abode of the Muses]. He is close to you, with a noos that is very pleasing to you, O Earth-Shaking Poseidon, you who rule over the races of horses.
Here the linking of the present with the past of both the heroes and the ancestors is explicit: "But those things [= the deeds of the hero Antilokhos] are in the past. As for the present, Thrasyboulos stands up to the standard of his ancestors." As we have seen in another Pindaric passage, the victorious man of the present is said to be repeating the patterns of the ancestors by virtue of repeating the patterns of the heroes, in this case, of Antilokhos. 4 Just as Antilokhos had noos (noêma : 6.29), with an emphasis on the impulsive side of the hero (biâtâs: 6.29), 5 so also does Thrasyboulos have noos as he enriches his family by winning (noôi 6.47) and as he pleases Poseidon, the lord of horse racing noôi 6.51). In the meantime the theme of the ancestors, as conveyed by the name Patrokleês for Antilokhos in the Iliad, is conveyed for Thrasyboulos by the model of Antilokhos in Pindar's Pythian6.
§19. We have seen three clear examples where the victorious man of the present is said by Pindar's lyric poetry to be repeating the patterns of the ancestors by virtue of repeating the patterns of the heroes: there was Aristomenes in Pythian8, Kleandros in Isthmian8, and now Thrasyboulos in Pythian6. In each case, epic is represented as extending into the epinician ainos of Pindar, which in turn presents itself as the ultimate authority of tradition. More than that, the medium of the epinician ainos, as mastered by the likes of Pindar, is accepted as the ultimate authority by a society that can even name its children in accordance with the grand themes of the epinician tradition.
Notes
§1n2. On the speech of Phoenix as ainos or par-ain-esis 'instructive speech', cf. Ch.6§89.
§1n3. For the phraseology, compare Mimnermus F 14.2 W, as discussed at Ch.7§2.
§1n4. On the function of this expression houtô as a marker of the beginning of an ainos, see again Fraenkel 1950 II 339. Also Ch.6§89, and Ch.7§6.
§1n5. Compare tôn prosthen 'who came before' here at Iliad IX 524 with the word proterôn in
kleea proterôn anthrôpôn 'the klea of men who came before' at Hesiod Theogony100, where the
klea refers to both epic and theogonic poetry.
§1n6. Compare kleea proterôn anthrôpôn | hêrôôn 'the klea of men who came before, heroes' with klea phôtôn i...hêmitheôn 'the klea of men, demigods [hêmitheoi]' at Homeric Hymn32.18-19 and genos andrôn | hêmitheôn at Homeric Hymn31.18-19, where the word genos seems to refer explicitly to genealogical poetry. On hêmitheoi 'demigods, heroes' as a word connoting hero cult, see N 1979.159-161.
§2n1. Cf. Pindar Nemean 3.52-53: legomenon de touto proterôn epos echô 'I have this utterance [epos] as spoken by those that came before'. (On the possibility of translating 'spoken of' instead of 'spoken by' here, see N 1979.325 §8n5 and Hubbard 1985.42-43n92.) On the interpretation of se d' antia proterôn phthenxomai at Olympian1.36 as 'I shall call upon you [= Pelops] in the presence of the predecessors', that is, with the past tradition as witness, see Ch.4§18n7.
§2n2. On the possibility that Mimn-ermos 'Mimnermus' is a name commemorating the resistance (as conveyed by the verb mimnô), at the river Hermos (Hermos), of the Smyrnaeans against the Lydians, see West 1974.73, who adduces the tradition that Hellanicus, Hellanîkos, was born on the day of the Hellenic victory over the Persians at Salamis (Hellanicus FGH 4 T 6).
§2n3. As I tentatively interpret this poem, it concerns the miraculous appearance of a hero from the past at a decisive moment of battle in the recent history of a given polis; for a collection of testimonia related to the subject of the epiphany of a hero who rescues, in some contemporary crisis, the community in which he is traditionally worshipped, see Brelich 1958.91-92 on Theseus at Marathon (Plutarch Life of Theseus 35.5), Phylakos and Autonoos at Delphi (Herodotus
8.34-39; Pausanias 10.8.7). For instances where a group prays to heroes for intervention in moments of crisis, see Brelich ibid. on Ajax and Telamon at Salamis (Herodotus 8.64), Idomeneus and Meriones in a Cretan war (Diodorus 5.79.4). The emphatic use of keinos 'that one' at lines 1 / 9 of Mimnermus F 14 suggests, of and by itself, an epiphany: cf. Sappho F 31.1 V (where the collocation of phainetai moi kênos with isos theoisin likewise suggests an epiphany, even if the following infinitive at line 2, on which see Race 1983.94n10, shifts the understanding of phainetai from 'is manifested' to 'seems'). The description of 'that one' as a man who was by far the best man in his own time suggests a figure like Achilles.
§3n1. Cf. Ch.6§88. In a forthcoming work, T. K. Hubbard argues that the epiphanic hero in this context is Amphiaraos himself, not his son Alkmaion.
§4n1. See Geldner 1951 I 265-266; also Schmitt 1967.98.
§4n2. Cf. Schmitt, p. 96.
§4n3. On the Homeric device creating a sense of interchangeability between characters of epic and members of the audience, see Frontisi-Ducroux 1986; in particular I cite her persuasive argument that Patroklos as the audience of Achilles is interchangeable with the audience of the
Iliad; cf. also Russo and Simon 1968.
§5n1. On pherô in the sense of 'win as a prize', see Ch.6§87n1.
§5n2. For the collocation of tîmê 'honor' and auxô 'make / become greater' here, we may compare Pindar Nemean7.32: tima de ginetai hôn theos habron auxei logon tethnakotôn 'tîmê' becomes the possession of those who get words [logos] told about them, when they are dead, that are made great [auxô] and luxuriant [habros] by the divinity'. (On the positive usage of habros 'luxuriant' see Ch.10§15 and following.) On the collocation of logos 'word(s)' and the genitive designating the subject of the song, compare logon Odusseos 'words [logos] about Odysseus' at Nemean 7.21, which are attributed to "Homer" (21). The notion that there are more 'words' [logos] about Odysseus than 'experiences' [pathâ] by Odysseus, as expressed at 7.20-21, is correlated at 7.23 with the presence of supposedly misleading mûthoi 'myths' about Odysseus. On the semantics of mûthoi as a broader and relatively unreliable concept as opposed to alêtheia 'truth' as the narrower and absolutely reliable one, see Ch.2§28 and following. In the Odyssey, we may note, the outnumbering of the actual experiences of Odysseus by the stories about Odysseus has to do with the telling of numerous adventures, most often by Odysseus himself, in the format of an ainos: Ch.8§30.
§5n3. See also Pindar Isthmian4.37-38, where "Homer" is represented as giving tîmê to a subject, in this case the hero Ajax. I interpret di' anthrôpôn here as a functional variant of Homeric ep' anthrôpous in the sense of 'throughout humankind', a phrase deployed in collocation with kleos 'glory' and other designations of song and its performance (as at Iliad X 213, XXIV 202; Odyssey i 299, xix 334, xxiv 94, 201). The variation of epi + accusative and dia + genitive, where both the accusative and the genitive convey the diffusion of song, is attested in a single context at Nemean6.48-49: petatai d' epi te chthona kai dia thalassas têlothen onum' autôn 'their reputation spreads over land and sea' (with reference to the glory of the Aiakidai: 45-47, quoted at Ch. 8§25n1).
§5n4. See also Pindar Isthmian6.67, where "Hesiod" is represented as being given tîmê by virtue of having an audience that not only listens to his poetic words but also applies their inherent wisdom. In this case the audience is specified as Lampon, who passes on this wisdom to his sons, in the mode of par-ain-esis (huioisi te phrazôn parainei 'indicating to his sons, he makes
par-ain-esis' 6.68; more on par-ain-esis 'instructive speech' at Ch.6§7, Ch.6§89n1), and who even shares this wisdom with the community at large, thus bringing about kosmos 'orderliness' (6.69; more on kosmos at Ch.5§16).
§5n5. The underlined word kai makes clear that not only the poetry but also the subject of the poetry is meant: auxetai kai moisa (Pythian4.279). I use the word poetry here in the broadest sense, to include song.
§5n6. On pherô in the sense of 'win as a prize': Ch.7§5n1.
§6n1. As I argue in N 1979.176-177, the phraseology here implies that Achilles was destined to have a kleos that is a-phthi-ton 'unfailing, unwilting', as explicitly formulated at Iliad IX 413. Cf.
Steiner 1986.38.
§6n2. Köhnken 1975.30; cf. Pòrtulas 1985.214.
§6n4. Cf. 7 tag 305.
§6n6. This detail is noted by Köhnken 1975.32n3. For an analogous emphasis on an honorand's name by way of initial positioning in the composition, see Bacchylides Epinician 6.1 SM: here the theme of lachôn, the honorand's name and the first word of the composition, is immediately picked up by lache at 6.2.
§6n8. On kharis (plural kharites) 'grace' as a designation of reciprocity, see, for example, Ch. 2§28n1.
§6n9. This gesture of offering the flower of the Kharites is followed by houneka 'because', introducing the myth of the daughters of Asopos (Pindar Isthmian8.17 and following; cf. Nemean3.3-5). For another reference to this myth, which served to validate an alliance between Thebes and Aegina, see Herodotus 5.80; on the role of the Aiakidai in this passage, see Ch.6§57. For yet another reference, cf. Bacchylides Epinician 9.53 and following. Cf. Hubbard 1987c.
15-16.
§7n1. On Patroklos as audience, see Ch.7§4n3.
§7n2. See again Isthmian8.56a-62, as quoted at Ch.7§6 above.
§8n1. Cf. Aristotle Rhetoric 1400b21.
§9n1. Another striking example is the name of a victor's father in Pythian 11.43, Puthonikos 'he who has victory at the Pythian Games'. What goes for athletes goes for horses as well: consider the name of the prize horse of Hieron, Pherenîkos (Olympian1.18, Pythian3.74), which means 'he who carries off the victory [nikê]'. Cf. Burnett 1985.179n7, who offers a list of "puns" in Pindar and Bacchylides; I suggest, however, that the term pun in this context is too narrow, implying as it does a playful attitude towards the names of the honorands. On the serious function of the name as a "micro-récit" in Archaic Greek traditions, see Calame 1986.155 and Loraux 1988b.
§10n1. Cf. Farnell 1932.187.
§10n2. This interpretation requires that nin at Pythian6.19 refer to patri teôi at 15: cf. Gildersleeve
1899.318.
§10n3. There is a variation on this epic scene in Iliad VIII 80 and following, where it is Diomedes rather than Antilokhos who saves Nestor, this time from Hektor, after Nestor's chariot is immobilized as Paris shoots the old man's horse with an arrow (unlike Antilokhos, of course, Diomedes himself does not get killed in performing the rescue). On the pointed references to Diomedes as a stand-in, as it were, for Antilokhos, as in Iliad IX 57-58, see Schein 1987.247. It is the apparent Iliadic awareness of the story of Antilokhos' death that guarantees the epic pedigree of this story as Pindar alludes to it.
§11n1. In this connection, Frame also draws my attention to the description of the Siamese twins known as the Aktorione Molione in Nestor's narrative about the chariot race at the Funeral Games of Amarynkeus in Iliad XXIII: in this contest, which is the only one that Nestor says that he did not win (XXIII 638), the twins were victorious by way of their combined efforts, where one twin was consistently guiding the horses as he held the reins while the other twin would urge them on with the whip (XXIII 641-642). Since the left hand is conventionally the bridle hand (see LSJ s.v. hênia I.3) and since this heroic pair were Siamese twins, I assume that the user of the reins, the twin of restraint, would have to be on the left side, and that the twin of impulse would have to be on the right.
§11n2. On the semiotics of reading as 'recognizing', see N 1983, especially p. 39; also Pucci
Cf. also Ch.6§50 and following.
§11n3. That Antilokhos is behaving here as an exponent of mêtis 'cunning intelligence' is argued further in N 1983.53n37, extending the arguments presented by Detienne and Vernant
1974.22-24, 29- 31.
§11n4. Again, this point is argued in N 1983.53n37.
§11n5. Cf. N, p. 48.
§11n6. Ibid. Thus the act of balancing restraint and impulsiveness achieves in the end a dominant sense of restraint.
§12n2. This usage of proteroi 'men who came before', as we have seen at Ch.7§1, implies an ainos (on which see Ch.6§4 and following). Like the ainos, the sêma here is one code conveying at least two messages.
§12n3. See Rohde 1898 I 173 and n1 (= 1925.127 and n147n59); also Sinos 1980.53n6 and N 1983.46.
§13n1. The sêma here is like the ainos: one code conveying two messages.
§13n2. N 1983.47.
§15n1. N 1979.292-295; Sinos 1980.29-38; Lowenstam 1981.126-177.
§15n2. Van Brock 1959.119: "Le tarpalli- est un autre soi-même, une projection de l'individu sur laquelle sont transférées par la magie du verbe toutes les souillures dont on veut se débarasser."
§15n3. Again, N 1979.292-295.
§15n4. Sinos 1980.30 remarks: "It was Patroklos who succeeded in the competition with his multiforms, Antilokhos, Automedon, and Alkimedon."
§18n1. The use of the adverb proteron here should be compared with that of the adjective
proteros in indicating that an ainos is at work (cf. Ch.7§1).
§18n2. Compare noêma touto pherôn 'who wins as a prize this thought' here at Pythian6.29, applying to Thrasyboulos as well as to his model Antilokhos, with logon phereis 'you win as a prize the words' at Pythian8.38, applying to Aristomenes as well as to his model Alkmaion (as discussed at Ch.6§87).
§18n3. Compare plouton agei 'does he bring about wealth' here with psuchan komixai...derma te kriou...agein 'to save the psûkhê and bring back the fleece of the ram' at Pindar Pythian4.159. The materialism here is of the "otherworldly" sort (Ch.8§45 and following). Cf. Pindar Pythian6.5: olbioisin emmenidais 'for the patriliny of the Emmenidai, who are olbioi'; again, the materialism here is "otherworldly" (Ch.8§45 and following).
§18n4. Compare again noêma touto pherôn 'who wins as a prize this thought' here at Pythian6.29, applying to Thrasyboulos as well as to his model Antilokhos, with logon phereis 'you win as a prize the words' at Pythian8.38, applying to Aristomenes as well as to his model Alkmaion ( Ch. 7§18n2).
§18n5. On noos as a balance of impulsiveness and restraint, initially favoring the former and ultimately adopting the latter, see Ch.7§11 and following. The noos of Patroklos is described as biâtâs at Pindar Olympian9.75, precisely in a context where Achilles warns him not to venture off on his own (9.76-79).
§1. The historiâ 'inquiry' of Herodotus, like the ainos of epinician poets like Pindar, claims to extend from the epic of heroes. Like the ainos of Pindar, the historiâ of Herodotus is a form of discourse that claims the authority to possess and control the epic of heroes. I propose to support these assertions by examining the structure of Herodotus' narrative, traditionally known as the Histories, and by arguing that the traditions underlying this structure are akin to those underlying the ainos of Pindar's epinician heritage. 1 With reference to my working definition, in Chapter 1, of song, poetry, and prose, I argue that the study of Herodotus, master of prose, will help further clarify our ongoing consideration of the relationship between song in Pindar and poetry in epic.
§2. As in the songs of Pindar, the figure of Homer is treated as the ultimate representative of epic in the prose of Herodotus (e.g., 2.116-117). 1 In fact, the poetry of Homer along with that of Hesiod is acknowledged by Herodotus as the definitive source for the cultural values that all Hellenes hold in common:
hothen de egenonto hekastos tôn theôn, eite aiei êsan pantes, hokoioi te tines ta eidea, ouk êpisteato mechri hou prôên te kai chthes hôs eipein logôi. Hêsiodon gar kai Homêron hêlikiên tetrakosioisi etesi dokeô meu presbuterous genesthai kai ou pleosi. houtoi de eisi hoi poiêsantes theogoniên Hellêsi kai toisi theoisi tas epônumias dontes kai timas te kai technas dielontes kai eidea autôn sêmênantes. hoi de proteron poiêtai legomenoi toutôn tôn andrôn genesthai husteron, emoige dokeein, egenonto toutôn. ta men prôta hai Dôdônides hiereiai legousi, ta de hustera ta es Hêsiodon te kai Homêron echonta egô legô.
But it was only the day before yesterday, so to speak, 2 that they [= the Hellenes] came to understand wherefrom 3 the gods originated [= root gen-], whether they all existed always, and what they were like in their visible forms [eidos plural]. For Hesiod and Homer, I think, lived not more than four hundred years ago. These are the men who composed [= verb poieô] a theogony [with root gen-] for the Hellenes, who gave epithets [epônumiai] 4 to the gods, who distinguished their various tîmai [= spheres of influence] 5 and tekhnai [= spheres of activity]\, 6 and who indicated [= verb sêmainô] 7 their visible forms. 8 And I think that those poets who are said to have come before these men really came after them. 9 The first part of what precedes 10 is said by the priestesses of Dodona. 11 The second part, concerning Hesiod and Homer, is my opinion. 12
§3. Not only does Herodotus stress the Panhellenic importance of Homer and Hesiod. He takes both a Homeric and a Hesiodic stance. Let us begin with his Homeric stance, 1 which is evident at the beginning of the Histories, the so-called prooemium. 2 Although I have no doubt that Herodotus had Homer in mind when he composed the prooemium of the Histories, I plan to show in what follows that the prose narrative of the Histories is the product of an oral tradition in
its own right, related to but not derived from the poetic narrative of the Iliad. 3
§4. I now quote the prooemium of Herodotus in its entirety:
Hêrodotou Halikarnêsseos historiês apodexis hêde, hôs
mête erga megala te kai thômasta, ta men Hellêsi,
ta de barbaroisi apodechthenta, aklea genêtai, ta te alla kai di' hên aitiên epolemêsan allêloisi 1
This is the public presentation [= noun apo-deixis] 2 of the inquiry [historiâ] 3 of Herodotus of Halikarnassos, with the purpose of bringing it about
that whatever results from men may not, with the passage of time, become evanescent, 4
and
that great and wondrous deeds--some of them publicly performed [= verb apo-deik- numai] 5 by Hellenes, others by barbarians--may not become akleâ [= without kleos].
In particular 6 [this apodeixis of this historiâ concerns] why (= on account of what cause [aitiâ])
they entered into conflict with each other. 7
§5. It is important to pay careful attention here in the prooemium to the development of thought that links the noun apodeixis 'public presentation' with the verb from which it is derived, apo- deik-numai, to be found in the clause b that follows. We would expect this verb in the middle voice to mean 'make a public presentation of', that is, 'publicly demonstrate, make a public demonstration'; there are contexts where such a translation is indeed appropriate. Thus when Xerxes has a canal made in order to turn the isthmus of Mount Athos into an island, he is described as ethelôn te dunamin apodeiknusthai kai mnêmosuna lipesthai 'wishing to make a public demonstration of his power and to have a reminder of it left behind' (Herodotus 7.24; cf. 7.223.4). Combined with the direct object gnômên / gnômâs 'opinions, judgments', this verb in the middle voice is used in contexts where someone is presenting his views in public; the contexts include three specific instances of self-expression by Herodotus (2.146.1, 7.139.1, 8.8.3). 1 Yet in the context of the prooemium, and also in other Herodotean contexts where apo-deik-numai in the middle voice is combined, as here, with the direct object ergon / erga 'deed(s)', it is to be translated simply as 'perform' rather than 'make a public presentation or demonstration of'. Thus in Powell's Lexicon to Herodotus we can find 29 contexts where apo-deik-numai, in combination with direct objects like ergon / erga, is translated as 'perform'. 2 In the prooemium that we have just read, for example, the reference is to the megala erga 'great deeds' that have been apodekhthenta 'performed' by Hellenes and barbarians alike. If we translated apodekhthenta here as 'publicly presented' or 'demonstrated' instead of 'performed', the text would not make sense to us. So also 'performed' is suggested in a context like the following, where a dying Kallikrates
expresses his deep regret
hoti ouden esti hoi apodedegmenon ergon heôutou axion prothumeumenou apodexasthai
that there was no deed performed by him that was worthy of him, though he had been eager to perform [one].
Clearly this young man's sorrow is not over the fact that he has not made a public display of a great deed but over the more basic fact that he does not have a great deed to display. The obvious explanation for these usages of apo-deik-numai in the sense of performing rather than publicly presenting or demonstrating or displaying a deed is that the actual medium for publicly presenting the given deed is in all these cases none other than the language of Herodotus. In other words, performing a deed is the equivalent of publicly presenting a deed because it is ultimately being displayed by the Histories of Herodotus.
§6. Similarly saying something is in the case of Herodotus the equivalent of writing something because it is ultimately being written down in the Histories (e.g., 2.123.3, 4.195.2, 6.14.1, 7.214.3; cf. also Hecataeus FGH 1 F 1). 1 In other words saying and writing are treated as parallel speech-acts. 2 This sort of parallelism goes one step beyond what we have seen in the use of ana-gignôskô 'know again, recognize' in the sense of 'read out loud', as in Aristophanes Knights118, 1011, 1065. 3 This meaning of ana-gignôskô is a metaphorical extension of the notion of public performance, as we see in Pindar Olympian10.1, where the corresponding notion of the actual composition by the poet is kept distinct through the metaphor of an inscription inside the phrên 'mind' (10.2-3). 4 As for the language of Herodotus, in contrast, not only the composition but also the performance, as a public speech-act, can be conveyed by the single metaphor of writing. For Herodotus, the essential thing is that the writing, just like the saying, is a public, not a private, speech-act (again 7.214.3). 5 The historiâ 'inquiry' that he says he is presenting in the prooemium of the Histories is not a public oral performance as such, but it is a public demonstration of an oral performance, by way of writing. Moreover, the very word apodeixis, referring to the 'presentation' of the historiâ in the prooemium, can be translated as the 'demonstration' of such oral performance.
§7. Whereas Herodotus represents his writings as a public presentation, Thucydides represents his as if they were private: they are a ktêma...es aiei 'a possession for all time' (1.22.4), where the noun ktêma, derivative of the verb kektêmai 'possess', conveys the notion of private property. 1 Moreover, Thucydides avoids the words historiâ and historeô, 2 as also apodeixis 'public presentation' (with only one exception, at 1.97.2). 3 In the Histories of Herodotus, by contrast, precisely such words designate the performative aspect of the words of Herodotus taken all together. To return to the first words in the prooemium to the Histories of Herodotus, this whole composition is in itself an act of apodeixis 'public presentation': Hêrodotou Halikarnêsseos
historiês apodexis hêde 'this is the apodeixis of the historiâ of Herodotus of Halikarnassos'. 4
§8. Wherever apo-deik-numai designates the performance of a deed (or the execution of a monument, as in Herodotus 1.184, etc.), the performance (or execution) is tantamount to a public presentation as long as it can be sustained by a medium of public presentation. 1 As Herodotus declares in the prooemium, the apodeixis 'public presentation' of his Histories is for the purpose of ensuring that the great deeds performed by Hellenes and barbarians alike should not be akleâ 'without kleos'. This purpose of sustaining kleos is a traditional one, already built into the inherited semantics of the verb apo-deik-numai: the great deeds are already being literally apodekhthenta 'publicly presented' because they are in the process of being retold in the medium of Herodotus--just as they had been retold earlier in the medium of his predecessors. 2 These predecessors of Herodotus, as the wording of the transition from the prooemium to the Histories proper makes clear, come under the designation of logioi (Herodotus 1.1.1). For reasons that become clear as the discussion proceeds, I consistently translate logioi as 'masters of speech'.
§9. In order to grasp the concept of logioi, I draw attention to the word for the particular subject of the Histories, namely, the aitiâ 'cause' of the conflict between Hellenes and barbarians: ta te alla kai di' hên aitiên epolemêsan allêloisi 'in particular, [the apodeixis concerns\fR;] why (= on account of what cause [aitiâ]) they entered into conflict with each other' (Herodotus prooemium). This word is immediately picked up in the first sentence of the Histories proper: Perseôn men nun hoi logioi Phoinikas aitious phasi genesthai tês diaphorês 'the logioi of the Persians say that it was the Phoenicians who were the cause of the conflict' (Herodotus 1.1.1). This transition reveals that Herodotus, in concerning himself with the aitiâ 'cause' of the conflict, is implicitly a logios 'master of speech' like his pro-Persian counterparts, explicitly called logioi, who concern themselves with the question: who were the cause of the conflict? 1
§10. As we learn from the language of Pindar, it is the function of logioi 'masters of speech' to confer kleos:
plateiai pantothen logioisin enti prosodoi | nason euklea tande kosmein: epei sphin Aiakidai |
eporon exochon aisan aretas apodeiknumenoi megalas 1
Wide are the approaching paths from all sides, for the logioi to adorn this island with glory [kleos]; for the Aiakidai have conferred upon this island an exceptional share [i.e., of glory], 2 presenting [apo-deik-numai] great achievements [aretê plural].
Just as both Hellenes and barbarians can have their deeds apodekhthenta 'publicly presented'
and thus not become akleâ 'without kleos' by virtue of apodeixis 'public presentation' as explicitly conferred by Herodotus, 3 so also the lineage of Achilles, the Aiakidai, can go on 'publicly presenting', apodeiknumenoi, their achievements even after death--by virtue of the public display implicitly conferred by the logioi, who are described here in the language of Pindar
§11. Elsewhere the language of Pindar draws the logioi into an explicit parallelism with aoidoi 'poets', and the emphasis is on their enshrining the achievements of those who have long since died:
opithombroton auchêma doxas | oion apoichomenôn andrôn diaitan manuei | kai logiois kai aoidois. ou phthinei Kroisou philophrôn areta.
The proud declaration of glory that comes in the future is the only thing that attests, both for logioi and for singers [aoidoi], the life of men who are now departed; the philos-minded achievement [aretê] of Croesus fails 1 not. 2
This explicit parallelism of logioi and aoidoi should be compared with that of logoi 'words' and
aoidai 'songs' in Nemean6 (aoidai kai logoi 30), 3 the same poem from which I have just quoted the only other attestation of logioi in Pindar's epinician lyric poetry. 4 Let us turn back, then, to Nemean6:
euthun' epi touton, age Moisa, ouron epeôn | euklea: paroichomenôn gar anerôn, | aoidai kai logoi
In the direction of this house, Muse, steer the breeze, bringing good kleos, of these my words. For even when men are departed, aoidai and logoi 6 bring back the beauty of their deeds.
In short the language of Pindar makes it explicit that logioi 'masters of speech' are parallel to the
masters of song, aoidoi, in their function of maintaining the kleos 'glory' of men even after death, and it implies that this activity of both logioi and aoidoi is a matter of apodeixis 'public presentation'.
§12. As for Herodotus, I have already argued that he is by implication presented at the very beginning of his Histories as one in a long line of logioi, 1 and he makes it explicit that his function of maintaining kleos is a matter of apodeixis. 2 Accordingly I find it anachronistic to interpret logioi as 'historians'. 3
§13. The medium of logioi, as the contexts of apodeixis make clear, is at least ideologically that of performance, not of writing. Like the poets, the logioi can recreate with each performance the deeds of men. That is what Pindar's words have told us. Thus the aretê 'achievement' of a Croesus, for example, as we have just read in Pindar's Pythian1, 1 does not 'fail' (verb phthi-) 2
because it is transmitted by logioi and aoidoi. In this particular case we even have actual attestations of parallel but mutually independent Croesus stories in the prose narrative of one who speaks in the mode of a logios (Herodotus 1.86-91) and in the poetic narrative of an aoidos (Bacchylides Epinician 3.23-62). 3 It would seem then that the logios is a master of oral traditions in prose, just as the aoidos is a master of oral traditions in poetry and song. 4
§14. The notion that a logios, just like an aoidos, can prevent the transience of a man's aretê 'achievement' is found not only in Pindar: we have seen it conveyed twice in the prooemium of Herodotus. The first time around, it occurs in the negative purpose clause hôs mête ta genomena ex anthrôpôn tôi chronôi exitêla genêtai 'with the purpose of bringing it about that whatever results from men may not, with the passage of time, become exitêla [= evanescent]'. This clause is then coordinated with another negative purpose clause, this second one being more specific than the first: mête erga megala te kai thômasta, ta men Hellêsi, ta de barbaroisi apodechthenta, aklea genêtai 'and that great and wondrous deeds--some of them performed by Hellenes, others by barbarians--may not become akleâ [= without kleos]'. 1
§15. In other attested contexts, the adjective exitêlos can designate such things as the fading of color in fabrics (Xenophon Oeconomicus 10.3) or in paintings (Pausanias 10.38.9), the loss of a seed's generative powers when sown in alien soil (Plato Republic 497b), and the extinction of a family line (Herodotus 5.39.2). The references to vegetal and human evanescence reveal this adjective to be semantically parallel to the verb phthi-, which I have been translating as 'fail' in its application to the transience of man's aretê. 1 Moreover, the adjective aphthiton, derived from phthi- and translatable as 'unfailing, unwilting', 2 is a traditional epithet of kleos in the inherited diction of praise poetry, as when the poet Ibycus makes the following pledge to his patron Polykrates:
kai su, Polukrates, kleos aphthiton hexeis hôs kat' aoidan kai emon kleos
You too [i.e., you as well as the heroes just mentioned in the song], Polykrates, will have kleos
that is unfailing [aphthiton], in accordance with my song, my kleos. 3
What emerges then from this comparison of phraseology in song, poetry, and prose is that the two negative purpose clauses in the prose prooemium of Herodotus--the first one intending that human accomplishments should not be evanescent and the second, that they should not be without kleos--amount to a periphrasis of what is being said in the single poetic phrase kleos aphthiton.
§16. In this regard we may compare various Platonic passages concerning the concept of collective memory as a force that preserves the extraordinary and erases the ordinary. 1 To be noted especially is the expression tina diaphoran...echon 'that which has some distinctness to it' in designating that which deserves to be recorded, at Plato Timaeus 23a. In this sense the memory of oral tradition is at the same time a forgetting of the ordinary as well as a remembering of the
extraordinary (but exemplary). Such an orientation is parallel to what is being expressed by ta te alla kai 'in particular' in the prooemium of Herodotus. 2 Also to be noted are the similarities between the prooemium of Herodotus and the following Platonic passage:
pros de Kritian ton hêmeteron pappon eipen...hoti megala kai thaumasta têsd' eiê palaia erga tês poleôs hupo chronou kai phthoras anthrôpôn êphanismena, pantôn de hen megiston, hou nun epimnêstheisin prepon an hêmin eiê soi te apodounai charin kai tên theon hama en têi panêgurei dikaiôs te kai alêthôs hoionper humnountas enkômiazein.
He [= Solon] said to Critias my grandfather... 3 that there were, inherited by this city, ancient deeds, great and wondrous, that have disappeared through the passage of time and through destruction brought about by human agency. He went on to say that of all these deeds, there was one in particular that was the greatest, which it would be fitting for us now to bring to mind, giving a delightful compensation [kharis] to you [= Socrates] while at the same time rightly and truthfully praising [enkômiazein] the goddess on this the occasion of her festival, just as if we were singing hymns to her [humnountas].
The emphasis in the phrase pantôn de hen megiston 'there was one in particular that was the greatest' is comparable with the emphasis in the phrase ta te alla kai di' hên aitiên epolemêsan allêloisi 'in particular, [this apodeixis of this historiâ concerns] why (= on account of what cause [aitiâ]) they entered into conflict with each other' in the prooemium of Herodotus. 4
§17. The reciprocal relation between the man whose accomplishments or qualities are celebrated by kleos aphthiton and the man who sings that kleos is made explicit in the words quoted earlier from Ibycus. To paraphrase: "My kleos will be your kleos, because my song of praise for you will be your means to fame; conversely, since you merit permanent fame, my song praising you will be permanent, and consequently I the singer will have permanent fame as well." 1 A parallel relation exists between the man who presents an apodeixis 'public presentation' of his Histories on the one hand, and on the other the Hellenes and barbarians whose accomplishments are apodekhthenta 'publicly presented' and thereby not evanescent, not without kleos.
§18. The self-expressive purpose of Herodotus, to maintain kleos about deeds triggered by conflict, brings to mind the Iliad. Besides the fact that Homeric poetry refers to itself as kleos, 1 Achilles himself specifically refers to the Iliadic tradition, which will glorify him forever, as kleos aphthiton (IX 413). 2 Moreover, this glorification is achieved in terms of a story that ostensibly tells of a conflict between Achilles and Agamemnon in the context of a larger conflict between Achaeans and Trojans, that is, the Trojan War. This larger conflict is subsumed by the even larger conflict between Hellenes and barbarians, subject of historiâ 'inquiry' on the part of Herodotus. 3 Like the Homer of Pindar, the Homer of Herodotus is being subsumed by a form of communication that goes beyond epic.
§19. The notion that the framework of the historiâ of Herodotus subsumes the framework of the
Iliad is implied by the prooemium of Herodotus as compared with that of the Iliad. The expression di' hên aitiên 'on account of what cause...' in the prooemium of Herodotus, 1 which asks the question why the Hellenes and barbarians came into conflict with each other, is functionally analogous to the question posed in the prooemium of the Iliad: that is, why did Achilles and Agamemnon come into conflict with each other (Iliad I 7-12)? 2 The latter conflict results in the mênis 'anger' of Achilles (Iliad I 1), which in turn results in the deaths of countless Achaeans and Trojans (I 2-5). 3 These heroes would not have died when they did, in the course of the Iliad, had it not been for the anger of Achilles; in other words the prooemium of the Iliad assumes that the original conflict of Achilles and Agamemnon resulted in the Iliad. Similarly the prooemium of the Histories of Herodotus assumes that the original conflicts of Hellenes and barbarians resulted in the Histories. In both cases the search for original causes motivates not just the events being narrated but also the narration. From the standpoint of the prooemia of the Iliad and of the Histories, Herodotus is in effect implying that the events narrated by the Iliad are part of a larger scheme of events as narrated by himself.
§20. For Herodotus, the question of the prooemium, di' hên aitiên epolemêsan allêloisi 'on account of what cause they came into conflict with each other', begins to be answered in the first sentence of the narratise proper: Perseôn men nun hoi logioi Phoinikas aitious phasi genesthai tês diaphorês 'the logioi of the Persians say that it was the Phoenicians who were the cause of the conflict' (Herodotus 1.1.1). 1 The semantic relationship here between the noun aitiâ 'cause' and the subsequent adjective aitios, which I have just translated as 'the cause', can best be understood by considering the definition of aitios in the dictionary of Liddell and Scott as 'responsible for' in the sense of 'being the cause of a thing to a person'. 2 There is a juridical dimension of aitios in the sense of 'guilty' and aitiâ in the sense of 'guilt', operative throughout the Histories of Herodotus. 3 We may compare the semantics of Latin causa, which means not only 'cause' but also 'case, trial', and the derivatives of which are ac-cûs-âre and ex-cûs-âre. In the case of Herodotus' main question, what was the aitiâ 'cause' of the conflict between Hellenes and barbarians, the inquiry proceeds in terms of asking who was aitios 'responsible, guilty'. From the standpoint of the logioi who speak on behalf of the Persians, Herodotus says, the Phoenicians were first to be in the wrong, aitioi (1.1.1): they abducted Io, and 'this was the first beginning of wrongs committed' (tôn adikêmatôn prôton touto arxai 1.2.1). This wrong is then righted when the Hellenes abduct Europa, and 'this made things even for them' (tauta men dê isa pros isa sphi genesthai 1.2.1). But then the Hellenes reportedly committed a wrong, thereby becoming aitioi 'responsible' (meta de tauta Hellênas aitious tês deuterês adikiês genesthai 1.2.1), when they abducted Medea. This wrong is in turn righted when Paris abducts Helen (1.2.3). Up to this time, from the standpoint of the Persian logioi, there have been two cycles of wrongs righted: first the barbarians were aitioi, and the Hellenes retaliated; then the Hellenes were aitioi, and the barbarians retaliated. From then on, however, according to the Persians, the degree of
wrongdoing escalated when the Achaeans captured Troy:
to de apo toutou Hellênas dê megalôs aitious genesthai: proterous gar arxai strateuesthai es tên Asiên ê spheas es tên Eurôpên.
From here on, [they say that] it was the Hellenes who were very much in the wrong [aitioi], because it was they who were the first to begin to undertake a military campaign into Asia, instead of their [= the Persians'] undertaking a military campaign into Europe.
According to this Persian scenario then, the third and greatest cycle of wrongs to be righted is completed when the Persians finally invade Hellas.
§21. Against this backdrop of the Trojan and Persian Wars, the testimony of Herodotus links up with the ongoing inquiry into the aitiâ 'cause' of the conflict between Hellenes and barbarians. We have heard from the barbarians. Now we hear from Herodotus:
tauta men nun Persai te kai Phoinikes legousi. egô de peri men toutôn ouk erchomai ereôn hôs houtôs ê allôs kôs tauta egeneto, ton de oida autos prôton huparxanta adikôn ergôn es tous Hellênas, touton sêmênas probêsomai es to prosô tou logou, homoiôs smikra kai megala astea anthrôpôn epexiôn. ta gar to palai megala ên, ta polla autôn smikra gegone, ta de ep' emeu ên megala, proteron ên smikra. tên anthrôpêiên ôn epistamenos eudaimoniên oudama en tôutôi menousan epimnêsomai amphoterôn homoiôs.
So that is what the Persians and Phoenicians say. But I will not go on to say whether those things really happened that way or some other way. Instead, relying on what I know, I will indicate [= verb sêmainô] who it was who first committed wrongdoing against the Hellenes. I will move thus ahead with what I have to say, as I proceed through great cities and small ones as well. For most of those that were great once are small today; and those that used to be small were great in my time. Understanding that the good fortune [eudaimoniâ] of men never stays in the same place, I will keep in mind both alike.
§22. The very next word brings into focus the cause that Herodotus gives for the conflicts between Hellenes and barbarians that he is about to narrate: it is Croesus the Lydian (1.6.1), 1 who is described as the turannos 'tyrant' (ibid.) of the mighty Lydian Empire that preceded and was then replaced by the Persian Empire. It was Croesus, says Herodotus, who first compelled Hellenes to pay tribute to a barbarian (1.6.2); 2 'before the rule of Croesus, all Hellenes were still free [eleutheroi]' (pro de tês Kroisou archês pantes Hellênes êsan eleutheroi 1.6.3). 3 Herodotus' overall narrative explains the cause of the Ionian Revolt, which ultimately provokes the Persian invasion of Hellas, as provoked in the first place by the 'enslavement' of the Hellenes of Asia (5.49.2-3). 4 At the time of the Ionian Revolt, the 'enslaved' Hellenes were subject to the Persians; but the very first man to have 'enslaved' them was Croesus, tyrant of the Lydian Empire.
§23. It is important to notice that Herodotus qualifies his assertion that Croesus was the first man
ever to 'enslave' free Greek cities:
houtos ho Kroisos barbarôn prôtos tôn hêmeis idmen tous men katestrepsato Hellênôn es phorou apagôgên...
This Croesus was the first barbarian ever, within our knowledge, to reduce some Hellenes to the status of paying tribute... 1
The expression tôn hêmeis idmen 'within our knowledge' picks up the earlier expression that leads
to the identification of Croesus as the cause of the conflict between Hellenes and barbarians--or at least of that part of the conflict that is narrated by Herodotus:
ton de oida autos prôton huparxanta adikôn ergôn es tous Hellênas, touton sêmênas probêsomai es to prosô tou logou, homoiôs smikra kai megala astea anthrôpôn epexiôn.
Relying on what I know, I will indicate [= verb sêmainô] who it was who first committed wrongdoing against the Hellenes. I will move thus ahead with what I have to say, as I proceed through great cities and small ones as well.
§24. The wording of what we have just read is reminiscent not of the Iliad, prime epic of the Trojan War, but of the Odyssey. Thus we come to the second aspect of the Herodotean appropriation of Homer. 1 In the discussion that follows, the focus is on two particular passages in the Odyssey that serve to illuminate the wording of Herodotus.
§25. Let us begin by considering the prooemium of the Odyssey. After a reference to the destruction of Troy by Odysseus (Odyssey i 2), the hero's many subsequent wanderings are described in the following words:
pollôn d' anthrôpôn iden astea kai noon egnô
He saw the cities of many men, and he came to know their way of thinking [noos].
The correlation here of seeing (iden) with consequent knowing kai noon egnô) recapitulates the semantics of perfect oida: "I have seen: therefore I know." 1 This general quest of Odysseus is parallel to a specific quest that was formulated for him by the seer Teiresias; this brings us to the second pertinent passage from the Odyssey. In this passage we find Odysseus himself saying to
Penelope:
epei mala polla brotôn epi aste' anôgen elthein
since he [= Teiresias] ordered me to proceed through very many cities of men.
Teiresias had told Odysseus to undertake this quest after the hero has killed the suitors (xi
119-120); 2 specifically Odysseus is to go inland, with an oar on his shoulder, until it is mistaken for a winnowing shovel (xi 121-137; xxiii 265- 284). This experience, says Teiresias, will be a sêma 'sign, signal' for Odysseus (xi 126; xxiii 273). In such contexts the coding of a sêma in the dimension of seeing is analogous to the coding of an ainos in the dimension of hearing. 3 The sêma of Teiresias bears a twofold message: what is an oar for seafarers is a winnowing shovel for inlanders. The message of this sêma, however, is twofold neither for the seafarers nor for the inlanders since the former can surely distinguish oars from winnowing shovels while the latter are presented as knowing only about winnowing shovels. Rather the message is twofold only for Odysseus as the traveler since he sees that the same signal has two distinct messages in two distinct places: what is an oar for the seafarers is a winnowing shovel for the inlanders. 4 In order to recognize that one sêma can have more than one message, Odysseus must travel-- polla brotôn epi astea...elthein 'to proceed through many cities of men' (again xxiii 267-268). 5 The wording brings us back to Herodotus, who describes himself as homoiôs smikra kai megala astea anthrôpôn epexiôn 'proceeding through great cities and small ones as well' (again 1.5.3), in his quest to investigate the cause of the conflict that he is to narrate. Figuratively Herodotus travels along the 'roads of logoi' from city to city, much as Odysseus travels in his heroic quest. This argument meshes with the larger argument that the Homeric stance of Herodotus engages not only the Iliad but also the Odyssey.
§26. It would be a mistake, however, to explain this as well as other correspondences in the wording of Homer and Herodotus as a simple matter of borrowing by Herodotus. It is a built-in tradition in the diction of Herodotus to imagine the process of narration itself as if it were a process of traveling along a road: for example, when he is ready to investigate the replacement of the Lydian Empire of Croesus by the Persian Empire of Cyrus, Herodotus says that he is about to tell 'the true and real logos [= word]' (ton eonta logon 1.95.1), 1 though he would be capable of revealing three other alternative 'roads of logoi [= words]' (epistamenos...kai triphasias allas logôn hodous phênai 1.95.1). 2 Here we see a close parallelism between the traditions of Herodotus' historiâ and Pindar's ainos in that the same image of narration as the process of traveling along a road is extensively used in the diction of epinician poetry. 3
§27. The ideological correspondence between the quest of Odysseus and the quest described by Herodotus runs even deeper. Matching the sêma 'signal' that Odysseus gets from Teiresias is a sêma given by Herodotus when he indicates who committed the wrongdoing that led to the
conflict that he narrates while traveling down the road through cities large and small: as we have seen, the word that expresses the idea of 'indicate' is sêmainô, derivative of sêma (1.5.3). The choice of this word in indicating that the wrongdoer was Croesus is apt in that sêmainô denotes a mode of communication that is implicit as well as explicit. The narrative of Herodotus never says explicitly how the wrongdoing of Croesus is linked with the previous wrongdoings in the ongoing conflict between Hellenes and barbarians. Up to the point where Croesus is named, the series of wrongdoings had reached a climax in the Trojan War. In the version attributed to the logioi who speak on behalf of the Persians, the Hellenes were in the wrong when they undertook the Trojan War, and the barbarians were in the right when they retaliated with the Persian War, about to be narrated in the Histories. 1 But the narrator of the Histories never says explicitly that this version is false. Instead he keeps saying it implicitly. Something else happened between the Trojan War and the Persian War, and that was the 'enslavement' of the Hellenes of Asia by Croesus (1.5.3, in conjunction with 1.6.1-3). 2 Thus even if the Hellenes had been in the wrong when they undertook the Trojan War, the barbarians had already retaliated for that wrong. The Ionian Revolt, in reaction to the 'enslavement' of the Hellenes (Herodotus 5.49.2-3), 3 would not count as a wrongdoing in the latest cycle of wrongdoing and retaliation, in that Herodotus clearly does not accept the Persian premise that all Asia belongs to the Persians (1.4.4). Thus the real wrong in the latest cycle of wrongdoing and retaliation is the invasion of Europe by the barbarians in the Persian War. Again, Herodotus does not say this explicitly but implicitly, and the word that he uses to designate his mode of communication is sêmainô (1.5.3). We are reminded of the mode in which the god Apollo himself communicates:
ho anax, hou to manteion esti to en Delphois, oute legei oute kruptei alla sêmainei
The Lord whose oracle is in Delphi neither says nor conceals: he indicates [= verb sêmainô]. 4
§28. In his investigations of causes, Herodotus himself follows the convention of communicating in this mode. For example, in discussing the cause alleged by Croesus for his attack on Cyrus, namely, the usurpation of Median hegemony by the Persians, Herodotus promises to indicate the original cause of that usurpation:
...di' aitiên tên egô en toisi opisô logoisi sêmaneô
...on account of a cause [aitiâ] that I will indicate [= verb sêmainô] in later logoi. 1
As François Hartog points out, he who sêmainei 'indicates' does so on the basis of some privileged position of knowledge, as when scouts, having their special vantage point by having
ascended to an elevated place, can then run down to indicate to those below the movements of the enemy (Herodotus 7.192.1 esêmainon, 7.219.1 esêmênan). 2 The privileged position of Herodotus brings to mind the ultimately privileged position of the Delphic Oracle, with its all- encompassing knowledge, revealing mastery of such "facts" as the number of grains of sand in the universe (Herodotus 1.47.3). 3 When Herodotus sêmainei 'indicates', he seems to have comparable authority within the realm of what he indicates, revealing mastery of such "facts" as the full dimensions of Scythia as it stretches from the Istros to the sea (4.99.2), the precise length of the Royal Road leading from the Mediterranean seacoast all the way to Susa (5.54.1), 4 and, more figuratively, all the 'roads of logoi' along which his predecessors have traveled (2.20.1). 5 Most important, he also knows who is aitios 'responsible' for the all-encompassing conflict that he narrates as he sêmainei 'indicates' that it is Croesus (again 1.5.3). 6
§29. Thus when Herodotus sêmainei 'indicates', he does so on the basis of superior knowledge. We now see that he is doing something more than simply qualifying his statement when he indicates that Croesus was aitios 'responsible' for the conflict that he will narrate:
houtos ho Kroisos barbarôn prôtos tôn hêmeis idmen tous men katestrepsato Hellênôn es phorou apagôgên
This Croesus was the first barbarian ever, within our knowledge, to reduce some Hellenes to the status of paying tribute...
These words pick up the earlier wording:
ton de oida autos prôton huparxanta adikôn ergôn es tous Hellênas, touton sêmênas probêsomai es to prosô tou logou, homoiôs smikra kai megala astea anthrôpôn epexiôn.
Instead, relying on what I know, I will indicate [= verb sêmainô] who it was who first committed wrongdoing against the Hellenes. I will move thus ahead with what I have to say, as I proceed through great cities and small ones as well.
Figuratively Herodotus owes his privileged position of knowledge to the many roads of logoi
'words' that he travels (again 1.95.1) 1 as he proceeds through cities great and small.
§30. This privileged position is analogous to that of Odysseus, who 'saw the cities of many men, and came to know their way of thinking [noos]' (Odyssey i 3), the same man who was ordered by the seer Teiresias 'to proceed through very many cities of men' (xxiii 267-268). 1 Moreover, the discourse used by Herodotus in expressing his superior knowledge is likewise Odyssean. To sêmainein 'indicate' is to speak in a code bearing more than one message. Messages can be
immediate as well as ulterior, even about the central theme of the conflict between Hellenes and barbarians, presented as an extension of the Iliadic theme of the Trojan War. In this respect the discourse of Herodotus is akin to that of the ainos as represented in the Odyssey. When the disguised Odysseus tells his host Eumaios a story about the Trojan War, bearing both the immediate message that he needs a cloak and the ultimate message that he is to be identified as Odysseus (xiv 462-506), 2 he is complimented by Eumaios for telling a good ainos (xiv 508). 3 In fact Odysseus is traditionally represented as a master of the ainos, as evident from his particularized epithet polu-ainos 'he of many ainoi' (e.g., xii 184). 4
§31. Thus the Homeric stance of Herodotus, in reflecting both Iliadic and Odyssean themes, is analogous to the stance of the disguised Odysseus as he tells his ainos: the subject is Iliadic, but the context is Odyssean. The Homeric stance of Herodotus is also analogous to the stance of an epinician poet like Pindar, whose medium is likewise a type of ainos. 1 Like Herodotus, Pindar too conventionally represents himself as traveling along 'roads of logoi'. 2 Moreover, Pindar's diction reveals an ideology according to which he too has a lofty vantage point of knowledge. As a seer sêmainei 'indicates' by way of a koruphê 'culmination, summing up' of logoi
'words' (Pindar Paean 8a.13-14 kai toiaide koruphai samainen logôn) , 3 so also the man who gets praise from Pindaric song must understand the poet's koruphê of logoi:
ei de logôn sunemen koruphan, Hierôn, | orthan epistai, manthanôn oistha proterôn
If you understand, Hieron, the unerring culmination [koruphê] of words [logoi], you know, learning from those who have gone before, that...
§32. How then are we to read the message of Herodotus, if indeed he stands in such a privileged position of knowledge? We must look for signs, and we come back to the sêma 'sign' given by Herodotus when he sêmainei 'indicates' that Croesus the Lydian was aitios 'responsible' for the conflict that is narrated (1.5.3). The immediate message here is that even if the Persian logioi were correct in determining who was aitios 'responsible' for each wrongdoing up to the Trojan War--in which case the ancestors of the Hellenes would have been in the wrong--the Persian War nevertheless puts the Persians, not the Hellenes, in the wrong because of the intervening wrongs committed by Croesus. 1 But there is also an ulterior message here, one that we can best understand by first confronting the question: who was in the wrong in the Iliad?
§33. The main theme of the Iliad, the mênis 'anger' of Achilles, which leads to the deaths of countless Achaeans and Trojans, 1 is caused by the insult of Agamemnon, whom Achilles holds aitios 'responsible' (Iliad I 335; cf. XIII 111). 2 In the later reconciliation scene between the two heroes, however, when Achilles finally renounces his mênis (XIX 35, 75), Agamemnon claims that he was not aitios (XIX 86), but that it was Zeus--along with Moira 'Fate' and an Erînûs
'Fury'--who inflicted upon him a baneful atê 'derangement' (XIX 87-88). Even the other gods hold Zeus responsible for creating a new phase of conflict between Achaeans and Trojans (XI 78 êitioônto) --a phase triggered by the conflict between Achilles and Agamemnon in the Iliad. 3 As for the overall conflict between Achaeans and Trojans, triggered by the abduction of Helen, Priam can claim the same sort of exculpation: it was not Helen who was aitiê 'responsible' to him for all his woes, but rather all the gods (III 164). Such claims that the phase of the war narrated by the Iliad--or, for that matter, the entire Trojan War--was all part of a grand divine scheme is perfectly in accord with what the Iliad announces about its own plot: it is the Will of Zeus (I 5). 4 At the beginning of the Cypria, the entire potential narrative of the Trojan War is equated with the Will of Zeus (F 1 Allen). 5 King Alkinoos even tells a weeping Odysseus that the Trojan War was devised by the gods so that poets may have something to sing about for men of the future (viii 579-580). 6 In the same line of thinking Telemachus defends Phemios when this poet sings about the suffering of the Achaeans after the Trojan War, on the grounds that Phemios is not aitios for what he narrates (i 347-348; cf. xxii 356); rather it is Zeus himself who is aitios (i 348).
§34. In contrast the overarching narrative of Herodotus about the conflict between Hellenes and barbarians, linked as it is with the epic conflict between Achaeans and Trojans, seems on the surface to be preoccupied with a different and nonpoetic perspective, inquiring into the question: who were juridically responsible? Here too, however, the word conveying responsibility is aitioi.
§35. Let us for the moment examine the question from a juridical point of view: who then was in the wrong? The Persian view is that the Hellenes were in the wrong when the Achaeans undertook the war against the Trojans, though the Trojans had been in the wrong earlier when Paris abducted Helen. On the surface, then, it is a juridical matter of a series of retaliations for wrongs committed.
§36. But another principle is at work whenever retaliation happens--a principle that is not made explicit at the beginning of Herodotus' inquiry. Accepting the authority of the Egyptians, whom he describes elsewhere as the supreme logioi among all men ever encountered by him logiôtatoi 2.77.1), 1 Herodotus says that he personally does not believe that Helen was at Troy when the city was destroyed by the Achaeans (2.120). At the same time he clearly accepts the premise that the destruction of Troy was in retaliation for the abduction of Helen (ibid.). In fact Herodotus reasons that the absence of Helen from Troy sealed the fate of the Trojans. It made it impossible for them to offer compensation to the Achaeans and thus avoid retaliation since the Achaeans refused to believe that Helen was not in Troy until they destroyed it (ibid.). The cause for the Trojans' predicament is made clear when Herodotus finally makes explicit something that had been kept implicit up to this point:
all' ou gar eichon Helenên apodounai oude legousi autoisi tên alêtheiên episteuon hoi Hellênes, hôs men egô gnômên apophainomai, tou daimoniou paraskeuazontos hokôs panôlethriêi apolomenoi kataphanes touto toisi anthrôpoisi poiêsôsi, hôs tôn megalôn adikêmatôn megalai eisi kai hai timôriai para tôn theôn. kai tauta men têi emoi dokeei eirêtai.
The fact is, they [= the Trojans] did not give back Helen because they did not have her. What they told the Hellenes was the truth, but they did not believe them. The reason is, and here I display [= verb apo-phain-omai] my judgment [gnômê], 2 that the power of a supernatural force [daimôn] arranged it that they [= the Trojans] should be completely destroyed and thereby make it clear to mankind that the gods exact enormous retributions for enormous wrongdoings. I say this in accordance with what I have decided about the matter.
§37. We begin to see that the narrative of Herodotus is describing implicitly the workings of the gods as it describes explicitly the deeds of men. I now argue that when Herodotus sêmainei 'indicates' that Croesus should be held aitios 'responsible' for the conflict that is being narrated (1.5.3), 1 he is also indicating, by way of his overall narration, that Croesus is destined to incur retribution from the gods--retribution that will take the form of some human action that can be explicitly narrated.
§38. What we are about to see is a pattern of narration where a man who does wrong, who is aitios, pays for that wrong by suffering a great misfortune, for which he then holds a god responsible, aitios. Then the given god makes clear that it was really the wrongdoer who was juridically responsible for the wrong that he did, and that the god is 'responsible' only for the transcendent scheme of divine retribution for that wrong.
§39. Croesus the Lydian suffers the great misfortune of losing his mighty empire at the hands of Cyrus the Persian, whose empire he had attacked. When Cyrus asks Croesus why he had taken up arms against him, Croesus replies:
ô basileu, egô tauta eprêxa têi sêi men eudaimoniêi têi emeôutou de kakodaimoniêi: aitios de toutôn egeneto ho Hellênôn theos eparas eme strateuesthai
O king, I did it because of your good fortune [eudaimoniâ = having a good daimôn] and my bad fortune [= having a bad daimôn]. But the one who is responsible [aitios] is the god of the Hellenes, who impelled me to take up arms.
This outcome, a violent shift from good to bad fortune, is the central theme already formulated in the initial words of Herodotus as he began his inquiry into the responsibility of Croesus:
ton de oida autos prôton huparxanta adikôn ergôn es tous Hellênas, touton sêmênas probêsomai es to prosô tou logou, homoiôs smikra kai megala astea anthrôpôn epexiôn. ta gar to palai megala ên, ta polla autôn smikra gegone, ta de ep' emeu ên megala, proteron ên smikra. tên anthrôpêiên ôn epistamenos eudaimoniên oudama en tôutôi menousan epimnêsomai amphoterôn homoiôs.
Relying on what I know, I will indicate [= verb sêmainô] who it was who first committed wrongdoing against the Hellenes. I will move thus ahead with what I have to say, as I proceed through great cities and small ones as well. For most of those that were great once are small today; and those that used to be small were great in my time. Understanding that the good fortune [eudaimoniâ = having a good daimôn] of men never stays in the same place, I will keep in mind both alike.
§40. Maintaining the implicitness of the divine scheme in his narrative, Herodotus tells how the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi rejects the accusation of Croesus that Apollo is responsible for the king's misfortune: Croesus is informed by the Oracle that he had read the wrong message into its ambiguous utterance, which had told him only that he would destroy a great empire if he attacked the empire of Cyrus (1.91.4; cf. 1.53.3). This ambiguity brings to mind once again the words of Heraclitus, describing how Apollo speaks through his Oracle: the god neither says nor conceals, but he sêmainei 'indicates' (22 B 93 DK). 1 Returning to the narrative of Herodotus, we note a particularly significant detail: the Oracle goes on to say that Croesus, in misunderstanding Apollo's message, has no one but himself to hold as responsible for the misfortune. The word used is aitios: heôuton aition apophainetô 'let him [= Croesus] publicly display himself as the one responsible [ aitios]' (1.91.4).
§41. There is an interesting juridical distinction here. The god Apollo is clearly the cause of the Lydian king's misfortunes, in that it was Apollo's Oracle that gave Croesus the opportunity to make his mistake, but Apollo is not legally responsible, aitios. Croesus made the mistake. 1 There is an analogous theme in Homeric poetry. We have seen how the gods are presented as the causes of human misfortunes and thus accused by mortals as aitioi 'responsible'. But here too the gods can disclaim legal responsibility, as when Zeus says:
ô popoi hoion dê nu theous brotoi aitioôntai.
ex hêmeôn gar phasi kak' emmenai: hoi de kai autoi sphêisin atasthaliêisin huper moron alge' echousin
Alas, how mortals hold us gods responsible [= aitioi]!
For they say that their misfortunes come from us. But they get their sufferings, beyond what is fated, by way of their own acts of recklessness [atasthaliai].
The notion that mortals are responsible for the misfortunes that they suffer as retribution for their wickedness is a prominent one in the Odyssey, 2 setting it apart from the Iliad, which stresses the Will of Zeus as the force that controls the plot of the epic. 3 In other words, whereas the Iliad stresses that a grand divine scheme is at work in all human actions, even when one mortal wrongs another, the Odyssey in contrast stresses the responsibility of mortals in committing any wrong. The difference, however, is not as great as it first seems. Even the Iliad acknowledges the legal
responsibility of a wrongdoer, and even the Odyssey acknowledges a divine scheme in human actions. Thus when Agamemnon claims that not he but Zeus was aitios 'responsible' for his conflict with Achilles (XIX 86), as the gods inflicted atê 'derangment' upon him (XIX 87-88; 134-136), he nevertheless acknowledges that he is legally in the wrong and expresses his willingness to offer retribution for his wronging Achilles (XIX 137-138). 4 Conversely even the Odyssey acknowledges a grand divine scheme in the actual pattern of retribution for wrongdoing, most notably when Odysseus takes vengeance upon the reckless suitors through the active planning of the gods, especially of Athena.
§42. At the risk of oversimplification, it could thus be said that the Iliad stresses the divine scheme in why a mortal commits a wrong, while the Odyssey stresses the divine scheme in how a mortal pays for that wrong. In light of what we have just observed concerning the usage of the word atê in the overall scheme of the Iliad, we may note with interest that the primary wrongdoers of the Odyssey, the suitors, are nowhere overtly described as being afflicted with atê. 1
§43. Applying these Homeric perspectives of human accountability to the narrative of Herodotus, we can see that the story of Croesus conveys both an Iliadic and an Odyssean moral perspective. The narrative dramatizes both why a mortal commits a wrong and how he pays for that wrong--all in accordance with an implicit divine scheme. Let us briefly reexamine the narrative with these themes in mind.
§44. After Croesus subjugates the Hellenes of Asia--which is the very context in which he is marked as responsible for the overall conflict between Hellenes and barbarians from the standpoint of the Histories of Herodotus-- 1 the Lydian king turns his attention to the Hellenic islands; and he is dissuaded from attacking them only through the ingenuity of one or another of the Seven Sages (the narrative leaves it open--either Pittakos of Mytilene or Bias of Priene, 1.27.2). 2 Turned away from attacking in this direction, Croesus thereupon resolves to attack the Persian Empire, and for this new acquisitive enterprise he seeks the alliance of what are characterized as the two foremost cities of Hellas, Athens and Sparta (1.53.1, 1.56.2-3). The stage is now set for the ultimate conflict between Hellas and Persia. The stage is also set, by way of highlighting Athens and Sparta, for the here and now of the apodeixis 'making public' of Herodotus' inquiry.
§45. The narrative of Herodotus effectively dramatizes a divine scheme that accounts for both why Croesus is indeed in the wrong and how he pays for that wrong. Yet another of the Seven Sages, Solon of Athens, visits the court of Croesus when the Lydian king is at the height of his wealth (Herodotus 1.29.1). In the dialogue between the Sage and the Tyrant, it becomes clear that Croesus thinks that he himself is the most 'fortunate' of all men, in that he is the richest, and the word used for the concept translated here as 'fortunate' is olbios (1.30.3, 1.34.1). In responding to the tyrant, however, the sage understands the same word olbios differently. Whereas the understanding of the tyrant is simplex, that of the sage is complex, corresponding to his privileged mode of communication. In the Herodotean narrative that dramatizes the encounter between Solon and Croesus, the sage communicates in the mode of an ainos, a code that carries the right message for those who are qualified and the wrong message or messages for those who are
§46. The understanding of the word olbios by Croesus, as narrated by Herodotus, is symptomatic of the tyrant's derangement, or atê. Although the noun olbos denotes 'wealth', 1 it becomes clear from Solon's teachings to Croesus that the adjective olbios here means something more than simply 'wealthy' or even 'fortunate'. From Solon's represented vantage point, this word has an implicit meaning that transcends material wealth and good fortune: far from being a mere equivalent of plousios 'wealthy' (1.32.5-6), olbios applies especially to those who lived a righteous life and who are then rewarded with tîmê 'honor' after death (Tellos, 1.30.5; cf. Kleobis and Biton, 1.31.5). 2 Here and elsewhere in Archaic Greek thought, olbios conveys the image of material security, but it tends to restrict this image--in a way that plousios 'rich' does not--to ulterior contexts of bliss in an afterlife (it would not be inappropriate to translate olbios in such contexts as 'blissful'). 3 I cite here a striking example from Pindar: 4
olbios hostis idôn kein' eis' hupo chthon': | oide men biou teleutan, | oiden de diosdoton archan.
Blissful [olbios] is he who goes beneath the earth after having seen those things; 5 he knows the fulfillment [teleutê, = literally 'end'] 6 of life, and he knows its Zeus-given beginning.
When Herakles is immortalized on Olympus after performing his Labors, he too is described as
olbios (Hesiod Theogony954; cf. Pindar Nemean1.71). 7 We may note too the following passage, where we find an analogous theme, with a twist in the sequence of events:
a makar eudaimôn te kai olbios, hostis apeiros athlôn eis Aïdou dôma melan katebê...
Theognis 1013-1014
Ah, blessed [makar], fortunate [eudaimôn = 'having a good daimôn], and blissful [olbios] is he who goes down to the dark house of Hades without having experienced labors [athloi = aethloi]... 8
§47. Herodotus goes on to tell how the teachings of Solon fall on deaf ears and how Croesus is then marked for nemesis 'retribution' (1.34.1) precisely because he thought that he was the most olbios of men (ibid.). In Solon's teachings the word atê had come up twice in the context of describing how disastrous it is when it afflicts someone who is rich but an-olbos, that is, 'not olbios' (1.32.6). In all of Herodotus the noun atê occurs only here. 1 The nemesis 'retribution' against Croesus takes the immediate form of the accidental death of his son, whose name happens
to be Atus. 2 And the man who killed him accidentally with a spear happens to be called Adrâstos, where the morphology of the adjectival a-drâstos suggests the interpretation 'he from whom one cannot run away'. 3 This interpretation is supported by the attestation of Adrâsteia as the epithet of the goddess Nemesis (Aeschylus Prometheus 936). Adrastos is then told by the grieving Croesus:
eis de ou su moi toude tou kakou aitios, ei mê hoson aekôn exergasao, alla theôn kou tis, hos moi kai palai proesêmaine ta mellonta esesthai
You are not responsible [aitios to me for this great disaster, except insofar as you were the unwilling agent, but someone of the gods is, who long ago indicated [= verb sêmainô] to me in advance what was going to happen.
Croesus is referring to a dream that had 'indicated' to him--and again the verb in question is sêmainô--that his son would die by the spear (1.34.2). 4 This pattern of accusing a god as aitios 'responsible' for a misfortune only proves that the accuser is the one who is aitios. In the course of his later and ultimate misfortune, the loss of his empire, Croesus again accuses a god--this time Apollo directly--as aitios, who in turn makes clear that Croesus was really aitios (Herodotus 1.91.4). 5 In this connection we may note the teaching of Hesiod in the Works and Days: olbios 'blissful' is the man who acts in a ritually and morally correct manner (olbios hos tade panta | eidôs ergazêtai 826-827). 6 and who is therefore an-aitios 'not aitios' to the gods anaitios athanatoisin 827).
§48. In both misfortunes of Croesus, which are linked by the narrative, we have seen the Odyssean theme of how a man pays for a wrong. In the story of the first misfortune, how the king lost his son, we may also recognize the Iliadic theme of why a man commits a wrong in the first place: it is because of the derangement of Croesus, explicit in the use of the word atê in Solon's speech to him and implicit in the names Atus and Adrâstos. This derangement, as realized in his faulty perception of himself as the most olbios 'blissful' of men, provokes a pattern of divine retribution against Croesus in the form of two successive misfortunes, the death of his son and the loss of his empire. In both cases Croesus manifestly reveals himself as aitios by making the additional mistake, both times, of accusing the god who had forewarned him with signs. 1
§49. Besides the teachings of Solon as dramatized by Herodotus, we get parallel insights about atê from the Sage's teachings in the actual poetry that is ascribed to him. We learn from this poetry that atê 'derangement' happens when a mortal seeks ploutos 'wealth' by espousing hubris 'outrage' and rejecting dikê 'justice' (Solon F 13.11-13 W); then Zeus punishes that mortal for his hubris (13.16-18). 1 In contrast Solon defines the transcendent concept of olbos 'bliss' (13.3) figuratively as the kind of ploutos 'wealth' that is given by the gods and is attended by dikê
§50. In the actual poetry of Solon, then, the teaching of the Sage about this topic is direct: hubris is a cause of atê. In the narrative of Herodotus, on the other hand, Solon's teaching about hubris is indirect. The attitude of Croesus at the time of his encounter with Solon is surely symptomatic of atê, but what the Lydian tyrant has actually done in attacking the Persian Empire is surely an act of hubris: Croesus is being irresistibly drawn into a pattern of unlimited expansion that will ultimately ruin him and set Hellas and Persia on a collision course. Still, the atê and hubris of Croesus are not confronted directly by Solon in the encounter dramatized by Herodotus. In his own poetry, Solon can speak in his juridical role as lawmaker. In his encounter with a tyrant, however, he is more diplomatic. The juridical point that Croesus is guilty, that is to say aitios 'responsible' for his misfortunes (Herodotus 1.91.4), 1 is established not by Solon directly but by the turn of events that bring to fulfilment the words of Solon. Without the narration of Herodotus, neither the guilt of Croesus the tyrant nor the meaning of Solon the sage could be manifest. The words of the Sage have been ambiguously spoken in the mode of an ainos, the true meaning of which can only be brought out by the turn of events as narrated by Herodotus. The narration itself underlines the universal applicability of its lesson at a later point, as we see Croesus, now a captive of the Persians and about to be burned to death on a funeral pyre, reminiscing about the wise words that Solon had once addressed to him and declaring his present realization that Solon had at that time been speaking not so much to him as to the whole human race, especially 'to those who think that they are fortunate [olbioi]' (ouden ti mallon es heôuton legôn ê es hapan to anthrôpinon kai malista tous para sphisi autoisi olbious dokeontas einai Herodotus 1.86.5). I see in this detail from Herodotus an explicit formulation of a Classical ideal concerning the function of the ainos. On the surface the ainos is predicated on the reality of uncertainties in interaction between performer and audience; underneath the surface, however, it is predicated on the ideology of an ideal audience, listening to an ideal performance of an ideal composition, the message of which applies to all humanity. 2
Notes
§1n1. In making this attempt, I reach an important turning point at Ch.9§17.
§2n1. Further commentary on this passage at Ch.14§16.
§2n2. Herodotus here is contrasting the relatively recent fixing of the Hellenic heritage with that of the Egyptian.
§2n3. The relative pronoun hothen 'wherefrom', used here as an indirect question, reflects the "prooemium style," discussed in detail at Ch.8§4n4 and Ch.8§7n4.
§2n4. Cf. How and Wells 1928.193-194.
§2n5. Cf. Hesiod Theogony73-74 and the commentary of West 1966.180.
§2n6. Cf. Herodotus 2.83 on tekhnê as 'system of operation'; on classification by way of tekhnê
as 'sphere of activity', cf. Herodotus 2.164.1.
§2n7. On the pertinence of this word to the speech-activity of Herodotus, see Ch.8§21, Ch.8§27
and following.
§2n8. On eidos as 'visible form', there is further elaboration at Ch.9§16.
§2n9. Such a ranking makes Hesiod and Homer more canonical, more Panhellenic: see Ch. 3§3n5. In his allusion to the other poets, Herodotus probably means Orpheus and Musaeus; for the conventional ideology that presents them as predecessors of Homer and Hesiod, see Lloyd 1976.247, 251. Cf. Hippias 86 B 6 DK; Aristophanes Frogs1032-1035; Plato Apology 41a; cf. also Ephorus FGH 70 F 101, Plato Republic 363a, 377d, 612b. We may note with particular interest the tradition that Homer was descended from Orpheus: Pherecydes FGH 3 F 167, Hellanicus 4 F 5, Damastes 5 F 11; or from Musaeus: Gorgias 82 B 25 DK. Cf. Lloyd 1975.177 on the Herodotean scheme of 3 generations = 100 years.
§2n10. That is, the discussion at Herodotus 2.52.1 and following, not quoted here.
§2n11. The priestesses are named later by Herodotus (2.55.3).
§2n12. I stress that the discourse of Herodotus acknowledges at 2.53 the authority of Homer and Hesiod (Ch.8§2) in the context of acknowledging at 2.52 and 2.53.3 the authority of the Oracle of Zeus at Dodona.
§3n1. The Hesiodic stance of Herodotus will be taken up at Ch.9§7.
§3n2. On the aptness of Latin prooemium, a word borrowed from Greek prooimion (on which see Ch.12§33 and following), as applied to the first sentence of the Histories of Herodotus, see Krischer 1965. Unlike Krischer, however, I do not think that the resemblances between the prooemium of the Iliad and the prooemium of the Histories (on which see Ch.8§7n4) can be ascribed simply to the imitation of Homer by Herodotus.
§3n3. This point is perhaps more simple than it seems at first sight: I mean that the rhetoric of Herodotus' prooemium in particular and his entire composition in general is predicated on the traditions of speaking before a public, not of writing for readers. To me, that in itself is enough to justify calling such traditions oral. See Ch.6§46. To many others, however, this same word oral has a much more narrow meaning, restricted by our own cultural preconceptions about writing and reading. Cf. Intro. §16. On the important distinction between reading aloud and silent reading, see Ch.6§50 and following; cf. Svenbro 1987, following Knox 1968. On silent reading in the late medieval context, see Saenger 1982.
§4n1. Following Krischer and others I have supplied indentations in order to delineate the syntax; I have also set off as (a) and (b) the two negative purpose clauses, coordinated not only by mête... mête... but also by the homoioteleuton ...genêtai ...genêtai.
§4n2. The Ionic form apodexis in the usage of Herodotus, guaranteed by the testimony of inscriptions written in the Ionic dialect (see, for example, LSJ s.v. apodeiknumi) , apparently reflects a conflation of apo-deik-numai 'present publicly, make public' and apo-dek-omai
'accept or approve a tradition'. Such a conflation seems to be at work in Herodotus 6.43.3; as M. Lang points out to me, the implication is not only that whatever is accepted is made public but also that whatever is made public is accepted. Such acceptance is the presupposition of a living tradition. On the syntax of what is introduced by apodexis hêde, see Ch.8§7n4. For an earlier mention of the contexts of apo-deik-numai 'present publicly', see Ch.6§31.
§4n3. For the semantics of historiâ 'inquiry, investigation', see Ch.9§1 and following.
§4n4. For more on the semantics of exitêla 'evanescent', see Ch.8§15.
§4n5. I discuss the translation 'performed' below.
§4n6. The adverbial ta te alla kai... that precedes the relative construction ...di' hên aitiên... has the effect of throwing the emphasis forward from the general to the specific, to parallel the movement from general to specific in the negative purpose clauses (a) and (b). For more on Herodotean devices of shading over and highlighting, see Ch.2§36n3.
§4n7. This final clause, ta te alla kai di' hên aitiên epolemêsan allêloisi, is difficult. I interpret it as an indirect question, thus disagreeing with Erbse 1956.211 and 219: he takes the whole construction as an elaborated direct object of a hypothetical historêsas in a hypothetical expression Hêrodotou Halikarnêsseus historêsas apedexe tade, which has supposedly been reshaped into the actual expression that we read in Herodotus, Hêrodotou Halikarnêsseos historiês apodexis hêde. I also disagree with Erbse's view (p. 215) that di' hên aitiên... is a relative construction as opposed to an indirect question (in other words that the construction is equivalent to tên aitiên di' hên.... Relative constructions can in fact be used for the purpose of indirect question: cf. Herodotus 2.2.2 Psammêtichos de hôs ouk edunato punthanomenos poron oudena toutou aneurein, hoi genoiato prôtoi anthrôpôn 'when Psammetichus was unable to find, by way of inquiry, a method of discovering who were the first race of men...'; Herodotus 1.56.1 meta de tauta ephrontize historeôn, tous an Hellênôn dunatôtatous eontas prosktêsaito philous 'after this, he took care to investigate which of the Hellenes were the most powerful, for him to win over as friends'; Thucydides 5.9.2 tên de epicheirêsin, hôi tropôi dianooumai poieisthai, didaxô 'I will inform you in what way the attempt that I have in mind is to be accomplished'. In most cases the relative clause is linked with verbs that express or connote the speech-act of narration: see Ch.8§7n4.
§5n1. Comparable to these three instances of apo-deik-numai + gnômên / gnômâs as object is apo-phain-omai + gnômên as object at Herodotus 2.120.5: here again Herodotus is going publicly on record. On the synonymity of apo-deik-numai and apo-phain-omai, see the cooccurrence of these two words at Herodotus 5.45.1-2 (as discussed in Ch.11§5).
§5n2. Powell 1938.38 s.v. apodeiknumi B II (middle).
§6n1. Cf. Ch.6§46 and Ch.8§3n3.
§6n2. Cf. Hartog 1980.292-297 for an extensive survey of Herodotean contexts. Cf. also Svenbro 1987.39.
§6n4. Ibid. Cf. the use of ana-gignôskô 'read out loud' in Diogenes Laertius 9.54, with reference to the "public première" of various compositions by Protagoras (80 A 1 DK); cf. also the anecdotes in Plutarch On the Malice of Herodotus 862a-b (Diyllus FGH 73 F 5) and in Lucian Herodotus 1-2 about public "readings" supposedly performed by Herodotus himself.
§6n5. Hartog, p. 294, suggests that the writing of the name of Ephialtes at 7.214.3 is as if the words of Herodotus were emanating from "une stèle d\'infamie." For more on Herodotus 7.214.3, see Ch.8§28n1.
§7n2. See Snell 1924.65.
§7n3. Hartog 1980.285.
§7n4. The noun apodeixis takes on the syntax of a verb designating narration, as is already indicated by the conjunction hôs immediately following the clause ...apodexiW hêde... and introducing the complex purpose clause that comes before the concluding clause of indirect question (on which see Ch.8§4n4). Moreover, as Krischer 1965.162 points out, the indirect question in the prooemium of Herodotus, di' hên aitiên epolemêsan allêloisi 'on account of what cause they got into conflict with each other' in the prooemium of Herodotus is parallel to the indirect question in the prooemium of the Iliad (I 6), ex hou dê ta prôta diastêtên erisante '[narrate to me, Muse,...] starting with what time they first quarrelled, standing divided'. I stress that the relative clause 'on account of what cause they got into conflict with each other' is linked with 'This is the apodeixis of the investigation of Herodotus...', just as 'starting with what time they first quarrelled...' is linked with 'Sing, goddess, the anger of Achilles...' (I 1). Note too the parallelism of wide syntactical gaps spanned by apodexis hêde...di' hên aitiên... 'making public...on account of what cause' in Herodotus and by aeide...ex hou dê ta prôta... 'sing...starting with what time they first...' in the Iliad (Book I lines 1...6). Among the other Homeric attestations of both actual prooemia and indirectly retold prooemia (for a list of both types, see van Groningen 1946), there are other occurrences of relative clauses used as indirect questions (the clearest example is Odyssey viii 76 hôs pote dêrisanto... 'how they once fought'; note too the frequent use of prôta / prôtos / prôton / etc. 'first' in the indirect questions of the prooemia, as at Iliad I 6 / XI 217 / XVI 113, to be compared with prôtoi 'first' at Herodotus 2.2, quoted at Ch.8§4n4. Cf. also Ch.8§2n2 above. On the parallelisms between the Homeric Iliad and the Herodotean Histories in the formal transition from prooemium to narrative proper, see Ch.8§9.
§8n1. A monument can be such a medium, as in the case of mnêmosuna 'monument', direct object of apo-deik-numai (apodexasthai), at Herodotus 1.101.2. Immerwahr 1960.266 remarks: "The conception of fame underlying both monuments and deeds is exactly the same." Cf. Hartog 1980.378n3.
§8n2. It is from such contexts of apo-deik-numai that we begin to understand the basis of its apparent conflation with apo-dek-omai 'accept or approve a tradition', on which see Ch.8§4n1.
§9n1. On the semantics of aitiâ 'cause' and aitioi 'responsible ones' [= 'the cause'] as in Herodotus prooemium and in 1.1.1, see Krischer 1965.160-161; also Ch.8§20. For a parallel
transition from prooemium to narrative proper by way of repeating, with variation, a key word (in this case aitiên followed by epolemêsan 'cause...getting into conflict' picked up by aitious followed by diaphorês 'cause...conflict'), see Krischer ibid., who points to the prooemium of the Iliad (ex hou dê ta prôta diastêtên erisante 'starting with what time they first quarrelled, standing divided' at I 6) and the first line of the narrative proper (tis t' ar sphôe theôn eridi xuneêke machesthai; 'who, then, of the gods set them off against each other, to fight in a quarrel?' at I 8). Krischer also adduces the prooemia to the Catalogue of Ships archous at Iliad II 493, picked up by êrchon at II 494), to the Odyssey nostimon êmar at i 9, picked up by nostou at i 13), and to the Theogony (ho ti prôton genet' autôn at line 115, picked up by ê toi men prôtista Chaos genet' at 116).
§10n1. For the phraseology that immediately follows this passage, see Ch.7§5n1.
§10n2. For this interpretation, see Farnell 1932.285.
§10n3. Cf. the remarks at Ch.8§5 on the syntactical continuity of apodexis...apodechthenta.
§10n4. The Aiakidai are not only the immediate lineage of Aiakos, including the sons Peleus and Telamon, the grandsons Achilles and Ajax, and so on, but also the ultimate lineage of Aiakos, extending into the here and now, into the population of Aegina in Pindar's time: see Ch.6§57 and following.
§11n1. The Greek verb phthi- in the intransitive expresses various images of transience, most notably the failing of liquid sources and the wilting of plants (for a survey of passages, see N 1979.174-189; also Risch 1987).
§11n2. The song goes on to declare that the virtue of Croesus contrasts with the depravity of the tyrant Phalaris (Pindar Pythian1.95-98). Thus the logioi, like the aoidoi, have in their repertoire such Hellenes as Phalaris, not just non-Hellenes like Croesus (cf. Ch.8§13n4).
§11n3. This emended reading is adopted in the edition of SM; the manuscript reading aoidai kai logioi, however, in conjunction with the papyrus reading aoidoi kai lo[ p 41), makes it possible to read instead aoidoi kai logioi, if logioi may be scanned as a disyllable (on which see, for example, Farnell 1932.284).
§11n5. The quotation here follows the emended reading adopted in the edition of SM: see Ch. 8§11n1.
§11n6. Alternatively, if we follow the reading aoidoi kai logioi (Ch.8§11n1): aoidoi and logioi.
§12n1. Cf. Ch.8§9. Note too that the Egyptians as the most proficient logioi of all humans are described as mnêmên epaskeontes 'engaging in the practice of memory' in Herodotus 2.77.1.
§12n3. Pace Farnell 1932.116.
§13n3. See Ch.10§5 and following. See also Ch.10§7n1 for iconographical evidence on the story of Croesus that is even earlier than the testimony of Pindar and Bacchylides (500 B.C.: Beazley
1963.238 no. 1).
§13n4. I use the word prose here in the sense of a mimesis of speech: Ch.1§54. In the case of an opposition between logioi, masters of speech, and aoidoi, masters of song, we can say that speech or speaking is unmarked, while song is marked. On the terms unmarked and marked, see Intro. §12. One cannot define logioi in terms of aoidoi, in that logioi is the unmarked category in the usage of Herodotus. Herodotus is implicitly a logios even by virtue of not being an aoidos. Moreover, I have already argued ( Ch.8§9 above) that the syntax of the transition from the prooemium to the first sentence of the Histories proper is for us explicit evidence that Herodotus considered himself a logios. It is only for Herodotus that this consideration is implicit, not explicit. I would therefore disagree with the view that the use of the word logios, in the three attestations besides Herodotus 1.1.1, shows that it is appropriate only to non-Hellenes in Herodotus ( 2.3.1, 2.77.1, 4.46.1). In two of these attestations (2.77.1 and 4.46.1), non-Hellenes happen to be singled out within the category of logioi, but there is no indication that the category itself is foreign to Greek institutions. Even if we accepted the view that logioi implies non- Hellenes, we would still have to reckon with Herodotus' practice of referring explicitly to things foreign while at the same time referring implicitly to things Greek (cf. Hartog 1980). Finally logios is not the only word for the referent in question, that is, for the master of speaking before an audience. Besides the opposition of logios and aoidos in the diction of Herodotus, we find the parallel opposition of logopoios 'speech-maker, artisan of speech' and mousopoios 'song maker, artisan of song', where the first referent is Aesop and and the second referent is Sappho herself (Herodotus 2.134.3...135.1 Aisôpou tou logopoiou... Sapphous tês mousopoiou. The significance of this application of logopoios to the figure of Aesop in particular will be discussed in Ch. 11§21. Elsewhere in Herodotus, the word logopoios applies to a predecessor of Herodotus, Hecataeus (Herodotus 2.143.1 hekataiôi tôi logopoiôi; also 5.36.2, 5.125); further discussion in Ch.11§21. It is the likes of Hecataeus that Herodotus had in mind when he used the word logioi in the first sentence of the Histories proper (1.1.1).
§14n1. I disagree with the proposal of Krischer 1965.166 that the two negative clauses reflect different media.
§15n1. On the references of phthi- to vegetal and human evanescence, see Ch.8§11n1. Cf. Steiner 1986.38.
§16n1. Survey in Brisson 1982.23-28.
§16n2. As discussed at Ch.8§4n3. On the Herodotean device of highlighting the extraordinary by
shading over the ordinary, see also Ch.2§36n3.
§16n3. Solon, explicitly designated here as the wisest of the Seven Sages (Plato Timaeus 20d; cf. Ch.8§44n2), is represented as a friend and possibly a relative of the father of Critias, Dropides, whose name he mentions in several passages of his attested poetry (20e; also Plato Charmides 157e); see Solon F 22 W. Another poet who mentions Dropides is Mimnermus (Plato Charmides 157e); see Mimnermus PMG 495.
§18n1. See, for example, Iliad II 486, XI 227, as discussed in N 1979.15-18.
§18n2. Further discussion at Ch.8§46n3.
§18n3. More below on this subject.
§19n1. This phrase is picked up by aitious in the next sentence, at Herodotus 1.1.1.
§19n2. The question "who caused the conflict between them?" at line 7 of Iliad I is answered with "Apollo" at line 8, followed by an explanatory clause at lines 8-9 (introduced by gar) that tells why Apollo caused the conflict: he was angry. Then comes another explanatory clause at lines 11-12 (introduced by houneka) that tells why Apollo was angry: Agamemnon had dishonored Chryses, the priest of Apollo. Thus there is a complex answer to a simplex question, and the answer assumes that the intended question is also complex: it asks not only "who caused this conflict?" but also "why did this conflict happen?"
§19n3. On the anger of Achilles as the self-expressive "plot" of the Iliad, see N 1979.73. Cf. Considine 1986.
§20n1. For poetic parallels to the device of recapitulating a key concept of the prooemium in the first sentence of the narrative proper, see Ch.8§9n1.
§20n2. LSJ s.v. aitios II (+ genitive of the thing and dative of the person).
§20n3. See especially Pagel 1927, with adjustments by Immerwahr 1956; Krischer 1965.160-161 (disagreeing with Erbse 1956); Hohti 1976.
§22n1. Note the asyndeton that highlights the introduction of this subject: Kroisos ên Ludos men genos, pais de Aluatteô, turannos de ethneôn tôn entos Haluos potamou... (Herodotus 1.6.1).
§22n2. Cf. also the first sentence of Herodotus 1.27.1.
§22n3. For the notion, as expressed here in Herodotus 1.6.3, that the Hellenic cities were eleutheroi 'free' before Croesus, see Ch.10§50. The first Hellenic city that Croesus attacks is Ephesos (1.26.1-2). He then proceeds to attack each of the other cities of the Asiatic Ionians and Aeolians (1.26.3), in each case contriving an aitiâ 'cause' to justify his actions (1.26.3 alloisi allas
aitias epipherôn, tôn men edunato mezonas pareuriskein, mezona epaitiômenos, toisi de autôn kai phaula epipherôn). In no instance does Herodotus indicate the specific aitiâ.
§22n4. Cf. Hohti 1976.42-43. For Herodotus, the ktisis 'colonization' of Asia by Hellenes does not count as a provocation because he clearly does not accept the Persian premise that all Asia belongs to the Persians (see 1.4.4). In fact the Croesus narrative shows that Herodotus thinks of the Hellenes' cities in Asia as rightfully theirs: the enslavement of these cities by Croesus led to the mistaken Persian premise. Furthermore by implication the crime of Croesus is pertinent to the concept of the Athenian Empire: Ch.10§50 and following.
§23n1. See Ch.10§50 for a discussion of how the theme of 'enslavement', that is, of making free Greek cities pay tribute, is developed by the narrative of Herodotus; also, how the theme of Croesus the Tyrant is formulated in the mode of an ainos; finally, how the ainos applies to Athens and its Athenian Empire, the heir to the Persian Empire, in turn the heir to the Lydian Empire.
§24n1. Still to come, at Ch.9§7, is a discussion of the Herodotean appropriation of Hesiod.
§25n1. See Snell 1924.61 for areas of semantic overlap between perfect oida 'I know' and aorist eidon 'I saw', therefore 'I witnessed, experienced'. For example, kaka poll' epidonta at Iliad XXII 61 means 'having experienced many evil happenings'; compare the description of Herakles at xxi 26 as megalôn epiistora ergôn 'the one who experienced deeds of enormity [that is, of evil]'. Cf. Ch.9§1n4.
§25n2. As for the instructions of Teiresias concerning the nostos 'safe homecoming' of Odysseus (xi 100-118; nostos is the first word, at xi 100), the themes that are emphasized--not to mention the wording itself--are strikingly parallel to what we find in the prooemium of the Odyssey (i
1-10).
§25n3. This point is elaborated in N 1983.51. Cf. Ch.6§37. On ainos as a code, see Ch.6§6.
§25n4. There are further levels of interpretation, as discussed in N 1983.45. Let us consider the gesture of Odysseus, prescribed by the seer Teiresias, where he plants into the ground the handle of what he is carrying, at the precise point where it is no longer recognized as an oar (Odyssey xi 129). The picture of the implement planted into the ground is a sêma 'sign' bearing a twofold message. On the one hand it can mean "the sailor is dead," as in the case of Odysseus' dead companion Elpenor, whose tomb is to be a mound of earth with the handle of his oar planted on top (xi 75-78, xii 13-15); in fact the tomb of Elpenor is designated as his sêma (xi 75). On the other hand it can mean "the harvest is finished": to plant the handle of a winnowing shovel in a heap of grain at a harvest festival is a stylized gesture indicating that the winnower's work is done (Theocritus 7.155-156; I infer that the time of the year is July or August: cf. Gow 1952 II 127.). Cf. Hansen 1977.38-39 (also p. 35 on the Feast of St. Elias, July 20th). The first meaning reflects the god-hero antagonism between Poseidon and Odysseus, on the level of nostos 'homecoming'; the second reflects the more complex god-hero antagonism between Athena and Odysseus, on the two levels of nostos 'homecoming' and noos 'way of thinking': this point is elaborated in N 1983.53n31. On the role of Athena as patroness of pilots, and the related themes of noos and nostos, see N 1985.74-81. The complexity of the gesture of Odysseus in planting his implement
is reinforced by the inherent symbolism of the winnowing shovel: just as this implement separates the grain from the chaff, so also it separates true things from false things; I compare the discussion of krisis in the sense of separating, discriminating, judging at Ch.2§25 and following.
§25n5. To decode the code of a sêma, one has to know the noos 'way of thinking' of the one who encoded it: hence the expression kai noon egnô 'and he came to know their noos' in Odyssey i 3. For a survey of contexts where the sêma is the code, see N 1983. It may be possible to take the interpretation further: by knowing the noos 'way of thinking' of many men in many cities (Odyssey i 3), the hero may in effect come to know his own noos through that of others. Cf. Odyssey v 274 and the commentary at N 1979.202 (also 1983.39): the stargazer may come to understand his own situation by gazing at the situation played out by the stars (note too that Orion is defined by the Bear Star as the Bear Star takes aim at Orion).
§26n1. On ton eonta logon here at 1.95.1 in the sense of 'the true and real logos', see Woodbury 1958.155-156 and n34.
§26n2. Note the wording: epidizêtai de dê to enteuthen hêmin ho logos ton te Kuron hostis eôn tên Kroisou archên kateile, kai tous Persas hoteôi tropôi hêgêsanto tês Asiês 'Next, I look for the logos that tells what kind of a man Cyrus was--to have conquered the empire of Croesus--and how the Persians achieved hegemony over Asia' (1.95.1). For other examples of hodos 'road' in the sense of 'alternative version', see Herodotus 1.117.2 (here the choice is between one true logos and one false one) and 2.20.1 (note the use of the word sêmainô 'indicate' here) in conjunction with 2.22.1.
§26n3. For Pindar, see the list compiled by Slater 1969.373 s.v. hodos (b); also id. p. 275 s.v. keleuthos. Cf. Becker 1937.50-85. Precisely in the context of saying that he knows three roads of song but will tell the "real" story, Herodotus uses the word graphô 'write' in referring to his authoritative version (1.95.1). By implication, writing can be for Herodotus the authoritative speech-act in that whatever he writes can be equated with whatever he would say publicly (cf. Ch. 6§46, Ch.8§3n3, Ch.8§6).
§27n1. Cf. Ch.8§20 and following.
§27n2. On this attitude of Herodotus, see Ch.8§22 and following, above.
§27n3. For this attitude of Herodotus, see Ch.8§22 and following, above.
§27n4. Cf. Ch.6§37. Cf. also Herodotus 6.123.2, where the communication of the Pythia or priestess of Apollo's Oracle is again denoted by this verb sêmainô, as well as Theognis 808 (the only instance of sêmainô in the attested nonepigraphic elegiac and iambic poetry of the Archaic period). In Herodotus 7.142.2, what the words of the oracle are actually supposed to mean is also expressed by way of the word sêmainô.
§28n1. Cf. also Herodotus 7.213.3: ...di' allên aitiên, tên egô en toisi opisthe logoisi sêmaneô '...on account of another cause [aitiâ] that I will indicate [= verb sêmainô] in later logoi'. Here the 'other cause' has to do with explaining why Ephialtes was killed--a cause that Herodotus says is
not connected with the man's guilt in betraying the Hellenes at Thermopylae. For that betrayal, however, Herodotus does hold Ephialtes guilty: touton aition graphô 'I declare him in writing to be responsible [aitios]' (7.214.3). On the use of graphô 'write' in denoting the discourse of Herodotus, see Ch.8§6 above. But Herodotus does not think that the death of Ephialtes is causally related to his betrayal of the Hellenes. In fact Herodotus' promised account of the real cause of the death of Ephialtes is nowhere to be found in the Histories. Such an omission suggests that the phrases en toisi opisthe logoisi and en toisi opisô logoisi denote simply 'in a later narration', as if the attested Histories were simply one in a potential series of narrations by Herodotus. This stance is typical not only of written works but also of oral performance, where the given composition being performed presupposes a limitless series of future performances in which new compositions may take place.
§28n2. Hartog 1980.368f. Cf. the expression koruphê logôn 'summit of words', as discussed at
§28n3. Ibid. The first word of this the very first oracular utterance quoted by Herodotus is oida 'I know'.
§28n4. Note the wording of Herodotus 5.54.1: ei de tis to atrekesteron toutôn eti dizêtai, egô kai touto sêmaneô 'but if anyone seeks even more accuracy than this, I shall indicate [sêmainô] that as well'.
§28n6. Here and elsewhere I have interpreted 1.5.3 thus: Herodotus sêmainei 'indicates' that Croesus was aitios 'responsible' for the ultimate conflict between Hellenes and barbarians. It is to be understood that the word aitios in this passage is implied by what Herodotus has been saying in the prooemium (di' hên aitiên) and thereafter as discussed at Ch.8§9 and Ch.8§20; to be aitios is to be aitios of an adikiâ 'wrong' (1.2.1), and Herodotus at 1.5.3 sêmainei 'indicates' that Croesus was the first, as far as Herodotus knows, to commit adika erga 'wrongdoings' against the Hellenes.
§30n1. Cf. Ch.8§25 and following.
§30n2. For a discussion of the immediate and ultimate messages in the "code" of what the disguised Odysseus has to say, see N 1979.233- 241. For a study of the word khlaina 'cloak' as a symbol of ambiguous discourse, I cite the unpublished work of R. Ingber.
§30n3. See the arguments in N ibid. supporting the notion that the Odyssey is referring to the
ainos as a distinctly poetic form of expression.
§30n4. N, p. 240 §19n1, after Meuli 1975 (=1954) 742-743n2.
§31n1. Cf. Ch.6§4 and following.
§31n3. The seer represented in this Pindaric passage is probably Cassandra: see SM ad loc. Cf. also Pindar Olympian 7.68-69 teleutathen de logôn koruphai en alatheiai petoisai 'and the koruphai of logoi were accomplished, falling into place in truth [alêtheia]' (this passage concerns an oath about the future, as sworn by Lachesis the Moira 'Fate', in conjunction with the Will of Zeus: Olympian7.64-68). For apo-korouphoô in the sense of 'sum up' (note also the imagery of achieving a high vantage point in the English expression), see Herodotus 5.73.2. Bundy [1986] 18 paraphrases ho de kairos homoiôs pantos echei koruphan at Pindar Pythian9.78-79 as follows: "By judicious selection and treatment [kairos] I can convey the spirit [koruphê] of the whole just as well." Cf. Race 1979.254, 265n11.
§32n1. Cf. Ch.8§21 and following.
§33n1. Cf. Ch.8§19 and following.
§33n2. In contrast Achilles says that the Trojans are not personally aitioi 'responsible' to him (Iliad I 153); similarly Poseidon says that Aeneas is not personally aitios to the Achaeans (XX 297).
§33n3. Cf. Ch.8§19 and following.
§33n4. This point, that the traditional plot of an epic narrative is programmatically equated with the Will of Zeus, is elaborated in N 1979.82 §25n2.
§33n5. N 1979.131 §17n1. Cf. also Odyssey xi 558-560: Odysseus is telling the shade of Ajax that no one else but Zeus was aitios 'responsible' for the tragic misfortune that befell Ajax.
§33n6. Commentary on the element of self-reference in this passage: N 1979.100-101.
§36n1. If indeed Herodotus is implicitly a logios, on which subject see Ch.8§9 and Ch.8§13n4, then his expressed opinion about the authority of the Egyptians as supreme logioi (2.77.1) is in line with the prominence of his narrative about his own journey to Egypt in Book II of the Histories.
§36n2. For this expression, see Ch.8§5n1.
§37n1. Cf. Ch.8§21 and following.
§41n1. Croesus comes to admit this after hearing the Oracle's response to his recriminations:
§41n2. Odyssey i 33-34, as quoted immediately above, should be understood in conjunction with i 6-7.
§41n3. Further discussion at N 1979.113 §24n3.
§41n4. Dodds 1951.3 remarks: "Early Greek justice cared nothing for intent--it was the act that mattered." Dodds also points out (ibid.) that even Achilles as the aggrieved party accepts Agamemnon's premise, that he had not acted of his own volition (XIX 270-274; cf. I 412). Further observations on this point at Ch.9§5.
§42n1. I believe that this pattern of omission in the Odyssey is the reflex of an opposition in theme between the Iliad and Odyssey (cf. Ch.8§41). In other words the divergences in the uses of atê in the Iliad and the Odyssey do not reflect divergences in the actual meaning of atê. See Francis 1983.97-99 for passages in the Odyssey where we can find latent implications of atê for the suitors in an Iliadic sense. Moreover, atê can apply in an Iliadic sense to other characters in the Odyssey (e.g., Helen at iv 261, who is afflicted by Aphrodite). Conversely in the Iliad atê applies at least once in an Odyssean sense, where Phoenix says that the Litai, goddesses of supplication personified (IX 502), afflict with atê a man who does wrong in cruelly rejecting supplications (IX 510-512). The message here is intended for Achilles, for whom atê would be a form of punishment. See Ch.9§5. Yet another dimension to consider is the meaning of atê in juridical discourse: in the Law Code of Gortyn, for example, atâ actually means 'damage' (6.23, 43; 9.14 Willetts) and even 'obligation, indemnity, loss in a lawsuit' (e.g., 10.23-24; 11.34-35, 41); see Francis, p. 121n83. Thus atê can refer both to crime, that is, how someone commits a wrong, and to punishment, that is, how someone pays for a wrong. In terms of cause and effect, atê can be both. To quote Wyatt 1982.261n18 (following Stallmach 1968.88n160): "Indeed, this is the meaning of personification--taking the act (or state) and making it also the cause of the state. Or, put grammatically, placing in subject position what should be the object or the instrument of the action." For the imagery of atê as even reflected by its etymology (root *a[usubcirc]ê-, in the sense of 'being blown off course'), see in general the suggestive article of Francis 1983. For another possible etymology, see Wyatt 1982.
§44n1. Cf. Ch.8§22 and following.
§44n2. The basic testimony on the concept of the Seven Sages is conveniently assembled in DK no. 10 (pp. 61-66). The canonical list attributed to Demetrius of Phaleron in Stobaeus 3.1.172 is as follows: Kleoboulos of Lindos, Solon of Athens, Khilon of Sparta, Thales of Miletus, Pittakos of Mytilene, Bias of Priene, Periandros of Corinth. In Plato Protagoras 343a, Myson is in place of Periandros. In Ephorus FGH 70 F 182, it is Anacharsis the Thracian who is in place of Periandros; also in Plutarch Banquet of the Seven Sages. Diogenes Laertius also mentions Pythagoras as an optional variant in the grouping (1.41, 42). For other variations, see again Diogenes Laertius 1.40-42 and the references in DK, p. 61 (cf. also Privitera 1965.55-56). One particular variation, noted at Ch.12§8, is the membership of Aristodemos in the grouping of the Seven Sages. On the theme of Solon as the wisest of the Seven Sages, see, for example, Plato Timaeus 20d (cf. Ch.8§16n1).
§45n1. For this definition of ainos, see Ch.6§6.
§46n1. For example, Solon F 6.3W and F 34.2W; cf. Hesiod Works and Days637 (where olbos
is used synonymously with ploutos 'wealth' and aphenos 'riches') and Theogony974 (Ploutos,
son of Demeter, gives olbos).
§46n2. On the use of tîmê in Herodotus and elsewhere to specify the 'honor' that a hero receives
in cult after death, see N 1979.118 §1n2.
§46n3. In other words, if we juxtapose plousios and olbios, we find that the second is the marked member in that it can specify concepts not specified by the first. On the terminology of marked and unmarked, see Intro. §12. For a survey of traditional Greek poetic designations for the concept of immortalization by way of images conveying the material security of wealth, see N 1981, especially with reference to the words aiôn 'vital force' and aphthito- 'unfailing, unwilting, inexhaustible'. Cf. also Risch 1987. The article N 1981 was written in response to that of Floyd 1980, who argues that the Indo-European heritage of the epithet aphthito- is semantically restricted to the notion of material wealth. There is a similar argument offered by Finkelberg 1986 (who cites Floyd 1980 but not N 1981). At p. 5 she asserts that the application of aphthito- to an "incorporeal entity" is a "semantic innovation"; at p. 4 she argues that, on the grounds that aphthito- applies mostly to "material objects," the "concrete associations of the term must have been the original ones." I question such a weighing of statistical predominance in determining what is "original." And I point out a salient feature, not noted by Finkelberg, in the contexts where aphthito- applies to "material objects": the concrete associations are otherworldly ones. In response to Finkelberg's argument that kleos aphthiton as used at Iliad IX 413 is not "a self- contained unit," I point to the discussion in N 1974.104-109, where the relationships that link the phrase types kleos aphthiton estai (as at IX 413), kleos estai (as at VII 458), and kleos aphthiton (as at Sappho F 44.4 V) are explored from the perspective of a less narrow understanding of formula. I agree with Finkelberg that kleos aphthiton estai at IX 413 is coefficient with kleos oupot' oleitai as at II 325. I can also accept the possibility that kleos oupot' oleitai does not occur at IX 413 because ôleto is already present at the beginning of the line. But I disagree with her inference that the presence of kleos aphthiton estai instead of kleos oupot' oleitai at IX 413 is an innovation; it could be an archaism that survives precisely for the stylistic purpose of avoiding word duplication. As a general approach to poetics, I suggest that allowance should always be made for the possibility that more archaic forms can be activated in situations where the more innovative device is inappropriate. For an illuminating discussion of the usage of relatively older and newer forms in poetics, see Meillet 1920. For another critique of Finkelberg's argumentation, see Edwards 1988.
§46n4. This Pindaric passage is quoted by Clement of Alexandria (Stromateis 3.3.17), who says that it concerns the Eleusinian Mysteries. Whether or not this specific ascription may stand, the language is in any case mystical. The poem is apparently from a thrênos 'lament' for Hippokrates (scholia to Pindar Pythian7.18a). On the affinities of this genre of lamentation called thrênos with mystical themes of immortalization, see N 1979.170-177.
§46n5. Compare Homeric Hymn to Demeter480: olbioW hoW tad' opôpen epichthoniôn anthrôpôn 'blissful [olbios] is he who has seen these things [= the Eleusinian Mysteries]'; later the olbios man who is favored by Demeter and Persephone (Hymn to Demeter 486) is described as getting the gift of Ploutos 'Wealth' personified (488-489). Again we see that material wealth is but a physical manifestation of transcendent bliss.
§46n6. In light of Solon's point that Tellos is most olbios of men (Herodotus 1.30), it is worth
noting that this name Tellos seems to be a hypocoristic shortening of any one of a set of names built from the noun telos 'end, fulfillment, achievement', such as Telesiphrôn (on the morphology, see Immerwahr 1966.156-157n21). Whether or not Tellos was a historical figure (for bibliography, see Immerwahr ibid.), it is clear that the name has a bearing on the narrative of Herodotus, as we see from the profusion of teleutê / teleutaô in this Herodotean passage: this noun / verb is related to telos and means 'end, fulfill[ment]' (in the case of Tellos, teleutê 1.30.4; in the case of Kleobis and Biton, teleutê 1.31.3; in the case of Croesus, teleutêsanta and teleutêsai 1.32.5; teleutêsei and teleutêsêi 1.32.7; teleutêsêi and teleutên 1.32.9; teleutên 1.33; teleutêsein bis 1.39.2). (This interpretation of the significance attached to the name of Tellos has a bearing on the expression paanta parameinanta at Herodotus 1.30.4, which I translate as 'all his possessions having lasted' in light of the parallel use of paramenô 'last, endure' at 3.57.3.) The form telos itself is used in the expression en teleï toutôi eschonto 'they were held fast in this telos', which refers to the mystically dead state of Kleobis and Biton after they had performed their labors for the goddess Hera and had fallen asleep, never to be awakened again to this world (1.31.5). (On the use of eschonto 'were held fast' here in the sense of a ritualized pose, as in a dance, see Ch. 1§39n4.) I interpret telos here (pace Powell 1938.353: 'death') in the sense of 'service to a
god' (LSJ, p. 1773 s.v. telos I.6). This same word in the plural is regularly applied to the Eleusinian Mysteries (LSJ ibid.); the derivative of telos, teletê (cf. genos and genetê), means primarily 'initiation [into the mysteries of a god]', for example, at Herodotus 4.79.1 / 2.
§46n7. On the use of the word aethlos in designating the Labors of Herakles, see Ch.5§3. In this connection we may note the word aethlophoroi 'prize-winners' describing Kleobis and Biton at Herodotus 1.31.2.
§46n8. Cf. Bacchylides Epinician 5.50-55 SM. On the variations in themes of afterlife, with Hades on one side and Olympus / Elysium / Islands of the Blessed [Makares] on the other, see N 1979.164-210. In Hesiod Works and Days172, the inhabitants of the Islands of the Blessed are called olbioi hêrôes 'blissful heroes'. On the implications of olbios at Odyssey xi 137, see N 1981.116n22.
§47n1. The accepted reading is agêi not atêi at Herodotus 6.61.1.
§47n2. That this name is used in Herodotus as an evocation of atê: Immerwahr 1966.157-158.
§47n3. Cf. Immerwahr, p. 158n25.
§47n4. The message is of course ambiguous, in that the notion of 'spear' would suggest primarily a context of war, not hunting.
§47n5. The wording is quoted at Ch.8§40.
§47n6. On the parallelism established in the Works and Days between ritually and morally correct behavior, see N 1982.61.
§48n1. A related topical convention: when men are afflicted by misfortune, they may say that the cause is the anger of a god, and the word for 'cause' in such contexts is, appropriately, aition in an aetiological sense. A striking example is Herodotus 9.93.4.
§49n1. In that atê inevitably leads to retribution, it can be synonymous with retribution itself (cf. Solon F 13.75-76 W). For the semantics, see Ch.8§42n1.
§49n2. In other words, marked olbos is equivalent to unmarked ploutos plus divine sanction and dikê 'justice'. Previously at Ch.8§46n3, we have seen an optional unmarked / marked opposition between plousios and olbios, where the latter is marked as a transcendent image of material security, in terms of afterlife. I say optional because the marked / unmarked opposition is not activated in every context: in some contexts ploutos and olbos are synonymous: see Ch.8§46n1. In the present passage from Solon, in contrast, we see the transcendence of olbos in terms of life in the here and now, not in the afterlife. For other instances where olbos, instead of being synonymous with ploutos 'wealth' (see Ch.8§46n1), is restricted to convey the ethical notion of material security granted or taken away by the gods as a reward or punishment for righteous or unrighteous behavior, see Hesiod Works and Days281, 321, 326. In the Odyssey the struggle of the righteous Odysseus against the unrighteous suitors is played out with many references to olbos and how it is dispensed by the gods (the perspective of Odysseus on this matter is the "correct" one: see, for example, Odyssey xviii 19). For the timeless image of material security as prevailing under the rule of a righteous king, see Odyssey xix 109-114 (cf. Hesiod Works and Days225- 237). On dikê as 'justice' or 'righteousness' long-range and 'judgment' short-range, see N 1982.58-60.
§50n1. The wording is quoted at Ch.8§40.
§1. The juridical aspect of Herodotean narrative--that it can establish who is aitios 'responsible' for the ultimate struggle between Hellenes and Persians--is articulated already in the prooemium of the Histories, in that the purpose of the entire narrative is said to be an inquiry into the aitiâ 'cause' of that struggle. 1 Moreover, the word for 'inquiry' in the prooemium, historiâ, 2 is a juridical concept, semantically distinct from later uses of the word and from the current use of history. As we can see clearly from Bruno Snell's doctoral dissertation, historiâ is connected with the juridical words histôr 'witness, arbitrator' and historeô 'witness; inquire; conduct an inquiry'. 3 The noun histôr, derived from the verb represented by the aorist *[usubcirc]id- of idein 'see' and the perfect *[usubcirc]eid- / *[usubcirc]oid- of eidenai / oida 'know' (= "I have seen: therefore I know"), 4 is still attested in the sense of 'witness' in some contexts, 5 but in others the word has undergone semantic specialization, acquiring the sense of 'arbitrator'. A similar semantic specialization takes place in the Latin word arbiter 'arbitrator'. 6
§2. Snell draws our attention to one particular example of histôr in this sense of 'arbitrator': it occurs at Iliad XVIII 501, in the context of the description of the Shield of Achilles. 1 On the
Shield is depicted a scene of litigation (XVIII 497-508), 2 specifically a neikos 'conflict' neikos 497, eneikeon 498) over a poinê 'penalty, fine' (498) to be paid as compensation for the death of an anonymous man (499). 3 Our first impression is that the penalty is the equivalent of the Anglo- Saxon wergild, a fine payed by the kinsmen of the manslayer to the kinsmen of the slain (cf. the uses of poinê at Iliad IX 633, 636, XIII 659; XIV 483). But there is more to it. The anonymous defendant 'was making a claim' (eukheto 499) 4 that he paid the fine in full (pant' apodounai 499), but the anonymous plaintiff 'was refusing to accept anything' (ho d'anaineto mêden helesthai 500). 5 This case can be contrasted with the pattern in a speech addressed by Ajax to Achilles (Iliad IX 632-636), where a defendant, charged with killing a plaintiff's brother or son, tries to assuage the plaintiff and offers a poinê 'fine' (IX 633, 636) that is then accepted by the assuaged plaintiff. 6 Thus the litigation depicted on the Shield is inconclusive, 7 and we find both parties in the process of submitting the case to arbitration:
amphô d' hiesthên epi istori peirar helesthai
...and both were strising to come to terms in the presence of an arbitrator [histôr].
The process of arbitration is presented as a contest among a group of elders, where each takes his turn in offering, with skêptron 'scepter' in hand (XVIII 506), 8 a formula for resolution of the litigation (502-506); whoever pronounces the most equitable formula is to be awarded a given measure of gold (507-508). 9
§3. The pertinence of the neikos 'conflict' depicted on the Shield of Achilles goes far beyond the juridical issues of the litigation and subsequent arbitration narrated by the artifact. The narration has a dramatic as well as juridical dimension, and as such it has a bearing on the Iliad as a whole. 1 The refusal of the plaintiff to accept compensation is parallel to the refusal of Achilles to accept compensation (called apoina 2 at Iliad IX 20) from Agamemnon for the grievances that he suffered. 3 When Agamemnon, through his ambassadors, announces to Achilles an offer of compensation, one of these ambassadors, Ajax, actually contrasts the refusal on the part of Achilles with the acceptance on the part of a hypothetical plaintiff who is being offered compensation, poinê, for the death of his brother or son (Iliad IX 632-636). 4
§4. The point made by Ajax is that the heart of a man can be assuaged by compensation even if he has lost someone as close as a brother or father, whereas Achilles is supposedly heartless in refusing compensation for the loss of someone who is surely far less close, the girl Briseis (Iliad IX 636-638). 1 Ajax is in effect accusing Achilles of ranking Briseis ahead of his own hetairoi 'comrades-in-arms' by failing to be swayed by the comrades' philotês--the mutual state of being philoi 'near and dear' to each other (XVIII 628-632). 2 From the vantage point of the ambassadors, they as comrades-in-arms of Achilles should be closest to him--that is, most philoi
'near and dear' to him (so says Phoenix at IX 522). 3 From the superior vantage point of the overall narrative, however, someone is more philos 'near and dear' to Achilles than Briseis or the hetairoi--someone who is in fact so close to him as to be his other self, Patroklos. 4 For Achilles, Patroklos is polu philtatos...hetairos--the 'hetairos who is the most philos by far' ( Iliad XVII 411, 655). When Achilles gets the news that Patroklos has been killed, he mourns him as the philos hetairos whom he ranked above all other hetairoi (XVIII 80-81). For a man other than Achilles, as the god Apollo remarks, a brother or a son would be more philos than a comrade-in- arms (XXIV 46-49). For a man other than Achilles, then, the compensation for the death of a brother or a son would have to be greater than any compensation for the death of a comrade-in- arms, and yet even such a man comes to terms with death, whereas Achilles does not (ibid.). Apollo makes this remark in the context of blaming the heartlessness of Achilles (XXIV 39-45). Earlier, in the same context of blaming the heartlessness of Achilles (IX 628-632), we have seen that Ajax had contrasted the willingness of a hypothetical plaintiff to accept compensation for the death of someone who is even as close as a brother or a son (IX 632-636). In the first case the paradigm of accepting compensation is being applied to the hero's refusal of compensation offered by Agamemnon for the taking of Briseis; in the second case it is being applied to his refusal of any compensation offered by Priam for returning the corpse of Hektor (witness the use of apoina 'compensation' at XXII 349). 5 Thus in neither case is anyone intending compensation for the death of Patroklos. Yet the paradigms applied to the hero's refusal of compensation indicate that, from the superior vantage point of the overall narrative, what is really at stake for Achilles is coming to terms with his own death by accepting compensation for the death of someone who is more philos 'near and dear' to him than anyone else--his other self, Patroklos.
§5. Which brings us back to the litigation depicted on the Shield of Achilles, a scene that reflects in microcosm the vantage point of the overall narrative. 1 By the time this scene is unveiled, Patroklos is already dead and Achilles has just been mourned by his mother as if he too were dead (at XVIII 54-60). 2 The anonymous little plaintiff pictured on the Shield is frozen in his inflexible position of refusing compensation for the death of a victim--a victim who is none other than the plaintiff himself from the overarching standpoint of the Iliad. 3 Soon after this scene, however, Achilles in the end accepts compensation from Agamemnon, who declares publicly that he was not aitios 'responsible' for causing the anger of Achilles-- that it was really Zeus who inflicted atê 'aberration, derangement' ( Iliad XIX 86-88, 134-136). 4 If Agamemnon really was aitios, of course, he would also be aitios for the death of Patroklos, which had resulted from the withdrawal of Achilles from his comrades-in-arms on account of his anger. But the situation is more complicated. Achilles too had incurred atê by refusing the entreaties of those who were near and dear to him. 5 As a reflection then of the neikos between Achilles and Agamemnon, the neikos between the anonymous plaintiff and the anonymous defendant on the Shield of Achilles presents the ultimate juridical problem. Who in the end is aitios 'responsible': is it one of the two heroes, or both, or, as one of them claims, the god himself, who is explicitly accused of inflicting atê?
§6. The Iliad does not address such a problem directly; instead it refers the case to a histôr 'arbitrator' (XVIII 501). In the separate world of the Shield of Achilles, a group of arbitrators must compete with each other in rendering justice, until one winning solution can at last be found.
Such a winning solution is also needed for the Iliad as a whole, which does not formally take a position on who is aitios in its narrative. The question is left up to a figure who is beyond the Iliad, that is, to the histôr, whose function it is to render dikê 'judgment'. 1
§7. At this juncture we may shift our emphasis from a preoccupation with the Homeric stance of Herodotus. It is time to consider his Hesiodic stance, as reflected in the concept of historiâ. As one who pronounces dikê 'judgment', the histôr 'arbitrator' of the Shield of Achilles fits a pattern that is clearly visible in the portrait of the ideal king in the Hesiodic Theogony (80-93). The ideal king is one who has the moral authority to arbitrate and thus bring to an end 'even a great neikos [= conflict]' aipsa te kai mega neikos epistamenôs katepausen Theogony87). 1 The ideal king stops the neikos 'conflict' in the setting of an agorâ 'public assembly' (agoreuôn agorêphi agromenoisin Theogony86 / 89 / 92), which is also the setting for the neikos that is to be stopped by the histôr (both words neikos and agorâ at Iliad XVIII 497). 2 To be able to arbitrate, Hesiod explains, kings must be ekhephrones 'sound of mind' (Theogony88). 3 This quality is the same one that is required of the kings who are to understand the ainos--here we may translate the word as 'fable'--told by Hesiod in the Works and Days:
nun d' ainon basileusin ereô 4 phroneousi kai autois
Now I will tell the kings a fable [ainos] --sound of mind [phroneontes] as they are.
Hesiod's presupposition of the kings' soundness of mind is really a condition here: if the kings do not understand the ainos, then they are not sound of mind. 5 These same kings have so far in the Works and Days displayed just the opposite of soundness, in that they have earlier been described as ready to pronounce a dikê 'judgment' that is unsound (hoi tênde dikên ethelousi dikassai Works and Days39). This unsound dikê was pronounced by the kings in the context of their arbitrating a neikos 'conflict' between Hesiod and his brother Perses (Works and Days35); 6 it is in this light that Hesiod seeks to instruct them, by way of his ainos (202) of "The Hawk and the Nightingale," 7 in how to pronounce a sound dikê. If the kings understand the ainos, then they will have learned the lesson that dikê, in its ultimate sense of 'justice', is superior to its opposite, hubris 'outrage'; 8 if they do not understand, however, then their very raison d'être, which is to pronounce dikê 'judgment', is undermined, and they are left without any authority.
§8. In fact the Works and Days claims an authority of its own, not dependent on that of any earthly king. It is founded on the higher authority of Zeus as a model for kings. When a king pronounces dikê 'judgment' (as at Theogony86), he is in effect 'sorting out' (= verb dia-krînô: diakrinonta Theogony85) what is themis 'divine law' and what is not (that is, diakrinonta themistas ibid.). Still, as we see from the Works and Days, the dikê 'judgment' of a king may not always be the same thing as 'justice'. 1 For the equation of 'judgment' and 'justice', the model of Zeus must come into play: at the beginning of the Works and Days, Hesiod invokes Zeus to keep
themis [plural] 'divine laws' straight by way of his divine dikê--where the 'judgment' of Zeus is tantamount to the 'justice' of Zeus. 2 This action of Zeus, the pronouncing of dikê, is explicitly made parallel to the words of Hesiod as he speaks to Perses (Works and Days10), 3 and we must keep in mind that the words of Hesiod as addressed to Perses are in fact the Works and Days as a poem. Thus the justice of Zeus and the Works and Days are treated as coefficients in the context of a neikos 'conflict' that Hesiod and Perses must 'sort out' for themselves (again, = verb dia- krînô: diakrinômetha neikos 'let us sort out for ourselves this neikos' Works and Days35). 4 Since Hesiod is here saying that he and Perses should resolve their conflict themselves, it is clear that their neikos--and the whole poem for that matter--will not in the end require the authority of a king as arbitrator. In fact after the last admonition of Hesiod to the kings, at Works and
Days263-264, the kings are never to be heard of again in the poem. From a dramatic point of
view, it is as if the poem were eliminating the authority of kings while maintaining the ultimate authority of Zeus as king; I interpret this state of affairs as a poetic reflex of the historical fact that the institution of kingship was obsolescent in most Greek cities by the time of the Archaic period. 5
§9. Thus the Works and Days of Hesiod, a poem founded on the authority of Zeus as king, can teach the citizens of cities that are no longer ruled by kings. In fact it can teach all citizens of all cities. The structure of the poem, which a comparative study can relate to the cognate juridical traditions of India as embedded in the body of wise sayings known the Law Code of Manu, reflects a moral authority that could in theory serve as foundation for a law code. 1 But the laws of Greek cities in the Archaic and Classical periods are a local affair, with each law code reflecting the idiosyncratic history and politics of each city. Thus the Works and Days, by stopping short of formulating laws, can communicate a Panhellenic authority for the diverse law codes of all cities-- whether the city's government be an oligarchy, a tyranny, or even a democracy. Even in a democracy, the ideological basis of authority is the dikê 'justice' of Zeus, just as it is elaborated in the Works and Days: thus, for example, the laws of Athens, as the poetry of the city's lawgiver Solon proclaims, are founded on the authority of Zeus as king (Solon F 31W). 2
§10. The juridical authority of earthly kings is eliminated not only in the Works and Days. Even in the Iliad, an epic about warriors who are simultaneously represented as kings, 1 the scene of litigation on the Shield of Achilles leaves out any mention of kings; the group of men taking turns at standing with skêptron 'scepter' in hand and arbitrating the litigation by pronouncing dikê (XVIII 503-508) are described not as kings, but merely as gerontes 'elders' (503). This omission is remarkable in view of the fact that the skêptron is the visible sign of a king's authority in the Iliad (e.g., IX 97-99). 2 Another such omission in the Hesiodic Theogony is even more remarkable in view of the fact that a theogony is by nature a formal confirmation of royal authority. 3 In the Theogony we find a significant omission in the detailed portrait of the ideal king (80-93), that man who can arbitrate the ultimate neikos 'conflict' (87): the ideal king is not pictured as wielding a skêptron. Instead the man who is given a skêptron is Hesiod himself, who gets it from the Muses (Theogony30). Thus the man who tells the ainos in the Works and Days is the same man who holds the symbol of ultimate juridical authority in the Theogony. 4
§11. Let us try to sum up what we know about the histôr 'arbitrator'. From the comparative evidence to be found in Homeric and Hesiodic poetry, we see that a histôr is a man who has the authority, derived from the kingship of Zeus, to solve conflicts, even by deciding who is aitios 'responsible' for what. His mode of discourse, based on privileged information, is that of the ainos.
§12. In the mode of a histôr, the historiâ 'inquiry' of Herodotus likewise takes a position on who is aitios. When Croesus, like Agamemnon, declares publicly that a god was aitios for the misfortunes that have been narrated, the historiâ represents the god Apollo as having the last word: Croesus himself is manifestly aitios (Herodotus 1.91.4). 1 Moreover, the man who conducts the historiâ, Herodotus, publicly takes the same position, and the word that he uses in this context to designate his privileged mode of communication is sêmainô (1.5.3) 2 --a word that is characteristic of the discourse of the ainos. 3
§13. By now we see more clearly how the historiâ of Herodotus, in seeking to establish who was responsible for the ultimate conflict between Hellenes and barbarians, is analogous to the task of the histôr depicted on the Shield of Achilles. In the microcosm of the Shield, an ideal histôr must seek the most equitable solution of a conflict between two litigants; in the macrocosm of the Iliad this same conflict recapitulates the ultimate conflict that leads off the entire narrative, the neikos of Achilles and Agamemnon.
§14. But the question still remains: what is the semantic relationship of the word histôr in the sense of 'arbitrator' with the verb historeô 'inquire, conduct an inquiry' and the noun historiâ 'inquiry' as used in Herodotus? The derivation of histôr from oida ("I have seen: therefore I know") 1 and its primary sense of 'witness' 2 can be misleading as we examine the usages of historeô and historiâ: although the process of inquiry conveyed by these two words is primarily on the level of seeing (e.g., Herodotus 2.99.1), 3 it can also be on the level of hearing but not seeing (e.g., 2.29.1). 4 So also with the word oida itself: after all, knowledge may at times be founded on hearing only (cf., e.g., Herodotus 1.5). The semantic evolution of histôr from 'one who sees' = 'eyewitness' 5 to something like 'he who sees beyond what others see' (where the vision may be figurative as well as real) is comparable to what we find in the French word voyant: literally this word means 'one who is endowed with sight', but the voyant is in fact endowed not with normal sight but "something that goes beyond it, 'second sight'." 6 It seems to me no accident that the first word of the first oracle directly quoted by Herodotus, where the voice of Apollo declares that it knows the number of every grain of sand and the full dimensions of the sea, is oida 'I know' (1.47.3).
§15. In this light we may also consider the semantic specialization of Latin arbiter. From the survey by Emile Benveniste of this word's usage in the diction of Plautus, 1 it becomes clear that the arbiter, unlike the testis, is a 'witness' only in a special sense: whereas the testis is known to the parties in a given case or situation, the arbiter may or may not be known and may or may not even be seen:
secede huc nunciam si videtur, procul, ne arbitri dicta nostra arbitrari queant
Come over here, please, a way off,
so that arbitrî may not arbitrârî what we say.
eamus intro, non utibilest hic locus factis tuis
dum memoramus, arbitri ut sint qui praetereant per vias
Let's go inside. This is not a suitable place for us to talk about what you've done. Those who pass by on the streets may be arbitrî.
mihi quidem iam arbitri vicini sunt, meae quid fiat domi, ita per impluvium intro spectant
The neighbors are now arbitrî of whatever happens in my house: they peer through the impluvium.
In explaining how such a "clandestine witness" as an arbiter evolves into an arbitrator, a judge, Benveniste adduces the semantics of iûdex: 2
We must recall that in the most ancient sense of the word the name iûdex was given to every authoritative person charged with passing judgment in a disputed case. In principle it was the king, the consul, the holder of all powers. But for practical reasons this power was delegated to a private judge who, according to the nature of the cases, was called iûdex or iûdex privâtus, or iûdex selectus or arbiter. The last was empowered to decide in all cases which were not foreseen by the law. [...] In effect, the arbiter makes his decision not according to formulae and the laws but by a personal assessment and in the name of equity. The arbiter is in fact a iûdex who acts as an arbiter; he judges by coming between the two parties from outside like someone who has been present at the affair without being seen, who can therefore give judgment on the facts freely and with authority, regardless of all precedent in the light of the circumstances.
Although Benveniste does not directly adduce histôr or historiâ in this connection, we can see
that his working definition of arbiter is pertinent to the meanings of both these Greek words. 3 The histôr, whose authority is derived from Zeus as king, can be understood as thereby having the privileged vantage point of the gods themselves, who can see without being seen. 4 The same goes for the historiâ 'inquiry' of Herodotus: when he sêmainei 'indicates' that Croesus is aitios 'responsible' for the ultimate conflict between Hellenes and barbarians (Herodotus 1.5.3), 5 he is in effect speaking from a privileged vantage point similar to that of the god Apollo himself, who sêmainei 'indicates' by way of his Oracle (Heraclitus 22 B 93 DK) 6 --and who likewise declares that Croesus is aitios (Herodotus 1.91.4). 7
§16. In this connection, now that we are reaching the end of our inquiry into both the Homeric
and the Hesiodic stances of Herodotus, it is fitting to reiterate what Herodotus had said about the Panhellenic contributions of Homer and Hesiod: these are the poets 'who indicated the visible forms [eidos plural] 1 of the gods'. Again the word translated by 'indicate' here is sêmainô (eidea autôn sêmênantes Herodotus 2.53.2). 2 In other words Homer and Hesiod are represented by Herodotus as communicating in the same mode in which Herodotus himself communicates. We have seen that this is in fact not so, that the discourse of Herodotus in fact makes the sort of judgments that are avoided in a poem like the Iliad. Still the discourse of Herodotus, by implicitly claiming identity with the discourse of Homer, is appropriating it. Similarly we have seen that the discourse of Pindar, distinct as it is from the discourse of Homer, nonetheless claims identity with it and thus appropriates it, possesses it. Such parallelism of appropriation is yet another indication that the discourse of Herodotus has close connections with the ainos, which is the essence of Pindar's lyric poetry in contexts of appropriating epic. 3
§17. Such parallelism between Herodotus and Pindar has been our concern since the beginning of Chapter 8, with the assertion that the historiâ 'inquiry' of Herodotus, like the ainos of epinician poets like Pindar, is a form of discourse that claims the authority to possess and control the epic of heroes. 1 I had then proposed to support this assertion by arguing that the traditions underlying the historiâ are akin to those underlying the ainos of epinician lyric poetry. It is time to take stock of all that we have observed so far about the historiâ of Herodotus.
§18. The very word historiâ, as used by Herodotus in his prooemium, indicates the juridical aspect of what Herodotus has to say. In finding Croesus guilty or aitios 'responsible' for the ultimate conflict between Hellenes and barbarians, Herodotus is taking a stance similar to that of the histôr on the Shield of Achilles. Earlier we saw that Croesus proves himself to be guilty even by way of his behavior, which the narrative of Herodotus represents as a paradigm of atê 'derangement'. This representation is achieved in a quasi-juridical framework insofar as atê is defined through the teachings of the lawgiver Solon. But the atê of Croesus, as we have noticed, is not confronted directly by Solon in the encounter dramatized by Herodotus. 1 Moreover, Solon in Herodotus' Histories does not tell Croesus directly what we find him teaching in his own poetry, that atê is brought about by hubris. 2 This indirectness is not just a matter of diplomacy on Solon's part. Rather it can best be explained by considering the medium of Herodotus, historiâ. With his privileged position of knowledge, the master of historiâ is implicitly narrating divine actions as he explicitly narrates human actions. 3 The divine pattern of atê as brought about
by hubris is for Herodotus an implicit message as he sêmainei 'indicates' that Croesus was in the wrong. The task still at hand is to show how the implicitness of Herodotus, and even his dramatization of Solon as a sage who formulates implicit messages about the dangers of hubris and atê, is akin to the communication of Pindar through the ainos.
§19. The implicit hubris of Croesus the Lydian is indicated by the context of the story of Croesus and Solon in the Histories of Herodotus. This story makes it clear that the Persians acquired the characteristic of being habroi 'luxuriant', which as we shall see is a basic feature of hubris, from the Lydians, whom they had conquered: before the conquest, in the words of Herodotus, the Persians had nothing that was habron 'luxuriant' (ên oute habron oute agathon ouden 1.71.4; cf. also the context of ouk allo agathon ouden at 1.70.3). 1 Before the Lydians, the story goes, the Persians had a 'harsh' life, living in a 'harsh' country. 2
§20. In order to understand the traditional theme that being habros 'luxuriant' is a basic feature of hubris, let us turn to the traditions about the ktisis 'foundation' of the Greek city of Colophon, as reported by Phylarchus: in the beginning the colonizers of Colophon led a harsh life (Phylarchus FGH 81 F 66 in Athenaeus 526a), but eventually they turned to truphê 'luxuriance' when they came into contact with the Lydians (ibid.). 1 At this point Phylarchus (F 66 in Athenaeus 526a-b) quotes the following words of Xenophanes about the Colophonians:
habrosunas de mathontes anôpheleas para Ludôn, ophra turanniês êsan aneu stugerês...
Xenophanes F 3.1-2 W = 21 B 3 DK
Learning the useless ways of luxuriance [= being habros] from the Lydians, while they [= the Colophonians] were still free of hateful tyranny... 2
The Colophonians are ultimately ruined by their own hubris:
hubris kai Magnêtas apôlese kai Kolophôna kai Smurnên: pantôs Kurne kai umm' apolei
Theognis 1103-1104
hubris ruined the Magnesians, and Colophon
and Smyrna; and it will assuredly ruin you [plural] too, Kyrnos!
The expression Kolophônia hubris 'Colophonian hubris' is in fact proverbial (Corpus Paroemiographorum Graecorum I p. 266.6-7). 3
§21. In the passage just quoted from Xenophanes, the ruin of Colophon is linked with turanniê 'tyranny', and we get further thematic details from Theopompus (FGH 115 F 117 in Athenaeus 526c): the luxuriance of the Colophonians resulted in turannis 'tyranny' and stasis [plural]
'discord', so that the city and its people were 'destroyed'. In this case 'tyranny' is probably to be understood as some form of political domination by Lydia: Herodotus, for example, refers to the capture of the lower city of Colophon by Gyges the Lydian (1.14.4), parallel to the capture of Smyrna by Alyattes, the great-grandson of Gyges (1.16.2). 1 But the point of this traditional story about Colophon seems to be that the misfortune of tyranny was caused primarily from within, not from without: the luxuriance of the Colophonians brought about their defeat at the hands of their external enemies. A parallel point is made in the story about the ruin of the Magnesians, whose luxuriance brought about their defeat at the hands of the Ephesians (Callinus F 3 W; Archilochus F 20 W; cf. Theognis603-604). 2 The ruin of the Magnesians is mentioned alongside that of the Colophonians and that of the Smyrnaeans in the poem of Theognis quoted above (1103-1104).
§22. For Theognis, such stories are made applicable to the hubris that the poet finds in his own city of Megara (ibid.; also Theognis603-604). In another poem, Theognis 1081-1082b, the voice of the poet goes so far as to say that Megara is pregnant with a future tyrant, a man of hubris. 1 From this image of the pregnant city we see most clearly that tyranny can be generated from within. That the man of hubris in this poem is indeed a tyrant becomes evident from another poem, Theognis39-52, a variant in which the emphasis shifts from the hubris represented by the future tyrant to the hubris that could bring forth the tyrant in the first place. Again the poet says that his city is pregnant (Theognis 39), but this time he fears that it will give birth to a man who will be 'a corrector of our base hubris' (euthuntêra kakês hubrios hêmeterês Theognis40). 2 He goes on to say that the unjust behavior of his city's élite leads to stasis [plural] 'discord', intrasocietal phonos [plural] 'killings', and monarkhoi 'monarchs' (Theognis 51-52). 3 This triad of misfortunes matches closely the one found in the celebrated Herodotean passage known as the Debate about the Constitutions, 4 where the Persian king Darius is dramatized as praising tyranny and blaming oligararchy: in an oligarchy, says Darius, the behavior of the élite leads to stasis [plural], from which arises phonos 'killing', from which arises monarkhiâ 'monarchy'--so that monarchy, he reasons, must be superior to oligarchy (Herodotus 3.83.3). 5 As this particular passage makes clear, the word monarkhos 'monarch' is the attenuated equivalent of turannos 'tyrant' (Herodotus 3.80.2 in conjunction with 3.80.4). 6
§23. The point of this traditional topic is that whether tyranny afflicts a community from without or from within, its causes are from within. Granted, the Hellenes apparently learned the word turannos from the Lydians, as we may infer from its early attestation, applied to Gyges the Lydian, in Archilochus F 19 F (cf. Hippias of Elis FGH 6 F 6). 1 Still the experience of tyranny and of its causes is a native Hellenic tradition. While it is a matter of history that Colophon was culturally influenced and then politically subjugated by the Lydians, it is a matter of myth making that the stories of what happened in Colophon and elsewhere became paradigms for analogous patterns of happenings in other Hellenic city-states. The analogies vary considerably, but the language that expresses the analogous patterns follow closely the language of the paradigms. For example, whatever happened in Colophon or Smyrna or Magnesia is surely different from the ongoing events in mainland Megara, seemingly far beyond the reach of luxuriant Lydians or savage Cimmerians. 2 And yet, for Theognis, the same hubris that destroyed those three luxuriating cities from within 'now' threatens to destroy Megara as well (Theognis 1103-1104; cf.
603-604). This kind of warning by the figure of Theognis is typical of the mode of discourse that we have already identified as the ainos. 3
§24. In the Croesus story of Herodotus, a similar warning is ostensibly being made--not about any Hellenic city but about the Lydians themselves. Their ultimate luxuriance, manifested in the material over-acquisitiveness of their king Croesus as he tries to conquer the Persian Empire, leads to their own defeat. In this case, however, the conquerors learn the ways of luxuriance from the defeated, and not the other way around: the Persians, who had previously led a harsh life, acquire the quality of being habros 'luxuriant' from the Lydians (Herodotus 1.71.2). 1 Ominously, however, the harsh life of the Persians before Croesus is different from that of men like the early settlers of Colophon. As the captured king Croesus observes, in reaction to the sight of Persians looting the captured Lydian city of Sardis, the Persians are 'by nature men of
hubris' (persai phusin eontes hubristai... Herodotus 1.89.2). As we are about to see, hubris can have an aspect other than luxuriance, the aspect of savagery. 2
§25. The two aspects of hubris, luxuriance and savagery, tend to alternate in poetic treatments. In the poetry of Theognis, for example, the hubris that threatens to destroy Megara is either the same hubris that destroyed the luxuriant Hellenes, as we have read in the passages cited, or the same hubris that destroyed the Centaurs, 'eaters of raw flesh' (Theognis 541-542; ômophagous at 542). 1 The eventual destruction of Megara can be visualized as happening either from the inside, with the degeneration of the elite (again Theognis39-52) 2 or from the outside, with the influx and subsequent ascendancy of savages (Theognis 53-68), who are described as 'formerly' living outside the city like grazing deer, wearing the hides of goats for clothing (54-56). 3 There is a similar description of the Persians in Herodotus, before they conquered the Lydians: as an advisor points out to Croesus, the Persians still wear leather for their trousers and indeed for all their clothing (hoi skutinas men anaxuridas, skutinên de tên allên esthêta phoreousi 1.71.2). 'Once they taste of our good things', says this Lydian advisor, 'they will cling to them and we will be unable to push them away' (geusamenoi gar tôn hêmeterôn agathôn periexontai oude apôstoi esontai 1.71.3). Thus the Persians of Herodotus are a combination of the worst: already savage, they then become luxuriant as well. 4
§26. For Herodotus, the ultimate exponent of the luxuriance and savagery of hubris is Xerxes, the Great King of the Persians, leader of the "Asian" hordes massed against Hellas. Even more interesting for my present purposes, however, is another Persian exponent of hubris, whose story pointedly brings to a close the Histories of Herodotus. He is Artauktes, descendant of a man who had advised Cyrus, founder of the Persian Empire, to move from the 'harsh' land of Persia (gên...trêchean Herodotus 9.122.2) to some milder place (ibid.). Cyrus had rejected this advice on the grounds that men become 'soft' and slavelike when they live in 'soft' places (phileein gar ek tôn malakôn chôrôn malakouW andraW ginesthai Herodotus 9.122.3). With this thought, along with the observation that the Persians at that former time had heeded the advice of Cyrus, Herodotus ends his narrative in the last sentence of the Histories. Obviously the Persians of later times, under the kingship of Xerxes, failed to heed the advice of Cyrus as they sought to occupy a new European homeland in the wake of Xerxes' invasion of Hellas. From the standpoint of the Histories, the Persians had already been corrupted by the Lydians: they had acquired from these
fellow Asians the characteristic of being habroi 'luxuriant' (1.71.4), abandoning the harsh life that went hand in hand with living in a harsh country (1.71.2). 1 The topic of corruption is picked up again at the end of the Histories, where Cyrus is seen arguing against the advice given by the ancestor of Artauktes, who had argued that the Persians should move from the harsh land of Persia (9.122.2). With this background we come to the story of Artauktes--a story that realizes the advice given by his ancestor and that serves as a negative paradigm for the advice given by Cyrus.
§27. Described as an underling of Xerxes, Artauktes was put in charge of administering a region on the "Greek" side of the Hellespont, which he ruled in the style of a turannos
'tyrant' (eturanneue Herodotus 9.116.1). The story has it that Artauktes was a dreadful and atasthalos 'wanton' man (9.116.1)--and the word atasthalos in Archaic Greek poetry regularly characterizes a man of hubris 1 --who contrived to occupy as his own property the oikos 'house' of 'a Greek man' (esti oikos andros Hellênos enthauta 9.116.3). At least Xerxes was led to believe that Artauktes was to occupy the house of 'a Greek man'. The story is actually being told by Herodotus in a mode analogous to that of an ainos, in that double meanings abound. 2 To begin with, the 'house' of the 'Greek man' is really the sacred precinct of the hero Protesilaos, a cult center filled with riches supplied by the hero's worshippers (9.116.2). 3 Lusting to possess these riches, Artauktes had deceived Xerxes by asking the king to grant him the ownership of an oikos 'house' of 'a Greek man' who had died while attacking the land of Xerxes:
despota, esti oikos andros Hellênos enthauta, hos epi gên tên sên strateusamenos dikês kurêsas apethane, toutou moi dos ton oikon, hina kai tis mathêi epi gên tên sên mê strateuesthai
Master, there is here a house [oikos] belonging to a Greek man who had made war against your land. Getting his just deserts, he had died. Give me this man's house [oikos], so that everyone may learn not to make war against your land.
What Artauktes had said actually conveys an ulterior meaning: in Greek epic tradition Protesilaos was the first Achaean to die fighting the Trojans (Iliad II 698-702). Moreover, oikos is a word that can designate the sacred precinct of a hero (e.g., Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus 627). 4 For Xerxes, the oikos requested by Artauktes is the 'house' of a Greek; for Artauktes, it is the precinct of Protesilaos. Once he is granted ownership of the precinct, Artauktes proceeds to rob it of its riches, to which the narrative refers as the khrêmata of Protesilaos (9.116.1, 3; 9.120.3). The personalized tone reminds us of the same word khrêmata in a poem of Theognis (667, 677), describing the loss of possessions on the part of a figure who is presented as an exponent of dikê 'righteousness' and who speaks in the mode of the ainos (êinichthô 681). 5 Artauktes commits the further outrage of farming the lands of the precinct for his own profit and having sexual intercourse with women within the shrine (9.116.3). From a Hellenic standpoint Artauktes is clearly an exponent of hubris.
§28. Sometime after the Greek victories over the Persians at Salamis and Plataea, Artauktes is captured by the advancing Greeks as they push the Persians back to Asia, and a miracle
supposedly happens just as Artauktes is about to be executed in retribution for the wrongs that he had committed. As one of his Greek captors is roasting tarîkhoi 'preserved fish' for a meal (Herodotus 9.120.1), 1 the dead fish suddenly come alive. Artauktes reacts as follows:
xeine Athênaie, mêden phobeo to teras touto. ou gar soi pephêne, all' emoi sêmainei ho en Elaiounti Prôtesileôs hoti kai tarichos eôn dunamin pros theôn echei ton adikeonta tinesthai.
Athenian stranger, do not be frightened of this portent. For it was manifested not for you. Rather, the Protesilaos who abides in Elaious is indicating [= verb sêmainô] to me that, even though he is dead --and a tarîkhos--he has the power from the gods to exact retribution from the one who commits wrongdoing [= does deeds without dikê].
§29. The word tarîkhos, possibly of Anatolian provenience, 1 has two meanings: either 'preserved fish', as from the standpoint of the man who was roasting the preserved fish, or 'mummy', as from the standpoint of Herodotus in describing the funerary practices of the Egyptians. 2 What the two meanings seem to have in common is the idea of preservation. In an everyday sense, rotting is negated by preservation through the drying or salting of fish; in a hieratic sense, rotting and death itself are negated by preservation through mummification, which is from the standpoint of Egyptian religion the ritual phase of the mystical process of immortalization. 3
§30. In the Egyptian ritual of mummification, the ideology of immortalization is evident in the relationship between the corpse and the wt 'bandager', which is made analogous to the relationship between Osiris, the first person to be mummified, and Anubis, the inventor of mummification. It has been observed that "each ritual was a re-enactment of the prototype, the deceased, as throughout the cult, being regarded as Osiris while the wt could be addressed as Anubis, take his epithets and occasionally, from the New Kingdom onwards, even wear the Anubis-mask." 1 When Herodotus discusses the most expensive procedure of mummification, he remarks ostentatiously that he does not wish to give away the name of the procedure (2.86.2), and his stance here is typical of his general stance toward mysteries. 2
§31. In the image of a dead fish that mystically comes back to life, we see a convergence of the everyday and the hieratic senses of preservation. This image in the story of Herodotus, where Protesilaos sêmainei 'indicates' (9.120.2) the power that he has from the gods to exact retribution from the wrongdoer, amounts to a sêma or 'sign' of the revenant, the spirit that returns from the dead. 1 The hero Protesilaos himself is represented as giving the sêma, the 'sign' of his power as a revenant from the heroic past.
§32. This theme recurs in the anonymous Alexander Romance, conventionally dated to the third
century A.D. 1 After conquering the Persian Empire, Alexander pushes on further east till he reaches the edge of the world (to telos tês gês 2.39.4), and he finds himself in the Land of the Makares 'Blessed' (2.39.1). There his mageiros 'cook' discovers a spring of immortalizing water when he washes a tarîkhos 'preserved fish' in the spring and the dead fish epsuchôthê 'recovered its psûkhê', that is, came back to life (2.39.12). Alexander is not told of this water, and he fails to drink of it. Later, when he comes to a place that is described as 'where the gods dwell' (3.24.1), a place where he has visions of lightning (ibid.), he asks the apparition of the kosmokratôr Sesonchosis, who now dwells in this realm, this question: how long will I live (3.24.2-3)? The apparition refuses to answer this question, which implicitly acknowledges Alexander's mortality, and indicates instead that the city founded by Alexander, Alexandria, is suitable compensation for mortality (3.24.3-4). The apparition even implies that Alexander will not really be dead, in that his corpse will have Alexandria as its oikos 'abode': oikêseis de autên kai thanôn kai mê thanôn. taphon gar autên hexeis hên ktizeis polin 'you will hase it [= Alexandria] as your oikos both as one who is dead and yet also as one who is undead, for you will have as your tomb the very city that you founded' (3.24.4). What Alexander is being told at the edge of the world corresponds closely to what he had read inscribed in the shrine of Sarapis, back home in Alexandria, before he had begun his expedition to the East; the text here reads: su de apotheôtheis proskunêthêsêi nekros kai dôra lêpsêi ek pollôn basileôn pantote, oikêseis de autên kai thanôn kai mê thanôn. taphon gar hexeis autên hên ktizeis polin 'you will become a god and you will be worshipped, as a corpse, receiving gifts from many kings for all time, and you will have it [= Alexandria] as your oikos both as one who is dead and yet also as one who is undead, for you will have as your tomb the very city that you founded' (1.33.9). It has been argued that the enigmatic description of Alexander as dead and yet not dead refers to his status as founder and cult hero of Alexandria. 2 In becoming the cult hero of Alexandria, Alexander's corpse was to be transformed from a thing of nature into a thing of culture--a mummy. 3 The paradox of Alexander's being both dead and immortalized is comparable to the ideology of Archaic Greek hero cults, where the hero's abode is visualized simultaneously as (1) a cult place where his corpse is buried and (2) a paradiselike setting at the edge of the world, where he has been immortalized. The names for the two kinds of abode may even converge, as in the case of Elusion 'Elysium' and the Nêsoi Makarôn 'Islands of the Blessed': both names designate either a cult place or a paradiselike setting. 4
§33. Let us return to the story of Herodotus. The hapless Artauktes attempts to offer compensation for the wrongs that he had committed (9.120.3), but his offer is refused by his captors; he is executed at a spot near the place, as Herodotus emphasizes, where Xerxes had committed the ultimate outrage of bridging the Hellespont (9.120.4). On the surface Artauktes is paying retribution that is being exacted by human agency, that is, by his Athenian captors. Under the surface, however, retribution is being exacted by divine agency, through the hero Protesilaos.
§34. The role of Protesilaos is significant. By virtue of being the first Achaean to die in the Trojan War (Iliad II 698-702), he is described by Artauktes as a prominent Hellene who dared to attack Asians (again Herodotus 9.116.3). The narrative makes a point of drawing attention to the Persian assumption that underlies this description: the Persians take it for granted that all Asia belongs to them (9.116.3). With this theme the historiâ of Herodotus comes full circle in that the same assumption is cited at the beginning of the narrative (1.4.4) in the context of explaining why the logioi of the Persians find the Hellenes aitioi 'responsible' for the ultimate conflict (1.4.1): that the
Hellenes were in the wrong when they attacked Troy (ibid.). Even if this Persian assumption--that all Asia is theirs--were valid, the Persians would have been in the wrong when Xerxes bridged the Hellespont separating Asia from Europe in that even the assumption of the Persians implicitly cedes Europe to the Hellenes. Besides, the historiâ of Herodotus had already established at the beginning who is aitios for the present conflict as Herodotus sêmainei 'indicates' that Croesus had initiated the wrongdoing (1.5.3). Now, at the end of the historiâ, the first of the Hellenes whom the Persians hold responsible for the present conflict is vindicated: he is really the party wronged by the Persians, just as all Hellenes are wronged when the Persians cross over to Europe, and it is he who exacts retribution from the offending Persians. As he does so, he sêmainei 'indicates' his power, which is equated here with the efficacy of the gods (again Herodotus 9.120.2).
§35. Protesilaos is thus giving a sêma 'sign'. The 'sign' is intended not only for Artauktes but also for those to whom Herodotus is offering his narrative. At the same time that the hero Protesilaos sêmainei 'indicates' to Artauktes the power of the divine apparatus in bringing about justice (Herodotus 9.120.2), the narrative of Herodotus is conveying the same message, a message that is saying to the Hellenes that they were in the right. Thus not only Protesilaos gives a sêma here. So too does Herodotus, the narrator of this sêma, who at the beginning of his historiâ 'indicates', sêmainei, that the Asians started it all (again Herodotus 1.5.3). 1 When Herodotus 'indicates', sêmainei, he is indirectly narrating the actions of the gods by directly narrating the actions of men. The most powerful 'indication' is the sêma of the hero, whose message is also his medium, the tomb. The double meaning of sêma as both 'tomb' and 'indication, sign' 2 is itself a monument to the power of the ideology inherent in the ancient Greek institution of hero cults--an ideology that appropriated the very concept of meaning to the tomb of the hero. Moreover, this ideology is inherent in the poetic form that can both celebrate the institution of hero cults and make it apply to a given situation in the present. That poetic form is the ainos. 3
Notes
§1n1. See Ch.8§19 and following, with commentary on the relationship between aitiâ 'cause' in the prooemium and aitioi 'responsible, guilty' in 1.1.1 of Herodotus.
§1n3. Snell 1924.59-71. On the word histôr see also Dewald 1987, especially p. 153n18, with further bibliography.
§1n4. For the semantics of histôr as 'he who knows', Snell, p. 60n3, cites eidotes 'they who know' in the sense of 'witnesses' at Demosthenes 55.9, 11ff, 35, and at Isocrates 17.44. He also adduces (ibid.) the rare and apparently Solonian word idûos / eidûos, cited by Eustathius as a synonym of histôr in the context of Iliad XVIII 501. As an agent noun, histôr is not to be linked with eidenai 'know' only, to the exclusion of idein 'see': see Snell, p. 61, on the expression hêraklêa megalôn epiistora ergôn 'Herakles, the one who experienced deeds of enormity' at Odyssey xxi 26, where epi-histôr 'he who experiences' is to be derived from ep-idein (not ep- eidenai), as in kaka poll' epidonta 'having experienced many evil happenings' at Iliad XXII 61.
Cf. Ch.8§25n1.
§1n5. In Boeotian inscriptions histôr seems to be used in contexts where other dialects would feature martûs 'witness' (e.g., DGE 491.18, 492.7, 503a.28, 511.7, 512.6, 523.64). In line with such oath-expressions as istô nun Zeus 'may Zeus now be witness' (e.g., Iliad X 329), we may note that the gods are called upon as histores 'witnesses' and as sun-(h)istores in the sworn declaration quoted by Thucydides 2.74.3.
§1n6. Snell, p. 60n4, who also adduces the entry ep-êkooi in Hesychius s.v.
§2n1. Snell, p. 60. The only other attestation of histôr in the Iliad / Odyssey is at XXIII 486, where Idomeneus suggests to Ajax that they call on Agamemnon as histôr to settle a dispute that they are having.
§2n2. In my interpretation of this scene, I am guided primarily by the analysis of L. Muellner (1976.100-106).
§2n3. The setting of the litigation is an agorâ 'assembly'.
§2n4. See Muellner, pp. 100-106 on the juridical sense of eukheto here, for which there is a striking parallel in the use of e-u-ke-to = eukhetoi 'makes a claim' in the Linear B texts (Pylos tablets Ep 704 and Eb 297). Muellner also points out (ibid.) that the defendant in the Iliad passage is addressing his claim to an entity called the dêmos (dêmôi piphauskôn XVIII 500), the same word that is attested as da-mo = dâmos in the litigation recorded in one of the same Linear B texts that feature the verb e-u-ke-to = eukhetoi 'makes a claim' (Ep 704). In this context the dâmos actually figures as one of the parties involved in the litigation (the other party is a i-je-re-ja
= hiereia 'priestess'). The role of the dâmos here is in line with the following definition of dâmos
as used in the Linear B texts: "An administrative entity endowed with a juridical
function" (formulation by Lejeune 1965.12). Similarly in Homeric diction dêmos can have the sense of 'district' (e.g., Iliad V 710; XVI 437, 514); in fact this sense may well be primary (cf. N 1979.149n6; also Ch.2§12n1). In the context of an agorâ 'assembly' ( Odyssey ii 7, 10, 26; note again that the setting of the litigation depicted on the Shield takes place in an agorâ: Ch.9§2n3)-- which is the occasion for agoreuein 'speaking publicly' (Odyssey ii 15)--what a speaker says in public is technically dêmion 'of the dêmos' = public business for the dêmos ( Odyssey ii 32, 44), as opposed to private business (emon autou chreios ii 45). The act of publicly saying what is dêmion is conveyed by the two verbs piphausketai 'declares' and agoreuei 'speaks publicly' (ii 32 and 44, respectively), the first of which is also found in collocation with dêmos at Iliad XVIII 500: dêmôi piphauskôn 'declaring to the dêmos'. What is being declared to / in the public, the dêmos, is being made public, that is, dêmion.
§2n5. Here I am following the interpretation of Muellner 1976.105-106 ('but he said that he would accept nothing'), who notes the modal implication of negative mêden as opposed to ouden.
§2n6. This passage figures prominently in the discussion that follows. Note the expression kai rh' ho men en dêmôi menei autou poll' apoteisas 'and he stays in the dêmos, making a big payment'
here at Iliad IX 634, in light of the discussion at Ch.9§2n4.
§2n7. Another sign that it is inconclusive: the defendant rather than the plaintiff is represented as speaking first.
§2n8. For a parallel collocation of skêptron with the verb aissô, see Iliad III 216.
§2n9. The process whereby a formula is offered for resolution is designated by the verb dikazô 'render judgment' (dikazon XVIII 506); the notion of pronouncing the most equitable formula is equated with pronouncing dikê 'judgment' in the most correct way, that is, 'in the straightest manner" hos meta toisi dikên ithuntata eipoi 508).
§3n1. Muellner 1976.101, following the grammatical analysis of Iliad XVIII 500 by Corlu 1966.331-336, remarks that the interpretation of anaineto mêden helesthai as 'he [= the plaintiff] said that he would accept nothing' makes the conflict "dramatic."
§3n2. On the formulaic parallelism of apoina and poinê, see Muellner, p. 102n11.
§3n3. See Muellner, p. 106.
§4n1. On the definition of the identity of a person by way of identifying with others, that is, by way of measuring the relative closeness of this person to others in a group, where the notion of closeness is expressed by way of the word philos 'near and dear', see N 1979.102-111.
§4n2. This argument is undercut by the par-ainesis of Phoenix (on which see Ch.6§89), as understood by Achilles: see N 1979.105-111.
§4n3. The argument of Phoenix is in turn undercut by his own story: see ibid.
§4n4. The topic of Patroklos as the ritual substitute and thereby the other self of Achilles has been examined extensively in N 1979.32-34, 292- 294; also Sinos 1980 and Lowenstam 1981.
§4n5. Cf. also Iliad XXIV 137, 139, 276, 502, 555, 579, 594, 686.
§5n1. In this connection I draw attention to the use of the word sêma to denote the device on a shield, that is, the images on a warrior's shield that convey his identity: see Euripides Electra 456, with reference to the Shield of Achilles. On the various sêmata in the Seven against Thebes of Aeschylus (e.g., 643), see Zeitlin 1982.
§5n2. See N 1979.113, 183.
§5n3. Cf. Muellner 1976.105-106; also N, pp. 109-110, 312.
§5n4. See Ch.8§41. That the dishonoring of Achilles by Agamemnon is a matter of Agamemnon's atê is already indicated by Achilles at Iliad I 412. That this atê was inflicted by Zeus is admitted by Achilles at XIX 270-274. In this same passage it is also made clear that the
atê of Agamemnon caused the anger of Achilles.
§5n5. The atê that is to befall Achilles is indicated at Iliad IX 502-512, where Phoenix tells of the atê that is to befall those who reject the Litai, goddesses of supplication personified (502-512). See Ch.8§42n1. The Litai are said to heal the atê committed by wrongdoers when these wrongdoers offer compensation for such atê (502- 507)--a reference to the atê that Agamemnon admits having committed and for which he stands ready to offer apoina 'compensation' (115-120, apoina at 120). In rejecting the Litai, one is rejecting the process whereby compensation can be awarded for damage suffered--and the word for 'damage' here is Atê personified (504, 505); compare the juridical attestations of atê in this sense, as discussed at Ch.8§42n1. The punishment for such refusal is another round of atê--this time suffered by the one who rejects the Litai
(510-512). For Achilles, this atê would be the death of Patroklos, who personally experiences
atê, at the moment of his death, in the form of an aberration of the senses (XVI 685-687;
804-806; atê at 805). At XIX 270-274, Achilles seems to realize that both he and Agamemnon have been afflicted with atê. On this passage Michel 1983.298-299 comments: "Achilles now realizes to his horror that what had seemed to be his own intention and resolve was really the mysterious will of the god working through him. That sickening sense of the temporary alienation of one's will is what the realization of one's own atê always involves."
§6n1. Iliad XVIII 506: amoibêdis de dikazon 'they took turns in rendering dikê [= judgment]'; the prize is to go to hos meta toisi dikên ithuntata eipoi 'the one among them who pronounces dikê in the straightest way' (508).
§7n1. The ideal king is described as 'sorting out the divine laws [= themis in the
plural]' (diakrinonta themistas Theogony 85) by way of his 'straight judgments [dikê in the plural]' (itheiêisi dikêisin Theogony86). We may compare the depiction of the ideal histôr 'arbitrator' on the Shield of Achilles as 'the one among them who pronounces dikê in the straightest way' (Iliad XVIII 508); see Ch.9§6n1.
§7n3. Note the wording of Theogony88-90: touneka gar basilêes echephrones, houneka laois | blaptomenois agorêphi metatropa erga teleusi | rhêïdiôs, malakoisi paraiphamenoi epeessin 'It is for this reason that there are kings, sound of mind, \| namely, because they can easily turn right around the [wrong] things | that are done to people who are wronged in the public assembly [agorâ]. | They can do it by persuasion, using soft words.'
§7n4. I have not followed the reading basileus' ereô of West 1978.205.
§7n5. Cf. West, pp. 205-206.
§7n6. This unsound dikê at Works and Days39, pronounced by kings who are described as dôrophagoi 'those who devour gifts' (ibid.; also 264), is mentioned again at Works and Days249 and 269 (cf. also 264); cf. N 1982.58-60.
§7n7. The ainos 'fable' of "The Hawk and the Nightingale" is told at Works and Days202-212. The hawk seizes the nightingale, described as an aoidos 'singer' (that is, 'poet': see Works and
Days208), on the premise that might makes right (I paraphrase 206, 207, 210), and he boasts of having the ultimate power of either releasing or devouring his victim (209). On the importance of this ainos, as a bird omen, in the overall structure of the Works and Days, see Ch.2§27n1.
§7n8. The "moral" of the fable becomes clear at Works and Days 274-285: Perses is urged to espouse dikê in the ultimate sense of 'justice' (275, 278, 279, 283), for those without it will devour each other like wild beasts (276-278). The parallel with the hawk, whose stance of might makes right corresponds to the stance of kings ( Ch.9§7n6), imposes itself. As for dikê in the ultimate sense of 'justice', I argue in N 1982.57-61 that dikê is 'judgment' in an immediate sense, as at Works and Days39, 249, 269( Ch.9§7n5), and that this 'judgment' becomes
'justice' (personified as the goddess Dikê, Works and Days256) only with the passage of time, under the supervision of the gods (Works and Days 217-218; cf. Solon F 4.14-16 W). Further, I argue (ibid.) that the Works and Days dramatizes the actual passage of time required for the workings of Dikê to take effect, so that the faulty 'judgment' of the kings (dikê at Works and Days 39, 249, 269) may be transformed eventually into the 'justice' of Zeus (dikê at Works and Days256, 275, etc.).
§8n2. N 1982.58.
§8n3. N, pp. 58-60.
§8n4. This time the verb dia-krînô is in the middle voice, whence the translation 'let us sort out for ourselves'; contrast the active voice of dia-krînô at Theogony85 (diakrinonta themistas), where the agent is the ideal king.
§8n5. Cf. N, p. 60; this view differs from that of West 1978.151, who tentatively retrojects to the life and times of Hesiod the testimony of Diodorus Siculus 4.29.4 about the rulers of Thespiai.
§9n1. On the correlation of ritual and ethical correctness, see N, p. 61.
§9n2. N, p. 60. For a comparative study of the theme of "ruler's truth," see Watkins 1979; cf. also Martin 1984.
§10n1. On this subject, cf. N 1983.198-203; cf. N 1979.120 §3n3.
§10n2. Further details in N 1982.52-53.
§10n3. This point about the nature of any theogony is argued in N, p. 56. A survey of theogonic traditions native to diverse societies of the world reveals that a basic function of a theogony is to confirm the authority that regulates a given social group. The authority figure of the king symbolically incorporates society in that the king embodies the community through his status as the very incarnation of the body politic. Cf. Ch.6§23.
§10n4. On the Panhellenism of the Hesiodic Theogony: N 1982.51-57.
§12n2. Cf. Ch.8§21, Ch.8§27 and following.
§12n3. Ibid.
§14n2. Ibid.
§14n3. The wording of Herodotus 2.99.1 is worth scrutiny: mechri men toutou opsis te emê kai gnômê kai historiê tauta legousa esti, to de apo toude Aiguptious erchomai logous ereôn kata ta êkouon: prosestai de ti autoisi kai tês emês opsios 'up to this point it is my opsis [= seeing] and gnômê [= judgment] and historiâ that is saying these things, but from this point onward I am going to tell the Egyptian accounts according to what I heard; to which will be added a portion that will be my own opsis'.
§14n4. Note again the wording of this passage, Herodotus 2.29.1: allou de oudenos ouden edunamên puthesthai, alla tosonde men allo epi makrotaton eputhomên, mechri men Elephantinês polios autoptês elthôn, to d' apo toutou akoêi êdê historeôn 'I was unable to ascertain anything from any other person [except the aforementioned], having gone as autoptês [= eyewitness] as far as the polis of Elephantine, but from there on conducting the historiâ by way of akoê [= hearing]'. Cf. Herodotus 2.123.1.
§14n5. Cf. Ch.9§1 and following,.
§14n6. Benveniste 1973.527 = 1969 II 278; this example is cited in the context of Benveniste's discussion of Latin superstes as a witness "who has his being beyond," one "who stands over the matter" (p. 526 = 1969 II 276).
§15n1. Benveniste, pp. 396-397 = 1969 II 119-122.
§15n2. Benveniste 1973.397-398 = 1969 II 121-122. See also Benveniste, pp. 389-392 = 1969 II 111-113 on this same word iûdex, a compound built from iûs in the sense of 'juridical formula' and from the root *deik- / *dik- as in dîcô 'say' (note the collocation iûs dîcere) or in the dic- of dicis causâ 'for the sake of proper form'. I should draw special attention to a derivative of dic-, in- dic-âre, the English borrowing of which, indicate, I have been using to translate Greek sêmainô. The Latin dîcô is cognate with Greek deik-nu-mi 'show, indicate, make manifest'; moreover, Latin dic- as in dicis causâ and in-dic-âre is cognate with Greek dikê 'judgment, justice'. In this light historiês apodexis 'the apo-deixis of the historiâ' in the prooemium of Herodotus becomes all the more pertinent.
§15n3. The pertinence of arbiter to histôr is brought up at a later point in Benveniste's discussion, 1973.442 = 1969 II 174-175, in another connection.
§15n4. I have in mind the oath expressions cited at Ch.9§1n5. We may also compare the invisible phulakes 'guardians' of Dikê 'justice' at Hesiod Works and Days124-126, as discussed in N 1979.153; also the theme of the Eye of Zeus at Works and Days267-269, as discussed in N
1983.42-43.
§15n5. Cf. Ch.8§21, Ch.8§27 and following.
§16n1. The derivation of eidos 'visible form' from the verb represented by the aorist *[usubcirc] id- of idein 'see' is pertinent to the semantics of historiâ as discussed at Ch.9§1 and following.
§16n2. The passage is quoted at Ch.8§2. Note again the etymological pertinence of Latin in-dic- âre, as discussed at Ch.9§15n2.
§16n3. Ch.6, Ch.7.
§17n1. Cf. Ch.8§1 and following.
§18n2. Ibid.
§18n3. Cf. Ch.8§36 and following.
§19n1. That the Lydians are characterized by what is habron 'luxuriant' is a theme also reflected in the epithet pod-(h)abros 'with a footstep that is luxuriant [habros]' applied to Croesus the Lydian in the oracular pronouncement at Delphi as quoted at Herodotus 1.55.2 (podabre). I suggest that the notion of foot in this epithet can refer not only to a graceful step but even to its corresponding mimesis, a graceful dance-step, as conveyed, for example, by the use of habrobatai in Aeschylus Persians 1073 (for the diction, cf. (habron bainousa palleukôi podi in Euripides Medea 1164; cf. also 830). For a possible reference to an ungraceful dance- step, as a mimesis of hubris, cf. Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannus 878.
§19n2. To quote from Herodotus 1.71.2: chôrên echontes trêchean 'having a harsh country'. On the detail of the leather clothing worn by the Persians before they became contaminated by the Lydians, at 1.71.2, cf. Ch.13§18.
§20n1. Phylarchus uses the expression eis truphên exôkeilan 'they [= the Colophonians] ran aground on truphê [= luxuriance]' (FGH 81 F 66). Elsewhere he uses the expression exokeilantes eis truphên 'running aground on truphê' in describing the luxuriance of the people of Sybaris (Phylarchus 81 F 45 in Athenaeus 521c). After this description Phylarchus uses the expression exokeilantes eis hubrin 'running aground on hubris' in describing the savage behavior of the people of Sybaris (81 F 45 in Athenaeus 521d): they had murdered the ambassadors of the people of Croton and cast out their corpses to be devoured by wild animals. That was the beginning of the misfortunes of Sybaris, reports Phylarchus, mênisantos tou daimoniou 'because of the anger [mênis] of the daimonion [= power of the daimôn]' (ibid.); the anger is manifested by portents: the statue of Hera vomits bile and a fountain of blood erupts in her shrine. In this story, as elsewhere, the luxuriance of a society goes hand in hand with a propensity to savage
behavior. For the nautical image of 'running aground on truphê / hubris', compare
Theognis855-856: the city often runs aground, like a veering ship, because of the degeneration of its élite. On the equivalence of habrosunê and truphê as 'luxuriance', see Knox 1984.
§20n2. The whole passage of Xenophanes as quoted by Phylarchus FGH 81 F 66 should be compared with a passage about the luxuriance of the Samians, ascribed to Asius and quoted by Duris of Samos FGH 76 F 60 in Athenaeus 525e-f.
§20n3. That this theme is linked ultimately with the ktisis 'foundation' / 'colonization' of Colophon is suggested by another text, Mimnermus F 9.3-4 W, where the actual colonizers of Colophon, the speaker included, are characterized as biên huperoplon echontes 'men of overweening violence [biê]' and hubrios hêgemones 'leaders of hubris'. Further discussion in N 1985.52-53.
§21n1. On the eventual domination of Colophon and Smyrna by Lydia, see Jeffery 1976.224-225. In his own narrative Herodotus chooses not to present these instances of the domination of Hellenes by previous tyrants of Lydia as equivalent to the later domination by
Croesus. The effect is to sharpen the parallelism between the Lydian Empire of Croesus and the Athenian Empire, on which theme see Ch.8§22 and Ch.10§50 and following.
§21n2. The sources that make this story explicit are Strabo 14.1.10 C647 and Athenaeus 525c. The disasters befalling Magnesia are compounded: apparently after their capture by the Ephesians, Magnesia was destroyed by the invading Cimmerians (Strabo ibid.). On the grounds that Callinus (F 3 W) mentions the Magnesians as still flourishing while Archilochus (F 20 W) refers to their misfortunes at the hands of their enemies, Strabo (ibid.) and Clement (Stromateis 1.131.7-8) reason that Callinus is an earlier poet than Archilochus. Such reasoning, perpetuated in latter-day scholarship on the Greek lyric poets, should be subject to doubt in view of the poetic device where the poet is presented as foreseeing a disaster that is yet to befall a community (on this theme see, for example, Solon F 9 W and the commentary in N 1985.45; also Theognis 39-52 and 1081-1082b, to be discussed immediately below).
§22n1. An important variant, Theognis39-52, is taken up in the discussion that immediately follows.
§22n2. On euthunô 'straighten, correct' in the sense of 'check the growth a plant, prune' as a metaphor for dikê 'justice', see N 1985.61; cf. Michelini 1978.
§22n3. See Ch.6§63, Ch.6§64; Ch.12§56.
§22n4. Ibid.
§22n5. The elite behave as follows: each of them strives eagerly for aretê 'excellence', and great hatreds break out as a result (again Herodotus 3.83.3). Compare Theognis401-406: the man who is too eager for aretê and seeks kerdos 'personal gain' commits a grave error: his divine punishment is that he thinks that kaka 'bad things' are agatha 'good' and the other way around. On kerdos as a potential aspect of hubris, see Theognis46 and 50; also 835, discussed at Ch. 10§3n1.
§22n6. See Ch.6§63 and following.
§23n1. Cf. the testimonia collected at Archilochus F 19 W, most notably Etymologicum Gudianum s.v. turannos, where we learn that the word turannos is derived from an epithet of Gyges as King of Lydia--a piece of information inferred apparently from the actual poetry of Archilochus. Also, I draw attention to the use of the word turannos for the title of Croesus as King of the Lydian Empire (e.g., Herodotus 1.6.1; cf. especially the use of turannis in the context of 1.14.1). As we shall see in detail later at Ch.10§5 and following, the supreme generosity of Croesus in his public display of material offerings to Apollo at Delphi (Herodotus 1.50.1-1.53-2) is a traditional theme in the epinician lyric poetry of Pindar and Bacchylides, directly compared to the generosity of Hieron as Tyrant of Syracuse. It is in this context that we can understand the non-pejorative application of the word turannos to Hieron, as in Pindar Pythian3.85, discussed in Ch.6§54 and following. It is also in this context that we can understand the naming of an otherwise unknown Athenian as Kroisos = Croesus, memorialized in an inscription at the base of a kouros-statue, on which see Ch.6§22n2.
§23n2. I say seemingly because we have to reckon with the political relations of Megara as mother city with its daughter cities, on which subject see Ch.2§37n1.
§23n3. In the context of Theognis681-682: Ch.6§6 and following; also Ch.6§63, Ch.6§66 and following.
§24n2. This other aspect has already emerged in the discussion at Ch.9§20n1 of Phylarchus 81 F 45, where the savagery of the people of Sybaris is parallel to their luxuriance.
§25n1. Cf. Apollodorus 2.5.4 (Pholos the Centaur eats his own portions of meat raw) and the comments at N 1985.51 §39n2.
§25n3. This image of savages seems to be a reflex of poetic traditions describing colonization, where the polis of transplanted Hellenes is surrounded by local barbarians: see Ch.2§37n1. In Theognis 53-68, the equation of ethically inferior citizens with sociopolitically inferior savages who threaten the polis from the outside (cf. N 1985.44 §29n4, 51 §39n2, 54) may convey a colonial point of view adopted from a daughter city on the coast of the Black Sea: see Figueira 1985.129.
§25n4. The luxuriance of the Persians is a dominant theme in the Persians of Aeschylus; cf. the use of habros and its derivatives at lines 41, 135, 1072.
§27n1. A survey of passages in N 1979:163. Cf. also, for example, Herodotus 3.80.4.
§27n2. On the ainos as a discourse with one code that bears at least two messages: Ch.6§6.
§27n3. For a detailed discussion of the hero cult of Protesilaos, see Boedeker 1988; some of her conclusions, reached independently, concerning the deployment of the Protesilaos story in the narrative of Herodotus coincide with those presented in N 1987c; the main points of the latter article are recast in what follows.
§27n4. See N 1985.76-77, 81 §79n1, especially with reference to the riddle in
Theognis1209-1210; see also Edmunds 1981, especially p. 223n8, with reference to Sophocles
Oedipus at Colonus 627 and other related passages involving oikos and its derivatives.
§27n5. Cf. Ch.6§6, Ch.6§66 and following. Cf. N 1985.22-24, 76-78. On ainigma 'riddle' as a derivative of ainos: N 1979.240-241.
§28n1. I translate tarîkhos generally as 'preserved' rather than specifically as 'dried', 'smoked', 'salted', or 'pickled'; that brine or salt is used for the process of tarîkheusis 'preservation' is evident from Herodotus 4.53.3 (also 2.77.4).
§29n1. Chantraine DELG 1094 s.v. tarîkhos allows for the possibility that this word is connected with tarkhuô. At p. 1095 s.v. tarkhuô, where he follows the evidence presented by Laroche 1958.98-99 and Heubeck 1959.32-35, Chantraine concedes that tarkhuô was a borrowing from an Indo-European language of Anatolia--whether that language be Hittite, Luvian, or Lycian. But here (p. 1095) he goes on to deny the connection that he mentioned as a possibility at p. 1094. On the meaning of tarkhuô, see N 1983b and Schein 1984.48. Cf. also Boedeker 1988.40-41.
§29n2. For tarîkhos/tarîkheuô as 'mummy/mummify', see especially Herodotus 2.85.2.89, with a detailed description of the process of mummification. Cf. also Plato Phaedo 80c.
§29n3. We may compare the everyday and the hieratic or mystical sense of olbios, as discussed at
§30n1. Lloyd 1976.354-355.
§30n2. Lloyd, p. 18, cites Herodotus 2.61, 2.86, 2.132, 2.170 , and 2.171. It seems that this mystical procedure was named after Osiris, the prototype of immortalization (ibid.).
§31n1. For more on this theme, see N 1985.68-81; also 1983.54n55. Again we may compare the everyday and the mystical meanings of olbios as discussed at Ch.8§45.
§32n1. I follow the edition of van Thiel 1974. In using this source, I have benefited from the advice of M. N. Nagler.
§32n2. See van Thiel 1974.178.
§32n3. On the mummy of Alexander, see Pfister II 422n33; also I 178, 192, 296; II 434-436, and
584. The tomb of Alexander at Alexandria was officially known as the Sêma 'Tomb': Strabo
17.1.8 C794. Also as Sôma 'Body': Alexander Romance 3.34.5. On the relationship of sêma
'tomb' and sôma 'body' in the context of Alexander's place of entombment in Alexandria, see van
Thiel 1074.195.
§32n4. See N 1979.189-192 for documentation; note too that both of these names are associated with the mystical theme of being struck by lightning. On the association, at Hesiod Works and Days172, of the word olbioi with the heroes who inhabit the Islands of the Blessed, see N
1979.170 §30n2.
§35n1. Yet even if the Hellenes were in the right, the way in which the Asians were in the wrong corresponds to the way in which the Athenian Empire was in the wrong: on this point see Ch. 10§50 and following.
§35n2. For more on this double meaning, see Sinos 1980:48-49 on Iliad XXIII 326 / 331; also N 1983:45-48.
§35n3. For the intervention of the hero into the present, through the medium of the ainos, see Ch. 6§87 and following.
§1. The paradigm of the tyrant in Herodotus is clearly a negative concept, serving as a foil for the moral message of historiâ. Yet in the case of the archetypal tyrant figure, Croesus the Lydian, the perspective is not exclusively negative. There are positive sides to the traditional concept of Croesus the Tyrant, and the balancing of his negative and positive sides in the historiâ of Herodotus has a striking parallel in the ainos of Pindar and Bacchylides. The parallel treatment of tyranny in ainos and historiâ illuminates the comparison of these two forms of discourse.
§2. Let us review the negative side. In the historiâ of Herodotus the hubris of Croesus the Lydian is implied even by his being the prototype of the Persians in wronging the Hellenes. Moreover, the luxuriance exhibited by Persians like Artauktes is supposed to be clearly a consequence of the Lydian heritage, and the testimony of archaic Greek poetry and song leaves no doubt that luxuriance is an aspect of hubris.
§3. But we have also seen that luxuriance does not by itself constitute hubris. True hubris is also marked by savagery, 1 as is clearly evident in the behavior of the Persians. 2 Here we can pause to consider a point in defense of Croesus: at least he is not characterized in the Histories as an exponent of savagery. Croesus and his Lydians are characterized by Herodotus as indeed luxuriant but not necessarily savage. Moreover, Croesus is nowhere in Herodotus described directly as a man of hubris, although the Lydian blames the god Apollo as aitios 'responsible' for his own calamities (1.87.3) in a manner that is characteristic of someone who has indeed committed deeds of hubris. 3 So too in the poetry of Theognis, men of hubris are apt to blame some god as aitios for the calamities they suffer, and the poet has to point out their error:
panta tad' en korakessi kai en phthorôi: oude tis hêmin aitios athanatôn Kurne theôn makarôn,
all' andrôn te biê kai kerdea deila kai hubris pollôn ex agathôn es kakotêt' ebalen
Theognis 833-836
Everything here has gone to the ravens and perdition. And not one of the immortal and blessed gods is
responsible [aitios] to us for this, Kyrnos,
but the violence [biê] of men and their baneful personal gains [kerdos plural] and their hubris 4
have plummeted them from their many good things into debasement. 5
§4. Such a poetic teaching, with its tragic ring, is surely appropriate to Croesus. In fact the Croesus story of Herodotus has often been compared with actual tragedy. 1 In this light the absence of any explicit characterization of Croesus as a man of hubris may remind us of the prerequisite formulated by Aristotle for an appropriate figure in tragedy as someone who is "intermediate" in a field of conflict between dikaiosunê 'righteousness' and its opposite (Poetics 1453a7-12).
§5. But there is yet another reason for the attenuation of any charge of hubris in the case of Croesus. The historiâ of Herodotus is following a pattern of indirectness that is strikingly parallel to the pattern found in the ainos, as exemplified by the epinician songs of Pindar and Bacchylides. We see already from the internal evidence of Herodotus' Histories a motivation for the indirectness in conveying the hubris of Croesus. With his untold wealth, Croesus is not only the most luxuriant of men: he is also the most generous. Specifically he outdoes everyone in his public display of material offerings to Apollo at Delphi (Herodotus 1.50.1-1.53-2); he reminds the god of this generosity when he is about to be incinerated by the flames of a funeral pyre that he had mounted for his public execution by the Persians (1.87.1). Then, as Croesus invokes the god, a sudden storm extinguishes the flames, and his captor Cyrus, recognizing that this prisoner is a man agathos 'noble' and philos 'dear' to the gods, spares his life (1.87.2).
§6. We have arrived at a specific point of thematic contact between the historiâ of Herodotus and the ainos of epinician poets like Pindar and Bacchylides. The generosity of Croesus is a traditional theme of epinician song, worthy of direct comparison with the generosity of the given patron who has commissioned the given epinician poem and who is destined to be praised in that poem. In Epinician 3 of Bacchylides, 1 for example, where the tyrant Hieron of Syracuse, the olbios 'blissful' son of Deinomenes (3.8), 2 is being praised as winner in the chariot race at the Olympic Games of 468 B.C., a special point is made about praising Hieron as tris-eu-daimôn 'thrice-fortunate' (3.10) for knowing how to display his wealth, which is greater than that of any other Hellene (3.10-14). 3 There follows a description of lavish offerings of gold made by Hieron
to Apollo at Delphi (3.15-21), 4 concluding with the following thought:
theon th[eo]n tis | aglaïzethô gar aristos olbôn
It is the god, yes, the god that everyone should glorify, for he is the best bliss [olbos] of them all. The transcendence of the god is being applied to a man's material wealth, making it transcendent as well: hence my translation of olbos here as 'bliss' rather than 'wealth'. 5 Immediately following this thought, the conjunction epei 'since' abruptly introduces the story of Croesus as if to validate the thought that olbos is indeed transcendent: Apollo is the very essence of olbos, the poem says, and the reason given is simply that once upon a time Apollo saved Croesus (epei pote kai Ludias achagetan...phulax' apollôn Bacchylides 3.23- 28). 6
§7. What follows is a detailed narrative that closely parallels that of Herodotus--up to a point. As in the narrative of Herodotus, the poem of Bacchylides likewise has Croesus about to be incinerated by the flames of the funeral pyre (3.29-35, 48-51). 1 Here too Croesus invokes Apollo (3.35-48), reminding him of his offerings at Delphi (3.38, in conjunction with 3.61-62). 2 Here too a sudden storm extinguishes the flames (3.53-56; in this version Zeus himself is pictured as sending the storm). After the rescue, however, we find an important additional theme in Bacchylides: Apollo kat[en]asse 'transported' Croesus, daughters and all, to the Land of the Hyperboreans (3.58-60). 3 This transporting of Croesus by Apollo formalizes the transcendence of olbos from the 'wealth' of this life to the 'bliss' of a timeless existence beyond death. In support of this interpretation, let us consider a striking analogue: when Zeus katenasse 'transported' the warriors who fought in the Theban and the Trojan War (Hesiod Works and Days168), he took them to the Islands of the Blessed (170-173), to be immortalized there as olbioi hêrôes 'blissful heroes' (172). 4
§8. The reward of Croesus, in being transported to the Land of the Hyperboreans, is on account of his eusebeia 'piety' (Bacchylides 3.61) 1 in that he gave the greatest offerings of all mankind to the Temple of Apollo at Delphi (3.61-62). The stage is set for the juxtaposition with Hieron: this tyrant in turn has given the most gold of all Hellenes to the Temple of Apollo at Delphi (3.63-66). Already in the initial description of Hieron's offerings at Delphi, the focus had been on the gleam of gold (3.17), 2 and it was this description that led directly to the thought that Apollo himself is the best olbos 'bliss' of them all (again 3.21-22). 3
§9. Later, gold is equated with the poetic celebration of Hieron's victory, as designated by the programmatic word euphrosunê 'mirth' (euphrosuna d' ho chrusos 3.87). 1 Gold is the visible sign of Hieron's own olbos (3.92), which is displayed in public by way of his consecrated offerings and by way of the poetic celebration (3.88-98). The piety of consecrating gold offerings to the god makes the wealth of Hieron a transcendent thing, olbos 'bliss', raising hopes that he
will be immortalized like Croesus. Gold, as an imperishable substance, is an ideal symbol for olbos as immortalization. 2 But the juxtaposition of Hieron and Croesus raises fears as well. At the moment when Hieron is called megainêtos 'he who receives great ainos' (3.64) in the context of being praised for giving more gold to Apollo than any other Hellene (3.63-66), we may be reminded that the poetic medium of the ainos has the power to convey implicit as well as explicit messages. 3 The juxtaposition with Croesus, who is being praised for giving more riches to Apollo than any other human in general (3.61-62), seems to warn implicitly as well as to praise explicitly. 4 We have learned from Herodotus that the olbos 'wealth' of Croesus, meant to be consecrated by way of magnificent offerings to Apollo, was instead destroyed because of the tyrant's implicit hubris. This part of the story is left unspoken in Bacchylides.
§10. We learn from Bacchylides on the other hand that the olbos of Croesus was indeed ultimately consecrated by an act of Apollo, but that this olbos was not material wealth: instead it took the form of the tyrant's being saved from the funeral pyre and being transported by Apollo to the Land of the Hyperboreans. The latter part of the story is in turn left unspoken in Herodotus: the good fortune of Croesus does not go beyond his being saved from the funeral pyre. Such an attenuated salvation of Croesus is still enough to vindicate him after all his sufferings as at least a man who is agathos 'good' and philos 'dear' to the gods (again Herodotus 1.87.2), but it is not enough to confer upon him the epithet of olbios in the transcendent sense of 'blissful'. For Herodotus, Solon's injunction--that one may call no one olbios until he is dead (1.32.7; 1.86.3)-- deprives Croesus of the title altogether: since he has lost all his wealth and since his salvation from the pyre does not transcend his mortal life, he is represented in the Histories as a man who is olbios 'wealthy' / 'blissful' in neither the material nor the transcendent sense. 1 This is as it should be in the narrative of Herodotus, who 'indicates' (= verb sêmainô: 1.5.3), in the mode of an ainos, 2 that Croesus was the first barbarian, within the span of knowledge ostensibly achieved by Herodotus, to have committed wrongdoing against Hellenes (1.5.3 in conjunction with 1.6.1-3).
§11. Conversely it is also as it should be that wherever Croesus is mentioned in the praise song of Bacchylides and Pindar--praise that is called ainos by the song--the stress is on the Lydian tyrant's positive side whenever he is being directly compared with the given patrons of the praise song. For example, when Bacchylides praises the tyrant Hieron of Syracuse, we hear of the aretê 'achievement' of Croesus (Bacchylides 3.90) in the context of that earlier tyrant's olbos (3.92). So also in Pindar's praise of Hieron, the aretê of Croesus is given due emphasis:
opithombroton auchêma doxas | oion apoichomenôn andrôn diaitan manuei | kai logiois kai aoidois. ou phthinei Kroisou philophrôn areta.
The proud declaration of glory that comes in the future is the only thing that attests, both for logioi
and for singers [aoidoi], 1 the life of men who are now departed; the philos-minded achievement
[aretê] of Croesus fails [= root phthi-] not. 2
Still the very suppression of the obviously well-known negative aspect of Croesus is in itself a sign or signal, an implicit warning of what can happen when olbos is perverted.
§12. Not only for Croesus but even for the very concept of turannos 'tyrant', praise song can stress the positive aspects whenever the song is actually praising a tyrant. In Pindar's Pythian3, for example, the poem has this to say to Hieron, Tyrant of Syracuse:
tin de moir' eudaimonias hepetai. | lagetan gar toi turannon derketai, | ei tin' anthrôpôn, ho megas potmos.
A portion of good fortune [eudaimoniâ] is attracted to [= verb hepomai] you. Great destiny looks at the turannos, if at any man, as the leader of the people [lâos].
Yet the very next thought is negative: even heroes like Peleus and Kadmos, who had the ultimate olbos in the immediate sense of 'material prosperity' olbon hupertaton 3.89), could not achieve an aiôn in the immediate sense of 'lifetime' that was asphalês 'secure' (3.86-87). 1 After a quick glimpse of these heroes' subsequent misfortunes (3.88-105), there follows another implicit warning of what can happen when olbos, in the sense of 'material prosperity', is perverted:
olbos {d'} ouk es makron andrôn erchetai | saos, polus eut' an epibrisais hepêtai
The prosperity [olbos] of humans does not go ahead, safe and sound, for a very long time, as it gets attracted [= verb hepomai] to them, with its full weight [epibrisais].
§13. In this context of material possessions, we must pay special attention to the last word of this passage, epibrisais from the verb epi-brîthô 'weigh heavily'. This verb is semantically parallel to the noun hubris, the etymology of which is recapitulated in these quoted words of Pindar concerning material prosperity, olbos, described as coming down with its full weight upon its owner: in the standard etymological dictionary 1 hubris is segmented etymologically as hu- / u- (hu- u-) in the sense of epi- (epi-) 'on, on top of' 2 plus root bri- (bri-) as in briaros (briaros) 'heavy, massive, solid, strong'. 3 The built-in connotations of hubris in this quoted Pindaric passage are reinforced by the following two parallels:
tiktei gar koros hubrin, hotan polus olbos hepêtai anthrôpois hoposois mê noos artios êi
For insatiability [koros] gives birth to hubris when much prosperity [olbos] gets attracted [= verb hepomai]
to men whose intent [noos] is not fit. 4
tiktei toi koros hubrin, hotan kakôi olbos hepêtai anthrôpôi kai hotôi mê noos artios êi
Theognis 153-154
Insatiability [koros] gives birth to hubris when prosperity [olbos] gets attracted [= verb
hepomai]
to a man who is base [kakos] and whose intent [noos] is not fit. 5
§14. The implicit warning about hubris in Pythian3 conveys the negative potential of any tyrant. But the use of the word turannos in this poem is clearly not negative, only ambivalent. In the poetic medium of Pindar, the word turannos is like the figure of Croesus, conveying overt positive aspects as well as latent negative ones. 1
§15. The positive aspects of turannos, as with the Lydian Croesus, have to do with the material security that allows the tyrant to be a paragon of generosity. But this material security, as we have seen, is at the same time an ambivalent conceit, conveyed by words like habros / habrotês 'luxuriant' / 'luxuriance'. 1 These words certainly apply to Croesus, who is actually called pod-(h) abros 'with luxuriant [= adjective habros] footsteps' by the Oracle of Apollo in the context of the god's implicitly foretelling the tyrant's doom (Herodotus 1.55.2). 2 We have already noted some other implicitly negative contexts of habros and its derivatives, 3 but we have yet to examine how these words too, like the themes of Croesus in particular and turannos in general, have an explicitly positive aspect as well. Turning back to Pindar's Pythian3, we note the following example in a passage that immediately follows the warning, quoted just now, about the perversion of olbos:
smikros en smikrois, megas en megalois | essomai, ton d' amphepont' aiei phrasin | daimon' askêsô kat' eman therapeuôn machanan. | ei de moi plouton theos habron orexai, | elpid' echô kleos heuresthai ken hupsêlon prosô
I will be small among the small, great among the great. 4 I shall practice my craft on the daimôn that occupies my mind, tending it in accordance with my abilities. And if the god should give me wealth [ploutos] that is luxuriant [habros], then I have the hope [elpis] of finding lofty kleos in the future.
Here then is yet another variation on a theme that we have already witnessed many times before: the song of the poem is making the admittedly pleasurable material security of the tyrant into a transcendent thing. There follows a quick glance at epic heroes like Nestor and Sarpedon, made famous by song (3.112-114), and then a coda about the transcendence of aretê 'achievement' through the efficacy of the poem:
ha d' areta kleinais aoidais | chronia telethei
And achievement [aretê] becomes enduring through songs of kleos
§16. In epinician song the word habros and its derivatives can in fact be so positive as to characterize the luxuriance that a victor earns and deserves as the fruit of his struggles, either in athletics or in war. It is in such a context that the kûdos 'emblem of victory' won by the victor is described as habron 'luxuriant':
hos d' amph' aethlois ê polemizôn arêtai kudos habron...
...but whoever, engaged in struggles for athletic prizes [aethloi] or fighting in a war, strives for and achieves [= verb ar-numai] 1 an emblem of victory [= kûdos] that is luxuriant [habron],... 2 Also, habros applies to the garland of myrtle won by the athlete Kleandros (Pindar Isthmian8.66). The words of praise spoken about victors who are already dead qualify for the same sort of description:
tima de ginetai | hôn theos habron auxei logon tethnakotôn
honor [tîmê] comes into the possession of those about whom the god magnifies the word [logos] of repute, so as to be habros, on the occasion of their death.
As for the living, we have just seen that the luxuriance deserved by the victor is manifested as ploutos, material security, which is likewise described as habros (again Pindar Pythian 3.110) and which is to be followed up by kleos, fame by way of song, in the future (3.111)--even after
death, as in the case of heroes (3.112-115). It is specifially the elpis 'aspiration' of the victor that he will gain kleos on the basis of ploutos that is habros (3.110-111). Thus the luxuriance conveyed by habros can apply not only to the victor's ploutos, which is transient, but also to the praise that he gets from song, which is transcendent. In the context of such transcendent luxuriance, elpis 'aspiration' makes the victor's thoughts soar beyond mere ploutos:
ho de kalon ti neon lachôn | habrotatos epi megalas | ex elpidos petatai | hupopterois anoreais, echôn | kressona ploutou merimnan. en d' oligôi brotôn, | to terpnon auxetai: houtô de kai pitnei chamai, | apotropôi gnômai seseismenon
But if one gets as his lot some beautiful new thing, in this time of great luxuriance [habrotês], 3 he soars at the impulse of aspiration [elpis], lifted high in the air by his acts of manliness, with his ambition [merimna] beyond material wealth [ploutos]. 4 The pleasure [terpnon] that mortals get waxes in a short space of time. And, just as quickly, it falls to the ground, shaken by adverse opinion. 5
In other words ploutos 'wealth' becomes a transcendent thing when it is enhanced by the
luxuriance earned through victory at the Games:
ho man ploutos aretais dedaidalmenos pherei tôn te kai tôn | kairon batheian hupechôn merimnan habroteran, 6 | astêr arizêlos, etumôtaton | andri phengos
Embellished with achievements [aretê plural], wealth [ploutos] gives scope for actions of every kind, 7 supporting an ambition [merimna] that is more luxuriant [habros]. 8 It [= the ploutos 'wealth'] is a preeminent star, the most genuine light for man.
§17. A quality inherent in the concept of habros 'luxuriant' that makes it transcend mere ploutos 'wealth' is that of sensuality. We see it in the application of habros to the beautiful body of Iamos (Pindar Olympian6.55) or to the seductive Hippolyta (Nemean5.26), who is described by this adjective in the specific context of a "Potiphar's Wife" story (having tried and failed to seduce Peleus, she then slanders him to her husband: 5.26-36; cf. Nemean4.54-65). We may even note a trace of this quality in the application of habros to the garland of myrtle blossoms won by the athlete Kleandros (Isthmian8.66). 1
§18. This inherent sensuality, even eroticism, of habros and its derivatives is most vividly attested in the compositions of Sappho. For Sappho, the adjective habros is the epithet of Adonis (F 140.1 V) 1 and of the attendants of Aphrodite, the Kharites (F 128 V), 2 while the adverb (h)
abrôs describes the scene as Aphrodite is requested to pour nectar (F 2.13-16 V). For Sappho,
(h)abrosunâ 'luxuriance' is a theme connected with 'lust for the sun':
egô de philêmm' abrosunan, [...] touto, kai moi to la[mpron erôs 3 aeliô kai to ka]lon le[l]onche
Sappho F 58.25-26 V
But I love luxuriance [(h)abrosunâ].... this,
and lust for the sun has won me brightness and beauty. 4
Sappho's theme of luxuriance is also connected with the concept of Lydia as a touchstone of sensuality. Contemplating the beauty of the girl Kleis, Sappho says that she would not exchange her even for all of Lydia (F 132.3 V). Of another girl she says that she would rather contemplate the sight of her lovely footsteps and her radiant face than the magnificence of the Lydian army in full array (F 16.17-20 V). The attractiveness of yet another girl, now turned woman, stands out amidst a bevy of Lydian women\fR;, much as the moon stands out amid surrounding stars (F 96.6-9 V). 5
§19. The Lydian connection brings us back to the negative theme: the quality of being habros, for all its attractiveness, has its built-in dangers. We have seen this negative theme in the story of the Colophonians: these men, in the words of Xenophanes, learned habrosunê 'luxuriance' from the Lydians (F 3.1-2 W), 1 and the misfortune of the turanniâ 'tyranny' that befell them was because of this (ibid.). 2 The luxuriance of the Colophonians, as we have also seen, was a manifestation of their hubris, which led to their utter ruin (Theognis 1103-1104), 3 as was also the case with such other formerly great cities as Magnesia and Smyrna (ibid.). 4 Even for Sappho, who declares that she loves (h)abrosunâ 'luxuriance' (F 58.25-26 V), the attractions of sensuality are not only foreign, as typified by the Lydians, but also dangerous: the Lydian army in full array may be a beautiful thing to behold, but it is also a threat--more overtly so than the lovely footsteps and radiant face of a pretty girl (F 16.17 V). 5 As recently argued, 6 the theme of luxuriance and its dangers must have figured in the lost final stanza of the celebrated ode by Sappho describing her reactions to a girl whose attention is being held by a godlike young man (F 31 V), and this theme is still to be found in the final stanza of the version by Catullus:
otium, Catulle, tibi molestum est, otio exsultas nimiumque gestis, otium et reges prius et beatas perdidit urbes
Luxuriance, 7 Catullus, is distressing to you.
In luxuriance you exult and are elated to excess. It is luxuriance that in times past caused the ruin of kings and cities. 8
The dangers of luxuriance apply also to that quintessentially sensuous centerpiece of the Sapphic
repertoire, the (h)abros Adonis (for the epithet, see again Sappho F 140.1 V). In the ideology of his cult the botanical luxuriance of Adonis leads to his own sterility and even doom. 9
§20. Dangerous as it is, however, luxuriance is a thing appreciated and celebrated by the transcending medium of song--even if the luxuriance makes a man's thoughts turn to tyranny. This theme is evident in Encomium 20B (SM) of Bacchylides, where the voice of the poet declares that no mortal has ever had access to complete olbos 'bliss' in his lifetime (20B.23-24). 1 With this thought in mind, the poet visualizes in the same poem the intoxicated lightheartedness of a symposium at the very moment when the singing and dancing get under way; it is in this setting that the poet's thoughts can converge on wealth, sensuality, and tyranny:
ô barbite, mêketi passalon phulas[sôn] | heptatonon l[i]guran kappaue garun: | deur' es emas cheras: hormainô ti pemp[ein] | chruseon Mousan Alexandrôi pteron | kai sumpos[iai]sin agalm' [en] eikades[sin], | eute neôn ha[palon] glukei' ananka | seuomenan kulikôn thalpêsi
thumon, | Kupridos t' elpis <di>aithussêi phrenas, | ammeignumena Dionusioisi dôrois: | andrasi d' hupsotatô pempei merimnas: | autika men poliôn krademna luei, | pasi d' anthrôpois monarchêsein dokei. | chrusôi d' elephanti te marmairousin oikoi, | purophoroi de kat' aiglaenta ponton | naes agousin ap' Aiguptou megiston | plouton: hôs pinontos hormainei kear.
Lyre, do not stay hanging on the peg, holding back your resonant seven-stringed sound. Come into my hands as I ponder what to send from the Muses to Alexander--something golden and winged--an adornment for symposia, in the last ten days of the month, when the sweet compulsion of jostling drinking-cups warms the heart of the young and makes it delicate, and when the aspiration for Aphrodite rushes through one's inner feelings, mixed with the gifts of Dionysus. It sends ambitions [merimna plural] 2 to the uppermost heights for men; straightway it undoes the protective headbands of cities, and it thinks that it will be monarch [monarkhos] over all mortals. 3 Buildings gleam with gold and ivory, and throughout the shining sea there are
wheat-bearing ships carrying the greatest wealth [ploutos] from Egypt. Such things it is that the
heart of the drinking man ponders. 4
Elsewhere too thoughts of sensuality and tyranny converge. Let us consider the following words of Simonides, in light of the well-known verse of Mimnermus in praise of sensuality, quoted immediately thereafter:
tis gar hadonas ater thnatôn bios potheinos ê poia turannis; | tasd' ater oude theôn zêlôtos aiôn
What life of mortals, or what tyranny [turannis], is to be yearned for, if it is to be without pleasure [hêdonê]? Without it, even the lifetime [aiôn] of the gods is not to be envied. 5
tis de bios, ti de terpnon ater chrusês Aphroditês:
What is life, what is pleasurable, without golden Aphrodite?
In the poetry of Archilochus we can detect an analogous theme: luxuriance and sensuality are attributes of not just any tyranny but Lydian tyranny in particular. The poet quotes a speaker as saying:
ou moi ta Gugeô tou poluchrusou melei, oud' heile pô me zêlos, oud' agaiomai
theôn erga, megalês d' ouk ereô turannidos: apoprothen gar estin ophthalmôn emôn
I do not care about the possessions of Gyges rich in gold. Envy has not yet taken hold of me. And I am not indignant
about what the gods do. Nor do I lust after great tyranny [turannis]. For it is far away from my eyes. 6
In connection with Gyges, Tyrant of Lydia, Herodotus in fact testifies that Archilochus 'continued
the memory [= root mnê-]' of a story told about Gyges (epemnêsthê 1.12.2)--presumably the same story that is narrated with such sensual gusto in the Histories of Herodotus: how Gyges acquired the basileia 'kingship' 7 of Lydia by winning the sexual favors of the Queen of Lydia (1.8.1-1.12.2). 8 This poetic theme, the memory of which is continued by Archilochus and, after him, by Herodotus, is made directly pertinent to the story of Croesus' misfortunes, which as we have seen is central to the Histories of Herodotus: the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi says that the usurpation committed by Gyges, that is, his political acquisition of the Lydian Empire and his sexual acquisition of the Lydian queen, calls for a tisis 'retribution' that will befall the fifth tyrant in the dynasty started by Gyges (1.13.1-2). This fifth tyrant turns out to be Croesus
(1.15.1-1.16.1; 1.26.1). 9 For Herodotus, the continuity from Gyges to Croesus is a matter of thematic development, not just genealogy, in that Gyges serves to prefigure Croesus. This earlier Tyrant of Lydia, like Croesus, makes generous offerings to Apollo at Delphi (1.14.1-2); 10 moreover, he too attacks the cities of the Hellenes in Asia Minor--in this case Miletus, Smyrna,
and Colophon (1.14.4). 11 Most important of all, the story of Gyges, like that of Croesus, manifests signs of hubris that set the theme for the overall narrative of the Histories. In the story of the tyrant Gyges, the hubris is manifested in an unrestrained sensuality that goes hand in hand with unrestrained political power. To repeat the essence of the tale: Kandaules, the tyrant whose queen and empire Gyges acquired, had a lust so great--ostensibly for the queen--that thinking her to be the most beautiful of all women, he was seized by a compulsion to reveal her naked to his trusted bodyguard, Gyges (1.8.1). Such is the legacy of tyrants, usurped by Gyges. It should come as no surprise then that the word erôs is used in the Histories of Herodotus only in two senses: sexual desire and the desire for tyranny. 12 Tyranny, as the daughter of the tyrant Periandros of Corinth observes in the Histories, has many erastai 'lovers' (3.53.4). 13
§21. Having seen that epinician song has the capacity both to appreciate the sensuality of the wealth inherent in victory and to warn against its perversion, we should not be surprised that, in the one attested Pindaric instance where the song explicitly warns against tyranny, it does so while all along promoting the ideals of moderation in a language that clearly espouses sensuality:
theothen eraiman kalôn, | dunata maiomenos en halikiai. tôn gar ana polin heuriskôn ta mesa makroterôi | {sun} olbôi tethalota, memphom' aisan turannidôn: | xunaisi d' amph' aretais tetamai: ...ph 1 ei tis akron helôn hêsuchai te nemomenos ainan hubrin | apephugen, melanos [lxub ]d'[rxub ] an eschatian kalliona thanatou <steichoi> glukutatai geneai | euônumon kteanôn kratistan charin porôn
May I lust for beauty that comes from the gods, 2 as I seek out in my own age that which is possible. As I search throughout the city, I find that the middle way flourishes with bliss [olbos], which is far more lasting than anything else. I find fault with the lot of tyrannies [turannis plural]. Instead, I exert myself by aiming for achievements [aretê plural] that are for the common benefit. (...) Whoever attains the highest point and cultivates it serenely, such a man escapes terrible outrage [hubris], attaining an ultimate goal that surpasses black death with its beauty, leaving behind for his beloved descendants a gratification [kharis] that confers a good name--a kharis that is the most precious of possessions. 3
I may add in passing that this same poem of Pindar makes a fleeting mention of Troy, in the
context of its ultimate doom, with words that convey the sensuality of both the city and the woman on whose account it was destroyed:
epei amph' Helenai purôthentas | Trôôn eluse domous habrotatos
...after he [= Agamemnon] destroyed Troy's edifice of luxuriance [habrotês], incinerated because
Figures of myth, such as Helen of Troy, provide unambiguously negative paradigms for warning against the perversion of olbos 'bliss'. Let us take the specific example of Ixion:
emathe de saphes. eumenessi gar para Kronidais | glukun helôn bioton, makron ouch hupemeinen olbon, mainomenais phrasin | Hêras hot' erassato, tan Dios eunai lachon | polugathees: alla nin hubris eis auatan huperaphanon | ôrsen: tacha de pathôn eoikot' anêr | exaireton hele mochthon
He [= Ixion] learned his lesson, and a clear one it was. For, receiving a life of pleasure from the kindly disposed children of Kronos [= Zeus and his siblings], he did not, in his crazed mind, await expectantly his great bliss [olbos], as he conceived a lustful passion for Hera, whose bed of delights was for Zeus alone to share. But outrage [hubris] propelled him into conspicuous derangement [atê]. The man quickly got his just deserts, suffering exceptional distress.
In this case man's perversion of olbos is manifested in sensual extravagance, the violation of sexual norms. For an analogous case of crime and punishment, we may compare the example of Tantalos:
ei de dê tin' andra thnaton Olumpou skopoi | etimasan, ên Tantalos houtos: alla gar katapepsai | megan olbon ouk edunasthê, korôi d' helen | atan huperoplon, han toi patêr huper | kremase karteron autôi lithon, | ton aiei menoinôn kephalas balein euphrosunas alatai. | echei d' apalamon bion touton empedomochthon
If ever there was a mortal man who was honored by the guardians of Olympus [= Zeus and his gods], it was this one, Tantalos. But he was not able to digest his great bliss [olbos], and, with his insatiability [koros], he got an overwhelming derangement [atê], 5 which the Father hung over his head in the form of an unyielding rock, which he [= Tantalos] forever seeks to dodge, as he keeps missing out on mirth [euphrosunê]. 6 And he has this irremediable life of everlasting distress.
Having given the general reason for the punishment of Tantalos, his failure 'to digest his great
bliss [olbos]', the poem proceeds to give the specific reasons: Tantalos stole and distributed to the other members of his symposium the nectar and ambrosia that the gods had given to him alone (Pindar Olympian1.60-64). Earlier the poem had entertained and then denied another possible version, according to which Tantalos had given the unsuspecting gods the flesh of his own son, Pelops, to eat (47-53). The expression katapepsai megan olbon ouk edunasthê 'he was not able to digest his great olbos' (55) covers both versions in that the perversion of olbos by Tantalos entails in either case a violation of dietary norms, 7 just as the perversion of olbos by Ixion entails
a violation of sexual norms (again Pythian2.26-29). 8
§22. The story of Tantalos, attested already in such early traditions as the Cycle (e.g., Nostoi F 10 Allen in Athenaeus 281b), is especially important for this entire presentation because it helps us understand how the story of Croesus, as applied both in epinician song and in the Histories of Herodotus, is closer to home than we may at first have imagined. The initial impression of Croesus the Lydian as the quintessential foreigner, an oriental potentate who is supposedly the antithesis of what it means to be a Hellene, comes into question as we begin to consider in more detail the myth of Tantalos, the earliest Lydian of them all. Son of the god Zeus himself and of a mortal woman called Ploutô, wealth incarnate (Pausanias 2.22.3), 1 Tantalos ruled over a land rich in gold, stretching from Lydia to Phrygia and the Troad (Aeschylus Niobe TGF 158, 162, 163). The Lydian dynasty of Tantalos was short-lived, however: his son, Pelops, was deposed and driven out by 'Ilos the Phrygian' (Pausanias 2.22.3). This Ilos, son of Tros and brother of Ganymede, had gone to Phrygia and founded Ilion--that is, Troy--at a spot known as the Hill of Atê (Apollodorus 3.12.2-3); 2 he is the same Ilos reported to be worshipped by the Trojans as their cult hero in the Iliad (e.g., X 415). 3 As for Pelops, Herodotus has the Persian king Xerxes referring to him as a mere vassal of the mighty empire inherited by the Persians, and Xerxes even calls him 'Pelops the Phrygian' (pelopos tou phrugos Herodotus 7.8. g. 1, Pelops ho Phrux 7.11.4). From the Persian point of view, then, Pelops is an antecedent of such figures as Midas the Phrygian (named, for example, in Herodotus 1.14.2)--not to mention Croesus the Lydian.
§23. But Xerxes also takes note that this same Pelops, this 'slave' of the predecessors of Xerxes (doulos Herodotus 7.11.4), had conquered the Peloponnesus, which was named after him (again 7.11.4). Moreover, the Persian king's arrogant appropriation of Pelops and hence of the Peloponnesus is actually based on a Hellenic myth to the effect that Pelops was indeed a Lydian (ludou pelopoW, Pindar Olympian1.24, Ludos hêrôs Pelops, Olympian9.9), who was ousted from his homeland and emigrated to the Peloponnesus (in Pindar's words the Peloponnesus is the apoikiâ 'colony' of Pelops: Olympian1.24). 1 This myth, from the vantage point of the Histories of Herodotus, is particularly suited to Sparta, the Hellenic city-state that came to dominate the Peloponnesus and was the foremost of all Hellenic states on the Mainland to establish an alliance with Lydia. As Herodotus observes, most of the Peloponnesus was under the domination of Sparta at the time when Croesus sought the alliance of this city-state (êdê de sphi kai hê pollê tês Peloponnêsou ên katestrammenê 1.68.6), and in fact the narrative of Herodotus attributes the alliance to the premise, accepted by Croesus, that Sparta was decidedly the foremost city of all Hellas (1.69.2 and 1.70.1). 2 Whether or not we may view this premise as a historical fact, it is certainly presented as such in the Histories of Herodotus. 3 In any case, it is indeed a historical given that the Lydian connection was formalized politically in the alliance between Sparta and Lydia (as also in earlier contacts: Herodotus 1.69.3-4). Moreover, the same Lydian connection was formalized ideologically in the myth about the colonization of the Peloponnesus by Pelops the Lydian.
§24. This is not to say that the myth about a Lydian founder of the Peloponnesus was invented out of nothing by the Spartans in order to justify their Lydian policy. The alien--that is to say, Lydian--identity of Pelops was a theme appropriated by the Spartans as validation of their Lydian
contacts: if Sparta's self-image is to be glorious, then its Lydian contacts are also glorious. But the actual theme of a Lydian Pelops was not invented ad hoc for the Lydian policy of Sparta: rather it was inherited from an earlier phase of Hellenic history and myth making--the era of the colonization of Asia Minor and the transplanting of native myths and rituals from the Mainland. 1
§25. From the standpoint of the Greek cities of Asia Minor, the tomb of Tantalos is on Mount Sipylos, overlooking the city of Smyrna (Pausanias 2.22.3; cf. 5.13.7, 7.24.13, 8.17.3). 1 Already in the Iliad, the realm of Tantalos is visualized in the environs of Mount Sipylos, as we see from the details of the reference to his daughter Niobe (XXIV 615). 2 Yet other evidence suggests that these figures of Tantalos and his family were originally native to the Peloponnesus; one version, for example, locates his place of origin as Argos (Hyginus Fables 124). 3 There was a tradition native to the city of Argos, a tradition reported but not accepted by Pausanias, to the effect that the bones of Tantalos were actually kept in Argos (2.22.2). 4 The Argives had another tradition, again reported but not accepted by Pausanias, that not all the children of Niobe died at the hands of Apollo and Artemis: two of them, Chloris and Amyklas, had been saved by Leto, and the statue of Chloris was housed in the sanctuary of Leto at Argos (2.21.9-10). 5 It seems that from the Argive point of view Tantalos and his family never left the Peloponnesus. 6 Since the location of a hero's bones was the ultimate test of his authentic affinities to any given place, 7 this native Argive tradition, in claiming the bones of Tantalos, father of Pelops, was in effect asserting the right of Argos to dominion over the Peloponnesus. Thus the Spartan adoption of an alternative tradition, appropriate to the Hellenic colonizations of Asia Minor, serves a dual purpose. First, the localization of Tantalos and his tomb at Sipylos, a region associated with the Lydian Empire, would negate any direct Argive claim to dominion over the Peloponnesus, which would have been based on the notion that Tantalos as father of Pelops is the symbolic progenitor of political power, of dynasty itself, in the Peloponnesus. Second, such a localization serves the interests of Sparta, the rival of Argos, in drawing attention to the alliance of the Lydian Empire with Sparta. 8
§26. The fact remains, however, that Lydia is a foreign concept to all Hellenes, and that the founder of the Peloponnesus, Pelops, is also conceived as foreign. This aspect of the myth of Pelops, that he is a foreigner, serves to illustrate an important lesson of myth: it is the paradox that whatever is alien is also native. The message of such a paradox is at the same time reassuring and disquieting. Let us consider the positive aspect first. It is surely reassuring to think that whatever is threatening, alien, can really be understood as familiar, native. To be ethnocentric is to explain, rationalize, and motivate the alien or the Other in terms of the native or the Self, and the ethnocentrism of the Hellenes is no exception to this general anthropological pattern. 1 When Hellenes come into contact with cultures that appear more prestigious by reason of greater antiquity or greater achievement, a typical response of their Hellenocentrism is to establish links with such cultures genealogically. 2 Thus the city-state of Argos, for example, claims as its founder an "Egyptian" named Danaos, twin brother of Aiguptos, who emigrated from Egypt on the first ship ever built (Apollodorus 2.1.4; Hesiod F 129 MW; cf. Aeschylus Suppliants 318 and following; also Herodotus 2.91.5). 3 Also, the city-state of Thebes claims as its founder a "Phoenician" named Kadmos, brother of Phoinix and of Europa (Apollodorus 3.1.1; cf.
Herodotus 2.49.3, 5.57.1). 4 In both these cases the prestige of civilizations that are considered by the Hellenes to be older and superior is being appropriated by city-states in rivalry with each other for the sake of their own self-advancement and self-reassurance. In these particular cases the myths of Argos and Thebes can be contrasted with the claim of Athens that its population is so ancient as to be autochthonous (e.g., Euripides Ion 20-21, 29-30; Plato Menexenus 245d; cf. Herodotus 1.56.3). 5 We may compare the claim, compatible with Sparta, that Pelops, founder of the Peloponnesus, migrated there from Lydia (e.g., Pindar Olympian1.24) 6 or from Phrygia (Herodotus 7.8 g. 1, 7.11.4). 7 So much for the positive side of the equation "alien is native." On the negative side, however, this equation raises anxieties about whatever is native, familiar, just as it lowers them about whatever is alien. The threats that come from without can, according to this equation, really come from within.
§27. The negative lesson inherent in the equation "alien is native" is illustrated by the Dionysus myth, as dramatized in the Bacchae of Euripides. 1 In this myth the newcomer Dionysus is perceived by the Hellenic citizens of Thebes as if he were the ultimate foreigner, and yet he turns out to be a native son: he is on his mother's side a grandson of Kadmos, founder of Thebes. As the myth of Dionysus evolves through the ages, it keeps attracting features that characterize what is perceived as foreign to each passing age of Hellenism; what remains a constant is simply the foreignness of the figure, and it is this foreignness that is paradoxically native to him. Moreover, it is an old theme that he is always new: the structure keeps asserting that it is very new, when it is in reality very old. When the foreign is negative, it is perceived as very new; when the foreign is positive, it is recognized as very old. Since the myth of Dionysus keeps stressing the god's newness, experts in the history of Greek religion were used to thinking of him as a new import-- until the name of Dionysus was discovered on a Linear B tablet dating back to the second millennium. 2 The delusions about the god go all the way back to Pentheus himself, a grandson of Kadmos on his father's side: this hero commits the ultimate mistake in not recognizing a fundamental message of the myth, that whatever he thought was alien to himself was really part of himself. 3 Dionysus seems to be new, not old, but he is in fact both old and new from the standpoint of the myth; similarly he seems to be alien, not native, but he is in fact both native and alien from the standpoint of the myth.
§28. Wine, a primary feature of Dionysus, brings together the outsider and the insider. As we have just read in a poem of Bacchylides (Encomium 20B.1-16), 1 the intoxication of
symposiasts--which is the gift of Dionysus--induces an elpis 'aspiration' for Aphrodite that sends
the mind soaring with sensual reveries of tyranny, of gold and ivory, of ships sailing home with all manner of riches from foreign lands (in this case from Egypt). 2
§29. Another example of the negative lesson inherent in the equation "alien is native" is to be found in the myth of Adonis. The name itself, a Semitic borrowing, 1 has encouraged historians of Greek religion to think of the entire myth of Adonis as a borrowing--a transformation of the myths of the Phoenician Eshmun, the Syrian Tammuz, and the Sumerian Dumuzi. 2 Yet the myths of these related figures do not correspond closely to the Greek myth of Adonis, and Marcel Detienne can make a good case for the proposition that the structure of the Greek story is in fact
autonomous. 3 It is simply that the story requires for its central character a figure who counts as an outsider. Thus the role of the outsider, a role that is really inside the tradition, attracts genuinely foreign features to reinforce itself. It even absorbs a foreign name to highlight its "foreign" identity. 4 I cite the formulation of Detienne in his attempt to grasp the essence of Adonis: 5
His quality of being oriental is linked to the way in which the Greeks represented the Orient--an Orient so close and yet so far away. Here was a world where the refinements of civilization and the enjoyment of the most dissolute pleasures promoted a style of life characterized by softness and sensuality. To take on the role of seducer and effeminate lover, to bring to life the persona of a young boy whom the search for pleasure ultimately condemned to a premature old age, what was needed was a daimôn whose traits were vague enough to get lost in this image of the Orient which the Greeks had made for themselves. Besides, only a foreign daimôn could represent the Other so overtly within the Greek system of thought. Only an oriental force-field could assume, to such an extent, a radical negation of the values represented by Demeter on both the religious and the political levels.
§30. Let us sum up then the impact of the message "alien is native" in the myth of Pelops. A threatening connection with Lydians, with the Other, is really not so threatening at all for Sparta, since the first Lydian sired Pelops, founder of the homeland, who in turn was paternal grandfather of Menelaos, local hero of Sparta. On the other hand the threat itself is not neutralized: the converse of "alien is native" is that the reassurance to be found in things native can lead to self- deception since the threats associated with things foreign, such as luxuriance, can in fact come from within.
§31. This two-way Spartan view of Lydia extends to other aspects of their institutions. A prominent example can be found in the traditions of singing and dancing at Sparta, as represented by the poet Alcman. The compositions attributed to such a figure are integral to the ritual complex of Spartan festivals. 1 The tradition specifies, in the case of Alcman, that this poet's provenience is Lydia (PMG 13a; also PMG 1 Scholion B; Velleius Paterculus 1.18.2; Aelian Varia Historia 12.50), and this detail can be correlated with the fact that there were Spartan rituals that centered on Lydian themes, such as the event known as tôn ludôn pompê 'Procession of the Lydians' in connection with the cult of Artemis Orthia (Plutarch Life of Aristides 17.10). We may compare an event known as the 'Dance of the Lydian Maidens' at a festival of Artemis at Ephesus (Autocrates F 1 Kock, by way of Aelian De natura animalium 12.9; Aristophanes Clouds599-600). 2 In this case, it seems clear that the term 'Lydian Maidens' designates a ritual role played by the local girls of Ephesus. 3 To return to the subject of Alcman: the pattern "alien is native" operates not only in terms of the official Spartan characterization of Alcman as a Lydian but also within his songs: luxuriance, for example, is represented by the songs of Alcman as a characteristically Lydian thing. 4 Indeed the songs themselves are well known for their characteristic luxuriance. We may apply here what we already know from other attestations that we have just surveyed: the luxuriance typified by the Lydians is an implicit threat from within, not just an explicit threat from without.
§32. Which leads us to a question: was the theme of affinity between Hellenes and Lydians
initiated by the Hellenes of Asia Minor as an ideological justification of their Lydian contacts or by the Lydians to legitimize their eventual hegemony over the Hellenes of Asia Minor and their alliance with other Hellenes, especially the Spartans? The answer cuts both ways.
§33. To begin, let us take one more look at the story of Herodotus about Croesus the Lydian: we have already noted that this foreigner is in fact part of a Hellenic story pattern, bearing an implicit message of admonition for all Hellenes. We have also noted that for the Hellenic audience of Herodotus the affinities of Pelops the Founder with the Lydians make Croesus a figure as familiar as he is foreign.
§34. In the Histories of Herodotus, however, we can see the pattern of familiarity extended even further to include the Persians themselves. To understand how this is done, let us consider the genealogical background. Tradition has it that the dynasty of Pelops was preceded by the dynasty of Perseus, father of Alkaios, grandfather of Amphitryon, and thus nominally great-grandfather of Herakles (e.g., Apollodorus 2.4.5). Since Alkaios had married a daughter of Pelops (Hesiod F 190.6-8 MW), this genealogy has Herakles as great-grandson of both Perseus and Pelops. Perseus was also father of Sthenelos, grandfather of Eurystheus (F 190.11- 12); 1 the dynasty of Perseus ended with this Eurystheus, the infamous figure who stood in the way of any eventual kingship for Herakles (Iliad XIX 95-133). 2 After Eurystheus, the dynasty of Perseus is replaced by the dynasty of Pelops, father of Atreus and Thyestes, grandfather of Agamemnon and Menelaos. In the actual sequence of ruling kings, the rule of Eurystheus is followed by that of Atreus and Thyestes (e.g., Apollodorus Epitome 2.11). 3 The dynasty of Pelops is in turn replaced by the Hêrakleidai 'sons of Herakles', who represent the ancestors of the Dorian dynasties who took over the major political centers of the Peloponnesus in the Dark Age (Tyrtaeus 2.12-15W; Pindar Pythian1.61-66, 5.69-72; Isthmian9.1-3; cf. Herodotus 9.26,
27.1-2). The two most prominent Herakleidai, great-grandsons of Hyllos, the son of Herakles
who killed Eurystheus (e.g., Apollodorus 2.8.1), are Temenos, founder of the royal dynasty of Argos (Theopompus FGH 115 F 393), and Aristodemos, whose two sons Eurysthenes and Prokles are co-founders of the dual royal dynasty of Sparta (Herodotus 6.52.1, Pausanias 2.18.7). 4 Eurysthenes is the forefather of the royal line of the Agiadai ( Herodotus 4.147, 6.52, 7.204; Pausanias 3.1.7), while his twin Prokles is the forefather of the royal line of the Eurypontidai
( Herodotus 6.52.1, 8.131.2). Thus in the case of Sparta a historical figure like King Leonidas can
trace his genealogy all the way back to Herakles: he is thirteen generations removed from Agis, son of Eurysthenes, son of Aristodemos, great-grandson of Hyllos, son of Herakles (Herodotus 7.204). Likewise in the case of Argos, the dynasty of the Herakleidai was still a concept to be reckoned with in the early fifth century, at the time of the Persian War, as we see from an explicit comparison in Herodotus 7.149.2 of the two kings of Sparta with the one king of Argos. 5 From the standpoint of either Sparta or Argos, then, the Herakleidai or "Sons of Herakles" represent a reestablishment of the dynasty of Perseus. In other words both Sparta and Argos have legitimate genealogical claims to dominion over the Peloponnesus by way of their respective dynasties in that both cities can trace their kings back to Hyllos, son of Herakles and descendant of the House of Perseus.
§35. With this genealogical background we come finally to the myth of a Persian affinity with Hellenes. In seeking the cooperation of the city-state of Argos, the Persian king Xerxes sends the
Argives a messenger promising to treat them as superior to all others and claiming as the basis of the Persians' offered friendship the common ancestry of Argives and Persians: they both can trace themselves all the way back to Perseus, he claims, in that Perseus had yet another son, named Perses, who was ancestor of all Persians (Herodotus 7.150.1-2 in conjunction with 7.61.3). The Persians could have said the same thing to the Spartans in that Sparta, just like Argos, preserved a dynasty of Herakleidai, but the enmity of Persia and Sparta was at this point already set, even serving as the actual premise for the Persian overture to Argos.
§36. The Lydians, under the dynasty that preceded the reign of Gyges, might have said something very similar to what the Persians are saying here to the Argives: from the standpoint of their foreign relations with Hellenes, the dynasty of Kandaules, Tyrant of Lydia, was a dynasty of Herakleidai 'Heraclids' (hêrakleideôn Herodotus 1.7.1) in that Kandaules claimed to be the descendant of one Alkaios, son of Herakles (Herodotus 1.7.2). 1 This dynasty of Herakleidai was overthrown later by Gyges, ancestor of Croesus (Herodotus 1.7.2-1.14.4).
§37. It would be simplistic to suppose that such a genealogy was invented in a vacuum. Instead it would make more sense to infer that the Lydians were in this case drawing upon the ethnocentric thought patterns of their Hellenic neighbors. This is not to say that the Lydians could not or did not effect changes, even radical ones, in contemporary Greek thought patterns. In that myth making is a social phenomenon, the domination of a given society by, say, Lydian dynasts can be expected to have an effect on the myths of that society. The process of reshaping myths must take place in terms of the myths themselves.
§38. To pursue the argument that the Lydian dynasts, by way of calling themselves Herakleidai, were drawing upon the ethnocentric thought patterns of their Hellenic neighbors, let us consider a myth ascribed by Herodotus to the Greeks who settled the regions of the Pontos (Hellênôn...hoi ton Ponton oikeontes 4.8.1): according to this myth the barbarian natives of these regions, the Scythians, can be traced back genealogically to the sexual union of Herakles himself with a half- woman, half-snake (4.8-10). No doubt this myth contains native Scythian elements, 1 but it has been appropriated and reshaped by and for Hellenes. It need not matter whether or not we know which side initiated the appropriation, the Hellenes or the Scythians. After all, myth is a matter of communication, and it is more important to recognize that we are dealing with a dialogue between two distinct societies than to ascertain which society initiated the dialogue. Moreover, if a given myth serves as dialogue between two distinct societies, it can speak to both even when it is expressed from the standpoint of one. For a Scythian to accept the Hellenic standpoint of the myth under consideration is the same thing as accepting--or offering--a token of some level of relationship with Hellenes. In this case we cannot be specific about the nature of the relationship. In the case of the Lydians, however, the situation is more clear. The Lydians, in asserting their hegemony over neighboring Hellenes, adopt a Hellenocentric viewpoint to establish this relationship. The earlier dynasty of Lydia does this by claiming descent from Herakles, thus appropriating a prestige that is commensurate with that of dynasties of the Peloponnesus that are direct heirs to the heroic age of Hellas. As for the Lydian dynasty after the Herakleidai, starting with Gyges and ending with Croesus, it seems to have taken an ethnocentric stance in its own right by claiming as the very first king of Lydia the figure of Tantalos, who is seemingly native to Argos. 2 This appropriation of Tantalos as a Lydian serves the purposes of the Lydians in that Tantalos is the father of Pelops, revered by Hellenes as founder of the Olympics and as an
emblem of the political power implicit in the concept of the Peloponnesus, the "Island of Pelops." This appropriation also serves the purposes of the Spartans in their rivalry with Argos, if indeed the Argives considered Tantalos their own native son. 3 Thus the Lydian version of the Tantalos myth affords a dialogue, so to speak, between Lydia and Sparta at the ideological and political expense of Argos.
§39. This theme brings us back to the Persian overtures to Argos, expressed in terms of a myth that tells how Perseus was the father of Perses, ancestor of the Persians (again Herodotus 7.150.1-2). 1 In this case the Persian version of the Perseus myth affords a dialogue between
Persia and Argos in the context of Persia's ostensible support for the hegemony of Argos over the
Peloponnesus. This theme in turn brings us back to the subject of the rivalry of Argos and Sparta. At the time of the Persian invasion, when Persia was making overtures to Argos, the contest seemed to have been already won by Sparta. The Argives had been decisively defeated by the Spartans at Sepeia in 494 B.C. (Herodotus 6.76-83, 92)--a defeat that can be described as "the logical culmination of events that began more than a half a century earlier with the Spartan conquest of and alliance with Tegea and the subsequent victory over Argos in the Battle of Champions [546 B.C.]." 2 Even in the context of this earlier period, when Sparta defeated Tegea and overtures were being made to the Spartans by Croesus the Lydian, Herodotus observes that much of the Peloponnesus was already under Spartan domination (1.68.6). 3
§40. It seems then that the preeminence assigned by Herodotus to Sparta at the time of the overtures made by Croesus the Lydian is at least in part a matter of hindsight on the part of the Histories. From the hindsight of the Spartan victories over Argos in 546 B.C. and in 494 B.C., both predating the overtures of Croesus, 1 Sparta did indeed become the preeminent power in the Peloponnesus. The hindsight extends further: it can be argued that the preeminence assigned by Herodotus to the two states of Athens and Sparta at the dramatic juncture of Croesus' overtures, as also throughout the Histories, is a direct function of the successes achieved by these two particular states in the War with the Persians.
§41. This is not to say that in the Histories the motive for dramatizing the theme that Athens and Sparta were the preeminent city-states of Hellas was a bias on the part of Herodotus in favor of these states. True, it has often been claimed that Herodotus takes sides, 1 especially in favor of the Athenians, 2 but in fact the various statements in the Histories that work to the advantage or disadvantage of any city-state cannot be understood without first coming to terms with the traditional stance of Herodotus. As one who conducts a historiâ 'inquiry', he is assuming an overarching position of authority that entails emphasizing the point of view that he deems the most just. At least in theory he must not associate himself with the interests of any one city-state. He will not even associate himself consistently with the Greeks in that the Hellenes are for him sometimes "we," sometimes "they." 3 From such a privileged position, he proceeds to narrate and thereby to adjudicate the ultimate conflict between Hellenes and Persians; the fact that the Hellenes are treated partially is motivated by the principle that the Persians in particular and the Asiatics in general are found to be guilty, in the wrong, by way of the narrative itself. It is as if Herodotus merely must have a good sense of judgment in his narration so that the patterns of divine justice
could implicitly work their way through this narration.
§42. Yet since the principle "alien is native" is so ingrained in the traditions of the Greek city- states, the voice of historiâ has much to teach the Hellenes by way of a grand juxtaposition of the foreign with the native in the narrative of Herodotus. Whenever Greeks and barbarians interact in the overall conflict recorded by the Histories, the barbarian point of view becomes an intellectual exercise in Hellenic introspection through the overarching perspective of historiâ.
§43. This intellectual exercise can perhaps be seen most clearly in the so-called Debate of the Constitutions (Herodotus 3.80-87), where the leaders of the Persian Empire are represented as debating the relative merits of three possible forms of government: democracy, oligarchy, and 'monarchy' (3.82.3). 1 While this debate is, of course, an absurdity from the standpoint of our own notions of history--and Herodotus is defensive about the lack of verisimilitude in this part of his narrative--it nevertheless serves as an ideal focus for the entire narrative from the standpoint of historiâ. These three forms of government correspond to the three protagonists of the Histories: the democracy of Athens, the oligarchy of Sparta, and the 'monarchy' of Persia. At first blush the 'monarchy' of Persia seems an institution foreign to the Greeks, but the word monarkhos 'monarch' is ostentatiously equated in the Debate passage with turannos 'tyrant' (Herodotus
3.80.2 / 4)--the same word that the Histories of Herodotus and all archaic Greek poetry and song consistently associate with both the attractions and the pitfalls of the wealth and the power that goes with tyranny. The pitfalls, moreover, as manifested in hubris, are not confined to tyranny. As the Debate passage makes clear, hubris proves to be the negative trait of men in a democracy as well (Herodotus 3.81.1-2); as for an oligarchy, the three symptoms of its shift toward 'monarchy' in the Debate passage (3.82.2) correspond to the three symptoms of hubris that lead from aristocracy to tyranny in the poetic traditions that warn against tyranny (Theognis 51-52; hubris at 40, 44). 2 The Persian king to be argues not only that oligarchies evolve into 'monarchy' (again Herodotus 3.82.3); so do democracies (3.82.4). Such patterns are supposed to prove the supremacy of tyranny (3.82.4-5). Thus the threat of tyranny is in fact posed not just from without, by the Great King of the Persians, but also from within, by the wrongdoings of the Hellenes themselves.
§44. In this regard it is important to keep in mind the historical context--and I am using historical here in the conventional sense of the word in our own time--for the composition of the Histories of Herodotus. It is a well-known fact that the Histories were composed at a time when the Peloponnesian War, the two main antagonists of which were the democracy of Athens and the oligarchy of Sparta, was under way. 1 That even the narrative of Herodotus can be perceived as functionally a prelude to the Peloponnesian War is clear from the narrative strategy of Thucydides (cf., e.g., 1.89.1-2), whose account of the events leading to the Peloponnesian War starts where Herodotus' account of the Persian War left off.
§45. Given such a historical context for the composition of Herodotus' Histories, and that Herodotus "is interpreting the past by the present," 1 we may ask ourselves what the message of his narrative might have been for the Hellenes of his time. In terms of the Debate passage the outward subject of the Histories is the struggle of Hellenes--primarily the democracy of Athens and the oligarchy of Sparta--against the tyranny of the Persians; the inward subject, however, is
the struggle of the Hellenes against each other or, to put it another way, against themselves. In terms of the Peloponnesian War it can be said that this struggle takes the external form of the overall Hellenic conflict between the democracy of Athens and the oligarchy of Sparta; in terms of the Peloponnesian War the third main character of the Histories, that ultimate exponent of hubris, the Great King of the Persians, is in the background. In terms of the Histories, on the other hand, he is in the foreground. The intention of the Histories is to narrate the conflict of the Great King, exponent of hubris, with the Hellenes--and thereby to render a judgment about who was in the right and who was in the wrong. Such is the juridical function of historiâ: to speak as a histôr 'arbitrator'.
§46. Which brings to mind a suggestion: perhaps the implicit intention of the historiâ of Herodotus is to "arbitrate" the ongoing conflict between the democracy of Athens and the oligarchy of Sparta--corresponding to the explicit intention of "arbitrating" the past conflict between tyrannical and anti-tyrannical ways of life. 1 In support of this suggestion, we may look to the traditions about the life of Herodotus: he is said to have settled, died, and been buried in Thourioi (Stephanus of Byzantium s.v. thourioi) , 2 a city founded ostensibly as a Panhellenic venture, with the involvement of both Athens and Sparta (Diodorus 12.10-11). 3 The city of Thourioi, founded in 444/3 B.C., 4 was built at a site where once stood the city of Sybaris, that ultimate symbol of luxuriance and the hubris that goes with it. 5 The setting of Thourioi as a reborn and reformed Sybaris would have been an ideal context for a reaffirmation of the values that bind Hellenes together in an ultimate conflict against hubris. The historiâ of Herodotus would have been an apt realization of such a Panhellenic goal. While I do not insist that the city of Thourioi was the actual setting for the composition of the Histories of Herodotus, I at least reaffirm the possibility. 6 Moreover, the stasis 'conflict' between Ionians and Dorians that reportedly developed in the city of Thourioi in the year 434/3, ten years after its foundation (Diodorus 12.35.2), 7 may well have appeared to Herodotus as a smaller-scale recapitulation of the larger-scale misfortune of the Peloponnesian War itself. 8
§47. It seems clear in any case that Herodotus thought of the Peloponnesian War as a misfortune for all Hellenes. In commenting on the earthquake that shook Delos in 490 B.C., Herodotus has this to say:
kai touto men kou teras anthrôpoisi tôn mellontôn esesthai kakôn ephêne ho theos. epi gar Dareiou tou Hustaspeos kai Xerxeô tou Dareiou kai Artoxerxeô tou Xerxeô, triôn touteôn epexês geneeôn, egeneto pleô kaka têi Helladi ê epi eikosi allas geneas tas pro Dareiou genomenas, ta men apo tôn Perseôn autêi genomena, ta de ap' autôn tôn koruphaiôn peri tês archês polemeontôn.
And this was, I suppose, a portent whereby the god revealed to men the misfortunes that were to be. For in the reigns of Darius son of Hystaspes, Xerxes son of Darius, and Artaxerxes son of Xerxes, in the space of these three successive generations, more misfortunes befell Hellas than in
the twenty generations before Darius. These misfortunes befell Hellas in part from the Persians, in part from its leading figures [koruphaioi] 1 as they fought each other for supremacy. Mention of the rule of Artaxerxes indicates that the era before and during the Peloponnesian War is meant as one chronological extreme; as for the other extreme, "twenty generations before the
accession of Darius, at Herodotus' normal equivalence of three generations to the century, is 1189
B.C., the period of the Trojan War." 2 Thus the historiâ of Herodotus associates its narrative, extending into the Peloponnesian War, with an epic theme, "the beginning of misfortunes," 3 from the vantage point of the Trojan War.
§48. Even the ending of the Histories seems to indicate--albeit indirectly--an association that stretches all the way from the Trojan War to the Peloponnesian War. The man who refused the compensation offered by the Persian Artauktes in return for wronging Protesilaos, the first "Hellene" to die in the Trojan War, was Xanthippos, father of Pericles of Athens (Herodotus 9.120.3- 4). 1 At this point the Athenians led by Xanthippos were already acting on their own at the Hellespont, no longer assisted by their Hellenic allies from the Peloponnesus who had earlier fought on their side against the Persians and who had by now gone back home (Herodotus 9.114.2). Moreover, the behavior of the Athenian leader Xanthippos in executing Artauktes by crucifixion (Herodotus 9.120.4) stands in pointed contrast with that of the Spartan king Pausanias, who had rejected the suggestion that he impale the body of the Persian general Mardonios, in return for the Persians' having mutilated the body of the Spartan king Leonidas: Pausanias says simply that the mutilation of the enemy's corpse would be a deed that suits barbarians, not Hellenes (Herodotus 9.79.1). 2 This characterization of Pausanias by Herodotus undercuts the position taken by the Athenians, that this Spartan king was a man of hubris (Herodotus 8.3.2). The Athenians took this position, as Herodotus pointedly observes, in order to gain for themselves sole hegemony over the Hellenic alliance against Persia (8.3.2).
§49. At an earlier time, as Herodotus observes in the same context, the Athenians had renounced sole hegemony, thereby avoiding stasis emphûlos 'intrasocietal conflict' that would have destroyed Hellas (8.3.2). The word em-phûl-os, which I translate here as 'intrasocietal', is clearly being used by Herodotus in the sense of 'Hellene against Hellene'. We find in a poem of Theognis a parallel use of the word stasis 'conflict' in a Panhellenic sense: contemplating the Persian threat to his city (Theognis 773-779, 781- 782), the poet declares that he fears the heedlessness and stasis of the Hellenes (781)--a stasis that destroys the lâos 'people' (ê gar egôge dedoik' aphradiên esorôn | kai stasin Hellênôn laophthoron 780-781). As in Herodotus, the external threat is represented here as meshing with the internal one. In another poem of Theognis is a parallel use of the word em-phûl-os 'intrasocietal', this time in the specific sense of 'citizen against citizen': in declaring his fear that a tyrant is about to emerge in his city, the voice of the poet blames the situation on the hubris of the city's leaders (39-50, hubris / (hubrizein at 40 / 44), the three symptoms of which are stasis [plural] 'conflict', emphûloi phonoi andrôn 'intrasocietal killings of men', 1 and monarkhoi 'monarchs' (51-51). 2 The same three misfortunes figure in the Debate of the Constitutions, where the Persian king Darius describes an oligarchy as a situation where everyone vies to be the koruphaios 'leading figure' and where this rivalry results in stasis [plural] 'conflicts', the stasis results in phonos 'killing', and the phonos results in monarkhiâ 'monarchy'--which Darius himself equates with 'tyranny'. 3 The same word koruphaios 'leading
figure' was used by Herodotus in describing the Athenians and the Spartans 'as they fought each other for supremacy'. 4
§50. When the Athenians had at first renounced sole hegemony of the Hellenic states allied against Persia, Herodotus says, they avoided stasis emphûlos 'intrasocietal conflict' that would have destroyed all Hellas (8.3.2). Herodotus is at least implying, then, that the Athens Athenians then caused precisely such a disaster by seizing sole hegemony later, with the emergence of the Athenian Empire. In this light the final action of the Histories, an implicitly barbaric deed committed by the father of Pericles in the context of an Athenian initiative taken without the acquiescence of the Peloponnesian allies, signals for the Athenians the threat of hubris from within, not from without. In this light even the initial guilty act of the Histories, the aggression of the Lydian "tyrant" Croesus against Hellenic cities, figures as an implicit warning to the Athenians. What made the aggression of Croesus distinct from that of his barbarian predecessors, as Herodotus makes clear, is that he was the first barbarian to reduce Hellenic cities to the status of tributaries:
houtos ho Kroisos barbarôn prôtos tôn hêmeis idmen tous men katestrepsato Hellênôn es phorou apagôgên...
This Croesus was the first barbarian ever, within our knowledge, to reduce some Hellenes to the status of paying tribute... 1
Reducing Hellenic cities to the status of tributaries is also what the Athenians themselves did in
the context of the Athenian Empire. To be a tributary, for Herodotus, is to be no longer eleutheros 'free', as we see from what he adds pointedly after his observation that Croesus the turannos 'tyrant' (1.6.1) was the first barbarian to make tributaries out of Hellenic cities:
pro de tês Kroisou archês pantes Hellênes êsan eleutheroi
before the rule of Croesus, all Hellenes were still free [eleutheroi]. 2
The theme of Croesus the Tyrant is formulated in the mode of an ainos, which applies to Athens with its Athenian Empire, the heir to the Persian Empire, in turn the heir to the Lydian Empire. That the Athenian Empire is a turannis 'tyranny' is acknowledged by none other than the figure of Pericles of Athens in his last oration (Thucydides 2.63.2). 3
§51. All this is not to say that Herodotus in his historiâ took sides against the Athenians. He takes pains to give credit where credit is due, even allowing that Hellas would never have remained eleutherâ 'free' without the initiative of Athens (7.139.5 in the context of 7.139.2-6). He goes so far as to say that the Athenians became sôtêres 'saviors' of Hellas by successfully
resisting the Great King of Persia (7.139.5). 1 This judgment of Herodotus, however, that Athenians are sôtêres 'saviors' of Hellas, 2 is expressed against the backdrop of the Athenian Empire, which had obviously made the Athenians unpopular among the Hellenes:
enthauta anankaiêi exergomai gnômên apodexasthai epiphthonon men pros tôn pleonôn anthrôpôn, homôs de, têi ge moi phainetai einai alêthes, ouk epischêsô
And here I am constrained by necessity to make public [= make an apodeixis of] an opinion [gnômê] that is invidious from the standpoint of most men. Still, inasmuch as it seems to me at least to be true [alêthês], I shall not hold back.
The hesitation of Herodotus is motivated by the ambiguity that is being set up by his historiâ: the city that once freed the Greeks from tyranny now threatens to enslave them. The city that became great by overthrowing the tyranny of the Peisistratidai (Herodotus 5.78) stands to lose all by imposing tyranny on other Hellenes. The contrast is made all the more effective in that the continuous narrative of the Histories stops at 479 B.C.--just before the Athenian Empire begins to take shape. 3
§52. The power of the historiâ of Herodotus to instruct, even to warn, is analogous to what we find in a specialized aspect of the ainos, the par-ain-esis. 1 At times, moreover, the stories of Herodotus take on not only the function of a parainesis but also the actual form of an ainos. There is, for example, the story of Agariste, granddaughter of Kleisthenes the Athenian: she dreamed that she gave birth to a lion, and a few days later she gave birth to a son, Pericles (6.131.2). 2 Besides the obviously positive associations of this image, there are negative ones. In the Agamemnon of Aeschylus (717- 736) is a similar story that has long been recognized as an ainos: it is about a lion cub that was raised in a household to become the bane of its inhabitants. 3 In Herodotus as well, there is a parallel to this sinister image of a lion cub that became the 'priest of Derangement [Atê]' for the household that had raised him (Aeschylus Agamemnon 735-736): in describing the gestation of lions, Herodotus says that the embryonic lion cub claws away at the insides of its mother so that the womb is destroyed by the time of the cub's birth (3.108.4). Herodotus offers this description in the context of arguing that limited fertility is the compensation paid by predatory animals for their predatory nature (3.108.1-3).
§53. This kind of reasoning illustrates the affinity of Herodotus' historiâ with the traditions of what we know as natural history, that is, historiâ 'inquiry' into the phusis 'nature' of the universe. 1 Natural history can equate the principles that operate in the realm of human events with those in the realm of natural phenomena, as we see from a celebrated observation of Anaximander about natural change:
ex hôn de hê genesis esti tois ousi, kai tên phthoran eis tauta ginesthai kata to chreôn: didonai gar
auta dikên kai tisin allêlois tês adikias kata tên tou chronou taxin
And the source of coming-to-be for existing things is that into which destruction, too, happens, in accordance with necessity; for they pay penalty [dikê] and retribution [tisis] to each other for their wrongdoing [a-dik-iâ] 2 in accordance with the assessment of time. 3
The underlying assumption in such examples of natural history is that the course of human events
follows a cosmic order, with the emergence of dikê 'justice' in the due course of time. 4 The same sort of assumption operates in the Works and Days of Hesiod, where it is also made clear that the cosmic order is an expression of the divine apparatus. 5 The workings of the divine apparatus emerge also from the historiâ of Herodotus, as we have seen. 6 For Herodotus too, "natural history" and "moral history" overlap: assuming that natural phenomena and the course of human events do indeed follow the same cosmic order, he can make such pronouncements as we see in the case at hand, that lions pay compensation for their savage and predatory nature by way of their limited fertility. Conversely, natural phenomena can be correlated with human events in the grand old tradition that we see in Hesiod when the voice of the poet says that the city of dikê 'justice' will be fertile while the city of its opposite, hubris 'outrage', will be sterile (Works and
Days225-247). 7 In making such an implicit equation between the course of human events and natural phenomena, Herodotus too is following the thought patterns of the ainos as 'fable'. We may compare the ainos of the Hawk and the Nightingale in the Works and Days of Hesiod (202-212; ainos at 202), where the predatory nature of the hawk is an exemplum of the ways of
hubris as opposed to the ways of dikê. 8 By associating the birth of Pericles with that of the lion cub, Herodotus has exploited the ambiguity of the ainos as a form of discourse: the child Pericles will become either the savior or the predator, the destroyer, of the Hellenic community at large that will raise him.
§54. This is not to say that Pericles is being subjected to blame. The ainos is simply an edifying discourse that bears implicit warnings of potential blame built into it. I see a similar sort of message in the ainos of the lion cub at Aeschylus Agamemnon 717-736. 1 In the symbol of the lion cub who is brought home to a palace and raised as a pet, as if he were native to human society, only to grow into an alien menace, bent on carnage, on destroying the very benefactors who had treated him as their own, we see a reference that extends not only to various characters of the Oresteia 2 but even to the audience itself as the embodiment of the Athenian Empire. The Oresteia was produced in 458 B.C.; already in 472 B.C., the khorêgos for the Persians of Aeschylus was none other than Pericles. All this is not to imply that Athens in general or Pericles in particular was being subjected to blame. Rather it is to say only that the ainos, true to its moral purpose, instructs as it implicitly warns. We may compare the characterization of Oedipus in the Oedipus Tyrannus, which can be interpreted as an implicit characterization of the city of Athens in its role as leader of the Athenian Empire. 3 The Empire is turannos, in the dramatized words of Pericles (Thucydides 2.63), and the notion of an Athenian Empire is already presupposed in the Histories of Herodotus (e.g., 5.97). For Herodotus too, the Empire is turannos. In this sense the theme of "alien is native," with a focus on the concept of turannos, is a mark not only of the
ainos but of the very master plan of Herodotean narrative.
Notes
§3n1. Cf. Ch.9§20n1, Ch.9§25 and following.
§3n2. Cf. Ch.9§25 and following.
§3n3. Cf. Ch.8§40 and following.
§3n4. Note the diminishing tricolon (cf. Mimnermus F 1.3 W), ending with the general category of hubris. The aspects of hubris that I have been calling luxuriance and savagery are conveyed by the words kerdos and biê respectively. For more on kerdos, see Ch.9§22n5. On biê as a symptom of hubris, in Hesiod Works and Days143-155 and elsewhere, see N 1979.156- 157.
§3n5. The 'good things' are both wealth and nobility, while 'debasement' is both poverty and degeneration. On the semantic shift from the socioeconomic to the purely ethical sense of agathos 'noble' and its synonyms, cf. N 1985.51-60; also p. 44 §29n4 and p. 45 §30n1.
§4n1. Stambler 1982.219, Waters 1985.21; cf. Immerwahr 1966.70
§6n1. For an evaluation of this poem, see Carson 1984; also Burnett 1985.61-76, who disagrees with previous works that stress the "pessimism" of the ode.
§6n2. On the transcendent semantics of olbios, see Ch.8§45 and following.
§6n3. For pertinent contexts of eudaimoniâ 'good fortune', see Ch.8§39.
§6n4. The wording lampei...ho chrusos 'the gold [khrûsos] gleams' at Bacchylides Epinician
3.17 here is crucial for understanding the poetic equation of khrûsos and euphrosunê
'merriment', to be discussed at Ch.10§9.
§6n5. On the transcendence of olbos as well-being that is material from the outside and mystical from the inside, see Ch.8§45 and following.
§6n6. The phrase phulax' apollôn 'Apollo saved...' is syntactically carried over from stanza b' and emphatically begins stanza g'.
§7n1. There is also an attested iconographical variation on the story, a Red Figure amphora dated around 500 B.C. (Beazley 1963.238 no. 1) showing Croesus calmly seated on the pyre while an attendant labeled Euthumos is apparently getting ready to set fire to it.
§7n2. At Bacchylides 3.38, the expected reciprocity of the gods in return for all the generosity of Croesus is expressed as kharis; cf. Herodotus 1.90.4
§7n3. On the Land of the Hyperboreans as a multiform analogous to Elysium, the Islands of the Blessed, the White Island, and so forth, cf. Hesiod F 150.21 MW, Epigonoi F 3 Kinkel, scholia
to Pindar Pythian3.28, and so on.
§7n4. See N 1979.164. My understanding of Hesiod Works and Days 158-168 is that the heroes of the Theban as well as the Trojan War are eligible for immortalization. I take the men at Works and Days166 as parallel to the instances of men at 122, 137, 141, 161 (pace West 1978.192): in other words, I argue that this men at 166, like the others here listed, is continuative, and that it does not set up a contrast with the de of 167. In line with this interpretation, the heroes who are transported by Zeus had to die before they could be transported to a state of immortalization. Compare the transportation of the dead Achilles from the funeral pyre to the White Island, where he is immortalized: Aithiopis / Proclus p. 106.14-15 Allen.
§8n1. Compare Herodotus 1.86.2: Cyrus makes Croesus ascend the pyre for various possible reasons, one of which is to find out if any daimôn 'supernatural force' would save a man so theosebês 'pious'.
§8n3. Cf. Ch.10§6 and following.
§9n1. For more on the programmatic function of the word euphrosunê 'mirth', see Ch.6§92.
§9n2. Gold is also a symbol of culture as distinct from nature: in the myth of the Golden Age, for example, as in Hesiod Works and Days 117-118, gold signifies the suspension of the natural, of the cycles and rhythms of vegetation, by way of the artificial (extensive discussion in N
1979.179-190; at Works and Days 172, the immortalized heroes on the Islands of the Blessed are called olbioi 'blissful'). In Iliad II 268, it is gold that makes the scepter a thing of culture, of artifice, not of nature, since it is aphthiton aiei 'unfailing forever' (II 46, 186; commentary in N, pp. 179-180). In Bacchylides 3.85-87, there is a tripartite crescendo of imperishable elements, where the first is the aithêr 'aether', described as 'incorruptible' (amiantos 86), which separates sky and earth; the second is the water of the sea, which 'does not disintegrate' (hudôr...ou sapetai 86-87); and the third is the khrûsos 'gold' that is euphrosunê (euphrosuna d' ho chrusos 87). The two foils for gold here are things of nature, while gold itself is a thing of culture. As for Pindar's Olympian1, in contrast, the hierarchy is different: here the element of water is said to be best (ariston men hudôr 1), juxtaposed with khrûsos 'gold' as the best display of wealth (1-2; cf. Olympian3.42), but the greatest of aethla 'prizes' (3) to be sought is the sun itself (5), as it shines through the aithêr (6), preeminent among celestial bodies just as the Olympics are preeminent among athletic contests (5-7). It is as if gold were just a reflection of the sun itself, so that gold, like water, is in truth a thing of nature, not culture. Since water is a symbol for the kleos of song, as in Pindar Nemean7.62-63 (Ch.6§3), it is as if song were a thing of nature, not a thing of culture, of artifice. In the poetics of Pindar, the genius of song is presented as natural, not artificial. To the extent that the natural is perceived as "realistic," unlike the artificial, we may again apply the dictum: the more the realism, the greater the artifice (Ch.1§36). On the traditional poetics of aphthito- 'unfailing' as applicable to kleos and to water, see N 1974.229-244; also Risch 1987.4-5. On the vegetal symbolism of aphthito-: N 1979 ch.10 and Steiner 1986.38.
§9n3. Cf. Ch.6§6 and following.
§9n4. On the ainos as an instrument of social criticism that can warn as well as praise, see Ch. 6§63 and following.
§10n1. Note the frequent use of olbos / olbios as a term that is specifically inapplicable to Croesus: Herodotus 1.86.3, 5(two times), 6; note also the use of an-olbos 'without olbos' in the response of the Delphic Oracle to Croesus (1.85.2).
§10n2. See Ch.8§21, Ch.8§27 and following.
§11n1. On the apodeixis 'public display' of aretê 'achievement' by way of logioi and aoidoi, masters of oral tradition in prose and song respectively, see Ch.8§10 and following.
§11n2. The description of the aretê of Croesus as 'unfailing', by way of the root phthi-, draws the theme of the tyrant's generosity into a symbolic parallelism with imperishable substances like gold, which is also the symbol for the medium of poetry and song that glorifies such generosity and which is associated with the quality of being aphthito- 'unfailing, imperishable': see Ch. 10§9n2. The 'unfailing' aretê of Croesus at Pindar Pythian1.94 is then contrasted with the savagery of the tyrant Phalaris of Akragas, who was reputed to roast his victims alive within the brazen simulacrum of a bull (Pythian1.95-96).
§12n1. Besides the immediate sense of olbos as 'material prosperity' and of aiôn as 'lifetime', there is an ulterior sense built into both words: on olbos in the ulterior sense of 'bliss', see Ch. 8§45 and following; on aiôn in the ulterior sense of 'vital force', see N 1981.
§13n1. Chantraine DELG 1150.
§13n2. For documentation of hu- / u- (hu- u-) in the sense of epi- (epi-), see Perpillou 1987.
§13n3. Cf. Perpillou, pp. 197-199. On the relationship of briaros and brîthô, see DELG 196.
§13n4. Commentary at N 1985.48-49, 60-61.
§13n5. Again, commentary at N 1985.48-49, 60-61. Cf. Pindar Olympian13.10, where the relationship is expressed in reverse: hubris gives birth to koros. Gildersleeve 1899.229-230 observes about the reverse order in Solon and Theognis: "But that makes little difference, as, according to Greek custom, grandmother and granddaughter often bore the same name. It is a mere matter of Hubris - Koros - Hubris."
§14n1. On the use of the word turannis 'tyranny' at Pindar Pythian11.53, see Ch.10§21.
§15n1. Cf. Ch.9§19 and following.
§15n2. Cf. Ch.9§19n1, with a discussion of the possibility that pod-(h)abros 'with a footstep that is luxuriant [habros]' at Herodotus 1.55.2 connotes specifically dancing steps. Cf. also Bacchylides 3.48, where the funeral pyre that Croesus voluntarily ascends is called a habro- batês domos (habrobatan domon) 'construction for luxuriant [habros] footsteps'. I interpret this expression to refer to the luxuriant manner in which Croesus walked up the constructed pyre, headed for certain doom (pace SM, apparatus ad loc.). For a different interpretation, where
habrobatan is read as Habrobatâs, the name of a page, see, for example, Burnett 1985.180.
§15n3. Cf. Ch.9§20 and following.
§15n4. On the theme of variations in human fortunes from mighty to slight, slight to mighty, cf.
Herodotus 1.5.3-4 and the discussion at Ch.8§39.
§16n1. The traditional themes associated with the verb ar-numai 'strive to achieve' here correspond to those of the noun aretê 'achievement', which is in fact etymologically derived from it: see Francis 1983.82-87.
§16n2. Cf. Pindar Olympian5.7.
§16n3. I interpret habrotatos epi megalas 'in [this] time of great habrotês' as referring to the time after, not before or during, the victory (pace Gildersleeve 1899.333, who inteprets habrotês here as the luxuriance that tempts the athlete in the austere period of his training).
§16n4. Compare Bacchylides Encomium 20B.8-16: kupridos elpis 'aspiration [elpis] for Aphrodite' (line 8), in the context of intoxication at a symposium, seems to be the subject of andrasi d' hupsotatô pempei merimnas: | autika men poliôn krademna luei, | pasi d' anthrôpois monarchêsein dokei 'sends ambitions [merimna plural] to the uppermost heights for men; straightway it undoes the protective headbands of cities, and it thinks that it will be monarch [monarkhos] over all mortals' (lines 10-13). On monarkhos 'monarch' as the attenuated synonym of turannos 'tyrant', see Ch.6§64, Ch.6§67n1. This passage, Bacchylides Encomium 20B.8-16, is treated at greater length below, at Ch.10§20 and following.
§16n5. This second clause, where the theme concerns soaring and falling, contrasts with the first clause, where the theme concerns soaring only.
§16n6. I accept this emendation of the manuscript reading agroteran, deemed corrupt in the edition of SM.
§16n7. So Nisetich 1980.89.
§16n8. Compare ploutos...hupechôn merimnan habroteran here with echôn kressona ploutou merimnan at Pythian8.91-92, quoted immediately above. Note too that merimna 'concern' has been interpreted here throughout in the sense of 'ambition' rather than 'worry'; cf. Slater 1969.329.
§18n1. There is an implicit danger in the application of this epithet habros to Adonis: we may note that the luxuriant Adonis is an exponent of hubris in a botanical sense, on which see the full discussion in N 1985.60-63.
§18n2. Compare Sappho F 194 V for the image of Aphrodite riding on the chariot of the
Kharites.
§18n3. Cf. Hamm 1957 §241.
§18n4. Cf. Pindar Pythian11.50, as discussed at Ch.10§21. This interpretation of the Sappho passage differs from that of, for example, Campbell 1982.101, who reads tôeliô (to aeliô), agreeing with to lampron. Even if we were to accept the reading tôeliô, we could theoretically interpret the crasis along the lines of tô aeliô = tôeliô (cf. e.g pô eslon = pôslon at Alcaeus 69.5 V; cf. Hamm, p. §91e). The theme of 'lust for the sun' is to be connected with that of Sappho's love of Phaon / Adonis: cf. N 1973.177 in connection with the theme of crossing the strait with Phaon.
§18n5. On the reference to women as distinct from girls here, cf. Rissman 1983.95.
§19n1. Cf. Ch.9§20 and following. The Lydians are characterized as habro-diaitoi 'living luxuriantly' in Aeschylus Persians 41; cf. the context of the same epithet in Thucydides 1.6.3, as applied to the "Ionian" style among old-fashioned aristocratic Athenians.
§19n2. The evidence for this theme is supplemented by the testimony of Theopompus FGH 115 F 117 in Athenaeus 526c. See Ch.9§21. Cf. also the Sybaris theme as discussed at Ch.9§20n1.
§19n3. The passage is quoted at Ch.9§20. The evidence for this corollary theme is supplemented by the testimony of Phylarchus FGH 81 F 66 in Athenaeus 526a. See Ch.9§20 and following.
§19n4. Cf. Ch.9§20. On the theme of variations in human fortunes from mighty to slight, slight to mighty, cf. Herodotus 1.5.3-4 and the discussion at Ch.8§39.
§19n5. Cf. perhaps Archilochus F 23.17-20 W.
§19n6. Knox 1984.
§19n7. Fraenkel 1957.211-213 notes that Latin otium is used to convey the traditional Greek topic of truphê 'luxuriance' as the ruin of cities; see Knox 1984.98n5 for a sample of passages. This is not to say that otium is the exact equivalent of truphê.
§19n8. Cf. also Lattimore 1944, who adduces Theognis1103-1104, quoted above at Ch.9§20.
§19n9. On the theme of the luxuriant Adonis as an exponent of hubris in a botanical sense, I cite again the full discussion in N 1985.60-63.
§20n1. See the apparatus of SM, p. 98, for Snell's tentative reconstruction: olb[on d' esche panta outis] anthrôpôn.
§20n2. At Pindar F 124(ab).5 SM (on this poem cf. Ch.10§20n3), merimnai is more easily translated in the general sense of 'concerns'.
§20n3. Cf. Ch.10§16n2.
§20n4. Note the ring composition achieved with the placement of hormainô / hormainei 'ponder (s)' at lines 3 / 16. See van Groningen 1960.100-101 for a word-by-word comparison of Bacchylides F 20B 1-16 SM with Pindar F 124ab SM. The striking parallelisms lead van
Groningen to worry about which of the two poems was imitated by the other.
§20n5. Cf. the use of terpnos aiôn 'pleasurable lifetime' at Pindar F 126 SM, words addressed to Hieron, Tyrant of Syracuse, as quoted by Heraclides Ponticus F 55 Wehrli by way of Athenaeus 512d; this quotation from Pindar comes immediately after the quotation in Athenaeus 512c of the present passage from Simonides.
§20n6. The last part of this statement, spoken by a character identified as Charon the Carpenter in Aristotle Rhetoric 1418b30, is analogous to a theme in the Gyges story as retold in Herodotus 1.7.2: the king of the Lydian Empire, Kandaules, tries to persuade his trusted bodyguard Gyges, who was later to become king himself by overthrowing Kandaules, to view the queen naked, on the grounds that the queen's beauty can be witnessed by the eyes more reliably than by the ears. The answer given by Gyges to Kandaules at Herodotus 1.7.3-4 (on which see Benardete 1969.11-12) resembles in tone the quoted statement of Charon the Carpenter in Archilochus F 19 W.
§20n7. On the semantic overlap of basileus 'king' / monarkhos 'sole ruler' / turannos 'tyrant', see Ch.6§54, Ch.6§64, Ch.6§67n1.
§20n8. That the mention of Archilochus in Herodotus 1.12.2 refers to an integral narrative about Gyges and the Queen in the poetry of Archilochus, not just to the naming of Gyges as Tyrant of the Lydians, is argued by Clay 1986.11-12, who also raises the possibility that Archilochus F 23 W contains a dialogue between the Gyges and the Queen.
§20n9. On the symbolism of the number 5 in conveying the notion of coming full circle, see N 1979.169.
§20n10. In fact Herodotus asserts that Gyges was the first barbarian to make offerings to Apollo at Delphi, except for Midas of Phrygia (1.14.2-3).
§20n11. The distinction that Herodotus makes between the aggression of Croesus against the Hellenes on the one hand and that of this tyrant's predecessors on the other is made clear at 1.5.3, in conjunction with 1.6.1-3, on which passages see Ch.8§22 and following.
§20n12. Documentation in Benardete 1969.137.
§20n13. For a most useful survey of this theme, see Hartog 1980.335-336. Note especially the expression erastheis turannidos 'lusting after tyranny [turannis]' at Herodotus 1.96.2.
§21n1. I omit here a stretch of the text where the testimony of the manuscripts is garbled.
§21n2. Cf. eros tôeliô at Sappho F 58.26, which I interpret as 'lust for the sun' at Ch.10§18.
§21n3. So the kharis transcends the material possessions [kteana] that were won in the contest. On kharis as a 'beautiful and pleasurable compensation, through song or poetry, for a deed deserving of glory', see Ch.2§28n1.
§21n4. Compare Iliad XIII 631-639, a passage with a parallel theme--but with a martial twist.
Menelaos is blaming the Trojans as hubristai 'perpetrators of outrage [hubris]' (633), with a menos 'disposition' that is atasthalon 'reckless' (634). In this context the Trojans are described as insatiable in war (634-635), with the notion of satiation expressed by the verb kor-ennumi (koresasthai 635). Menelaos goes on to say that all pleasures reach a point of satiety, koros pantôn men koros esti636)--namely, the pleasures of sleep, sex, song, dance (636-637)--and that he would expect a man to take his fill of these pleasures, not of war (638-639). But, he concludes, the Trojans are akorêtoi 'insatiable' in war (639). As C. Cowherd points out to me, Menelaos does not mention the pleasures of food and drink, though the expression ex eron heinai 'take one's fill' (638: noun eros!) is conventionally applied to satiation in food and drink.
§21n5. On atê 'derangement' as punishment (consequence) as well as crime (cause), see Ch. 8§42n1.
§21n6. In the words of Bacchylides gold as the symbol of good and genuine olbos 'bliss' is the same thing as euphrosunê (euphrosuna d' ho chrusos 3.87); whoever perverts olbos, as Tantalos did, is punished by a failure ever again to achieve euphrosunê.
§21n7. Cf. Ch.4§24 and following.
§21n8. The parallelism of dietary and sexual violations is pertinent to the semantics of koros 'satiety, point at which satiety is reached, insatiability' (as at Olympian1.56). Although koros applies primarily to food and drink, it can also apply to sex (Iliad XIII 636-637, as discussed at Ch.10§21n1). Note too the collocation of koros at Olympian2.95 with margos, an adjective conveying both dietary and sexual excess (on which see N 1979.229-231).
§22n1. On Tantalos as son of Zeus, cf. also Euripides Orestes 5.
§22n2. On the Hill of Atê, see also Stephanus of Byzantium s.v. Ilion. This theme is pertinent to another, the habrotês 'luxuriance' of Troy: see Ch.10§21, Ch.10§21n1.
§22n3. On this passage, cf. N 1979.145 §8n2.
§23n2. Elsewhere in Herodotus, Sparta and Athens are presented as sharing in the honor of being the foremost city-states of Hellas, to be sought out by Croesus as allies (1.56.2-3, following up on 1.53.1). The inclusion of Athens, however, is more by hindsight: it sets the stage for the central roles to be played by Sparta and Athens in the rest of the Histories, and it provides an opportunity for a brief sketch, at the outset of the narrative, of the importance of both cities (Athens: 1.56.3-1.64.3; Sparta: 1.65.1-1.68.6). We may note that from the ostensible standpoint of Croesus the initial importance of Athens is viewed almost exclusively in terms of the achievements of the tyrant Peisistratos (1.59-1.64.3).
§23n3. Let us consider again the ostensible standpoint of Croesus: the importance of Sparta is viewed in terms of its military successes in dominating the Peloponnesus, but there is also mention of the city's political successes in developing an outstanding constitution, thanks to the achievements of the lawgiver Lycurgus (1.65.2-1.66.1). Note the vegetal imagery inherent in the expression ana te edramon... kai euthenêthêsan 'they shot up and flourished' (1.66.1), applied to
the Spartans in their state of eunomiâ 'good government' (metebalon de hôde es eunomiên 1.65.2; houtô men metabalontes eunomêthêsan 1.66.1). For parallel uses of the verb ana-trexô 'shoot up' in describing the growth of plantlife, see Iliad XVIII 56, 437; also Herodotus 7.156.2, 8.55; for a parallel use of eutheneô 'flourish' in the context of eunomiâ 'good government', see Herodotus
2.124.1. Note too the vegetal imagery in Solon F 4.32-35 W: eunomiâ (personified) 'withers the burgeoning blossoms of derangement [atê]' (hauainei d' atês anthea phuomena).
§24n1. On the reflexes of such patterns of transplanting in the ktisis ('foundation, colonization') poetic traditions of various city-states, see N 1979.8 §14n1 (with cross-references) and especially pp. 139-141; also N 1982.63-64 and 1985.51 §38n1 and 63 §51n2. I stress that these patterns are a reflex not of colonization itself but rather of the poetic traditions about colonization.
§25n1. The testimony of Pausanias associating Tantalos with the region of Mount Sipylos is particularly valuable in light of this author's background. As Habicht 1985.13-15 has convincingly argued, Pausanias is probably native to the Sipylos region ("everything points to Magnesia on the Sipylos as his place of origin": p. 14). Habicht, p. 15n66, draws attention to ten passages where Pausanias gives revealing specific details about this region, one of which concerns an epichoric dance (6.22.1). On the unrelenting emphasis given by Pausanias to the perspectives of the archaic and Classical periods of Greece, to the disadvantage of the Hellenistic and later periods, see Habicht, pp. 23, 134, 149.
§25n2. The river Akhelôios, mentioned at Iliad XXIV 616 as a landmark in the same environs as Mount Sipylos, is thought by Pausanias to be distinct from the river of the same name that flows through Acarnania and Aetolia (8.28.9-10) or the one in Arcadia (8.28.10).
§25n3. Survey in Sakellariou 1958.227n2 of versions indicating the Peloponnesian provenience of Tantalos; see in general pp. 409 and 226-227 on the transplanting of the Tantalos figure from regions of the Mainland to the region of Smyrna in Asia Minor. Sakellariou also surveys the evidence for maintaining that Greeks were established in the region of Smyrna before the Lydians (pp. 408-410; cf. also pp. 391-392) .
§25n4. Pausanias accepts a version that makes this Tantalos prosopographically distinct (2.22.3). The main reason for the rejection of the Argive version by Pausanias has to do with his own close ties to the region of Sipylos, as discussed at Ch.10§25n1. Pausanias is openly hostile to Argive versions: 2.23.6.
§25n5. Pausanias 2.21.9-10 accepts the Homeric version, which does not draw attention to any local variation: according to the Iliad all the children of Niobe were killed (XXIV 609). In the tradition of Argos the first man and first king is Phoroneus (Acusilaus FGH 2 F 23)--a version followed by Plato Timaeus 22a4-b3, who mentions Niobe in the same context without specifying her relationship to Phoroneus. If Tantalos is father of Niobe, I infer that he is son of Phoroneus in this Argive version. Such a construct would dovetail with the claim, rejected by Pausanias
2.22.2-3, that the bones of Tantalos were the possession of Argos.
§25n6. Note too the prominent mention of Tantalos in the prologue of the Orestes of Euripides
(1-10), the setting of which is Argos. The punishment of Tantalos is the same in the Orestes (5-7)
as in Pindar's Olympian1 (57-60). The crime of Tantalos is described, obliquely, at Orestes 8-10.
§26n1. This insight is throroughly examined and illustrated by Hartog 1980; cf. also Redfield 1985.
§26n2. Cf. Bickerman 1952.71.
§26n3. Overview of the genealogy in West 1985.78.
§26n4. See How and Wells 1912 I 349-350. On the variant that claims Europa as the daughter rather than sister of Phoinix: Apollodorus ibid. (already in Iliad XIV 321). Overview of variations in West 1985.82-83. For the Indo-European foundations of the Kadmos myth, cf. Vian 1963 and the discussion of Boedeker 1974.5.
§26n5. On autochthony as a measure of the nobility of a polis: Aristotle Rhetoric 1360b31-32. On the ideology of Athenian autochthony in its various political phases, see Loraux 1982b, 1987b.
§26n6. Cf. Ch.10§23, Ch.10§22.
§27n1. Overview of the Dionysus myth in the Bacchae: Segal 1982 (cf. Henrichs 1979). Cf. also
Ch.13§10 and following.
§27n2. Cf. Boedeker 1974.4-5.
§27n3. Boedeker ibid.
§28n1. Cf. Ch.10§16n2, Ch.10§20.
§28n2. Cf. ibid.
§29n1. Chantraine DELG 21.
§29n2. Overview in Detienne 1972. 237-238.
§29n3. Ibid.
§29n4. On one of the "native" names of Adonis, Aôos (Hesychius s.v., Etymologicum Magnum
s.v.), see Boedeker, p. 67.
§29n5. Detienne, pp. 237-238. The translation is mine. For "god" I substitute daimôn, to accommodate 'hero' as well as 'god'.
§31n1. Cf. Ch.12§14 and following; Calame 1977 II 34-35.
§31n2. Cf. Calame I 178-185. For an overview of the contacts between Lydia and Ephesus, see Sakellariou 1958.392, 427-430.
§31n3. For more on ritual role playing, see Ch.12.
§31n4. Cf., for example, Ch.12§20n4.
§34n1. Like Alkaios, Sthenelos too married a daughter of Pelops (Hesiod F 190.9 and following).
§34n2. On the theme of Herakles as kingmaker but never king, see Davidson 1980.
§34n3. Further details and commentary in West 1985.159n75. In the Iliad, however, the field of vision is restricted to the sequence of Pelopidai: the scepter goes from Pelops to Atreus to Thyestes to Agamemnon (II 101-108).
§34n4. Variations in Apollodorus 2.8.2 and following; convenient summary in West 1985.113. Another brother of Temenos and Aristodemos is Kresphontes, founder of the dynasty of Messenia (Pausanias 4.3.3-4).
§34n5. Pausanias 2.19.2 reports that the royal authority of Medon, the grandson of Temenos the Heraclid, was already in that era checked by the polis of Argos so that the political power of the descendants of Medon was diminished; also that Meltas, the tenth descendant of Medon, was deposed altogether. The testimony of Pausanias about the removal of Meltas need not be interpreted to mean that kingship was abolished altogether. Meltas was the descendant of King Pheidon of Argos, who is described as a turannos 'tyrant' in Herodotus 6.127.3 (on his genealogy, see Theopompus FGH 115 F 393; cf. Jeffery 1976.135-136 on the political ideology of the "Heritage" of Temenos, as pursued by King Pheidon). How and Wells 1928 II 189 remark that Pheidon's reassertion of royal power was an exceptional phase, analogous to a tyranny, and that "presumably the monarch only retained the old royal right to priesthood and other formal honours, perhaps presidency of the Boule." On the problems of dating the genealogical sequence of the Argive dynasty, see Kelly 1976.105-111.
§36n1. This particular model of Alkaios the Heraclid may be attested indirectly at least in the native Greek context of the Lesbian traditions about Alkaios = Alcaeus, if we accept the argument that the Alcaeus figure, as contrasted with Pittakos in the poetry of Alcaeus, is thematically parallel to the Kyrnos figure, as contrasted with Theognis in the poetry of Theognis: see Ch.6§70. On the possibility that the Kyrnos of Theognis represents a Heraclid prince, see Ch.6§66.
§38n1. How and Wells 1928 I 305. On Herodotus 4.5-7, see Dumézil 1978.171 and following.
§39n1. Although this "dialogue," from the Persian point of view, is at the political expense of
Sparta, there is nothing in the myth of Perses, son of Perseus, that would directly undercut the Spartan kingship's genealogical derivation from Perseus. Herodotus elsewhere records another aspect of the myth, this one clearly congenial to the Persians from their ethnocentric point of view and just as clearly less appropriate for any overture to Argos: according to the Persians, Herodotus says, Perseus was originally an Assyrian who, unlike his ancestors, became a Hellene (6.54). Besides, continues Herodotus, both Persians and Hellenes agree that Perseus was an Egyptian on his mother's side (ibid.). Herodotus says that he chooses to say no more about the Egyptian connection on the grounds that the subject has already been treated by others (6.55; note the implication of textuality in this statement). The mother of Perseus is Danae--who represents a point that is as far as the general Hellenic vision of the genealogy of Dorian kings goes, according to Herodotus (6.53.1). But we know that the genealogy can in fact be taken further back in the Argive version of the myth: Danae was the daughter of Akrisios, who was son of Abas, who was son of Hypermestra, who was daughter of Danaos, the founder of Argos (Apollodorus 2.1.4; Hesiod F 129 MW; cf. Aeschylus Suppliants 318 and following; also Herodotus 2.91.5). Cf. West 1985.78.
§39n2. Kelly 1976.140. On the Battle of Champions, see Herodotus 1.82 (cf. Kelly, p. 116). Cf. also Calame 1987.177.
§40n1. From the standpoint of Herodotus 1.82-83, Sardis was already being besieged by the Persians when the Spartans were preoccupied with the events culminating in the Battle of the Champions.
§41n1. For example, How and Wells 1928 I 37-43.
§41n2. How and Wells I 41-43
§41n3. Survey and analysis in Hartog 1980.371-372, 376.
§43n1. Cf. Ch.6§64. On the Indo-Iranian themes disguised underneath these Greek categories of democracy, oligarchy, and 'monarchy', see Dumézil 1985.246-253.
§43n2. Cf. Ch.6§64, Ch.12§56, Ch.9§22.
§44n1. Opinions differ about termini post quem for the final text fixation of the Histories. For a balanced discussion of evidence for a late dating, possibly even as late as 415 B.C., see Raaflaub 1987.236-237 (cf. also Fornara 1971b).
§45n1. So Fornara 1971.88.
§46n1. For details about the traditions of international (that is, inter-polis) arbitration, see Ch.11.
§46n2. Commenting on the testimony of Duris of Samos FGH 76 F 64 and others to the effect that Herodotus is the Thourios 'the man from Thourioi', How and Wells 1928 I 3 remark: "It is difficult to understand the prevalence of the name [Thourios] unless Herodotus died and was
buried there."
§46n3. A brief survey of known facts about the foundation of Thourioi in Graham 1983.35-37.
§46n4. See Graham, p. 36.
§46n5. On the Sybaris theme, see Ch.9§20n1.
§46n6. Discussion in Stambler 1982.226.
§46n7. Graham, pp. 36-37.
§46n8. Cf. Stambler 1982.226.
§47n1. On the significance of this word koruphaioi 'leading figures': Ch.12§56.
§47n2. Stambler 1982.229.
§47n3. For another important attestation of this theme in Herodotus, see 5.97.3: the ships sent by Athens to aid the Ionian Revolt are described as the arkhê kakôn 'beginning of misfortunes' for Hellenes and barbarians alike (at this point Athens is described as the most powerful of Hellenic city-states with the exception of Sparta: 5.97.1). Compare the epithet arkhekakoi 'beginners of misfortune' at Iliad V 63, describing the ships used by Paris for the abduction of Helen-- the act that precipitated the Trojan War. Compare also the expression kakou...arkhê 'beginning of misfortune' at XI 604, marking the beginning of Patroklos' fatal involvement as ritual substitute for Achilles (commentary in Nagy 1979.33-34, 88 §34n4).
§48n1. The word used in the sense of 'compensation' here at Herodotus 9.120.3 is apoina, and the word for the 'possessions' of the hero Protesilaos in his hero shrine is khrêmata (ibid.).
§48n2. At Herodotus 9.79.2, Pausanias goes on to say that Leonidas is getting adequate compensation through the deaths of all those who were killed at Plataea.
§49n1. Cf. Loraux 1987c.8-11.
§49n2. See Ch.6§64, Ch.12§56, Ch.9§22.
§49n3. Cf. ibid.
§50n3. On the theme of Athens as polis turannos, "familiar to all Greeks since roughly the middle of the [fifth] century," see Raaflaub 1987.224. On the pertinence of the characterization of Oedipus as turannos 'tyrant' in the Oedipus Tyrannus of Sophocles, see Knox 1954.
§51n1. It is added that it was meta ge theous 'next in order to the gods' that the Athenians drove back the Great King (Herodotus 7.139.5). In other words the gods must be given a major share in the credit.
§51n2. In light of the reference at Ch.10§50n1, we may take note of the epithet sôtêr 'savior' as applied to Oedipus in the Oedipus Tyrannus of Sophocles (e.g., 48).
§51n3. If Herodotus were to have continued narrating the Persian Wars to their formal end at 448
B.C. or thereabouts, with the Peace of Kallias, the contrast between the old Athens as liberator of Hellas from the Persians and the new Athens as the supreme power of a new empire would have been blurred.
§52n1. Cf. Ch.6§7, Ch.6§89n1. For an ideal example of a represented parainesis in Herodotus, I cite 1.59.3, where the wise words of Khilon of Sparta, one of the Seven Sages, who is warning the father of Peisistratos of Athens, are designated by the verb paraineô.
§52n2. On this passage see Fornara 1971.53; also Raaflaub 1987.225n10. The theme of a woman's giving birth to a lion is parodied by Aristophanes Knights1037-1040 in the form of a quoted oracular utterance emanating from Bakis (on this figure, see Ch.6§49); this mock oracle is strikingly similar to the oracular utterance quoted at Herodotus 5.92 b. 3 concerning the birth of Kypselos, future tyrant of Corinth (on which see Ch.6§68).
§52n3. See Fraenkel 1950 II 338-339, who collects valuable parallels for the two formal characteristics of the ainos in this passage from the Agamemnon of Aeschylus, namely, the usage of anêr at line 719 and of (houtôs at 718. For a parallel usage of houtôs at Iliad IX 524, in the ainos addressed by Phoenix to Achilles, see Ch.6§89. For an interpretation of the ainos at Agamemnon 717-736 in the context of the entire Oresteia trilogy, see Knox 1952, who interprets the lion cub as a symbol of the new hubris that grows out of the old (philei de tiktein hubris men palaia neazousan en kakois brotôn hubrin Agamemnon 764-766). As Knox points out, the lion cub of this ainos refers not just to Paris but also to Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, even Orestes. Cf. also Goldhill1984.63.
§53n1. Stambler 1982.221-222, following Snell 1924.
§53n2. Kirk, Raven, and Schofield 1983.120 make note of the "legalistic" metaphor, adding: "The prevalence of one substance at the expense of its contrary is 'injustice' [= a-dik-iâ], and a reaction takes place through the infliction of punishment by the restoration of equality--of more than equality, since the wrong-doer is deprived of his original substance, too. This is given to the victim in addition to what was his own, and in turn leads (it might be inferred) to koros, surfeit, on the part of the former victim, who now commits injustice on the former aggressor."
§53n3. This translation is based on Kirk, Raven, and Schofield 1983.118. On taxis as 'assessment', they write (p. 120) that the word "suggests the ordaining of punishment by a judge or, more aptly, the assessment of tribute as in the Athenian tribute-lists."
§53n4. Cf. Kirk, Raven, and Schofield, pp. 120-121, with reference to a comparable text in Solon (F 36 W).
§53n5. Cf. Ch.9§7 and following.
§53n6. Cf. Ch.8§36 on Herodotus 2.120.5: the power of a daimôn preordained the destruction of Troy in order to teach humans about the patterns of divine retribution for a-dik-êmata 'wrongdoings, injustice'. This interpretation is expressed as the gnômê 'judgment' of Herodotus (ibid.).
§53n7. Commentary in N 1982.58-60, 63-64.
§53n8. The "moral" of the fable becomes clear at Works and Days 274-285: see Ch.9§7n7.
§54n1. On houtôs at Agamemnon 718 as a performative marker of ainos, see Ch.10§52n3.
§54n2. Ibid.
§54n3. Knox 1954.
§1. On the level of content, we have seen some striking similarities between Pindaric song and Herodotean prose in conveying a moral message about the realities of wealth, power, and prestige. The actual tradition of such a moral message can be summed up in one word, ainos, a premier term of self-reference in the epinician medium of Pindar. Though we find no attestations of this term in the Histories of Herodotus, it is by now clear that this work is shaped by the principles of the ainos. Moreover, these principles are cognate with those of historiâ 'inquiry', the medium of Herodotus. The authority of Herodotus is based on the traditional thought patterns of historiâ, just as the authority of Pindar is based on those of the ainos. This relationship of historiâ and ainos can best be seen wherever the prose of Herodotus, in order to demonstrate its authority, makes direct use of song, poetry, and other kinds of prose.
§2. I begin with an example where Herodotus deploys an actual ainos, in the specific sense of 'fable'. We find it in Herodotus' narrative of the overtures made by Persia to Argos, a passage that we have already considered in connection with the Persian manipulation of an Argive myth that would entitle Argos to hegemony over the Peloponnesus (7.150.1-2). 1 In this narrative Herodotus leaves open the possibility that Argos, in its ambition to achieve hegemony and gain the upper hand over its rival, Sparta, cooperated with the Persians and thus betrayed the Hellenes allied against Persia. After giving the Argive version of what really happened (7.148.2-149.3), Herodotus reports three opposing versions.
§3. The first and least damaging of these versions is that Argos, in order to remain neutral toward Persia, deliberately set impossible terms for cooperation with Sparta (7.150.3). Second, Herodotus reports a version derived from Athenian sources, to the effect that the Persian king Artaxerxes, around the time of the Peace of Kallias, declared that no city was more dear to him than Argos (Herodotus 7.151). Then, after declaring that he is not certain whether these two
versions are true, he exculpates the Argives by saying that even if these reports were true, the Argives would not thereby be guilty of the very worst deeds imaginable. In support of this thought Herodotus now speaks in a mode of ainos that is characteristic of Aesop's Fables: 1 if all men, he says, were to bring to one place all their kaka 'evils', they would surely, upon seeing what the other man has, take back home whatever they had brought (Herodotus 7.152.2). 2 This formulation is strikingly similar to the attested fable of Aesop known as "The Two Packs," likewise concerning the topic of one man's perception of another man's kaka 'evils' (Aesop Fable 266 Perry, pêrai duo. Immediately after speaking in the mode of an ainos, Herodotus continues in the mode of one who conducts a historiâ:
egô de opheilô legein ta legomena, peithesthai ge men ou pantapasin opheilô, kai moi touto to epos echetô es panta logon
I owe [opheilô] it to tell what is being told, but I by no means owe [opheilô] it to believe it, and what I say here should go for everything I say.
It is only after exculpating the Argives in the mode of an ainos and after making this all-inclusive statement about his procedures in historiâ that Herodotus gets around to the third and final negative version about the Argives: that they themselves, in their rivalry with the Spartans, had invited the Persians to invade Hellas (7.152.3).
§4. Having thus cushioned his negative reports about Argos, Herodotus assumes the stance of a fair and impartial arbitrator. This stance is obviously no longer evident to Greeks of later times, as when Plutarch, in his essay On the Malice of Herodotus, singles out this particular passage of Herodotus about Argos as a prime example of the author's malicious disposition (Plutarch On the Malice of Herodotus 863b-864a). The equitable but always diplomatic approach of Herodotus to the varied interests and prejudices of the city-states in the period after the Persian Wars is lost on Plutarch, who fails to observe the juridical dimension of what Herodotus has to say in the capacity of conducting a historiâ 'inquiry'. In order to appreciate this dimension, we would do well to compare the surviving Greek texts of international, that is, inter-polis arbitration.
§5. Let us consider, for example, an inscription recording the arbitration by King Lysimachus of Thrace, shortly before 281 B.C., of a territorial dispute between the states of Samos and Priene. 1 We may note in particular the phraseology that describes how the people of Priene presented their arguments:
hoi men oun Priêneis tên men ex archês gegenêmenên a[u]t[ois] | [ktêsi]n tês Batinêtidos chôras epedeiknuon ek te tôn historiôn k[ai] | [tôn al]lôn marturiôn kai dikaiômatôn [me]ta tôn hexetôn [spon]dô[n
Inschriften von Priene no. 500.11-132
The people of Priene were seeking to demonstrate [= make an epi-deixis] that the territory called Batinetis belonged to them on the basis of inquiries [historiai], 3 other evidence [marturiai], and documents, including 4 the six-year truce.
We may compare the phraseology used by Herodotus in describing a conflict of claims between
the people of Sybaris and the people of Kroton:
marturia de toutôn hekateroi apodeknuousi tade: [...] tauta men nun hekateroi autôn marturia apophainontai: kai paresti, hokoteroisi tis peithetai autôn, toutoisi proschôreein
Herodotus 5.45.1-2.
Both parties make a public display [= verb of apo-deixis] 5 of evidence [marturia] for their claims, as follows: [...] The above, then, are the evidence [marturia] that each of the two parties makes public [= verb apo-phainomai]. 6 It is possible to agree with whichever side one believes. In this case, as in his account of the policies of Argos at the time of the Persian Wars, Herodotus goes so far in his impartiality as not even to express his own opinion. 7 It suffices for him merely to conduct his historiâ 'inquiry'. Technically the historiâ of Herodotus corresponds to the process of arbitration, not to the actual outcome.
§6. Even in actual cases of juridical arbitration, the procedures do not necessarily lead to a juridical outcome: the given dispute may in the end be settled out of court if the arbitrator finds a successful formula for mediation, that is, if he can induce the two parties to agree mutually to an out-of-court settlement. 1 Otherwise the arbitrator must resort to a juridical verdict as he pronounces a final assessment or award. As one expert puts it, "An arbitrator may mediate, but a mediator as such has no arbitral authority, and in the cases before us, where a solution could not be reached by mutual agreement, the court had the right and the duty of pronouncing an award which was binding upon both parties." 2 In the dispute between Priene and Samos the verdict of the arbitrator, King Lysimachus, has aptly been described as follows:
Note, first, the time and trouble devoted to the settlement of this difference by the ruler of a wide empire, the fair and dispassionate tone which characterizes his rescript, and his evident desire to justify his award to the reason and the conscience of the states directly concerned and of the world at large. And, in the second place, note that, so far as our knowledge goes, this arbitration of Lysimachus closed forever a dispute which had lasted, in varying degrees of intensity, for four centuries at least. 3
§7. The status of the arbitrator may vary considerably, as we see from this description of a verdict
rendered in yet another dispute between Priene and Samos: 1
This time it is no powerful monarch who arbitrates, nor yet a large popular tribunal, embodying the democratic ideal of justice, like that court of six hundred Milesians who...adjudicated on the Spartan and Messenian claims to the ager Dentheliates. The matter is referred to the Rhodian state, and from its members a panel of five arbitrators is selected, a small body of men chosen, we may assume, for their character and ability. At the close of their proceedings, they drew up a report upon the whole case, and this reflects credit upon the clarity of their thought and expression, the thoroughness with which they carried out the task entrusted to them and the equitable nature of their final judgement. 2
§8. The evidence used by the arbitrator also varies. In the case of the latter dispute between Priene
and Samos, the records show that the arbitrators heard testimony in neutral territory, as also at the disputed territory, 1 whereupon, as they declare, 'we arrived at our decision in accordance with what we have seen' (epo[iêsametha tag] krisin kata ta huph' | [hamôn eph]eorame[na). 2 This figurative sense of 'seeing', clearly attested here in its juridical context of 'knowing', corresponds closely to the etymology of oida 'know' as 'have seen' and of histôr 'witness, arbitrator' as 'he who has seen'. 3 The arbitrator is a superwitness who builds an all-encompassing knowledge of a situation by bringing together the knowledge of all those who bear witness, no matter what their status may be. The crucial factor is the witness's knowledge of the facts, as we see strikingly illustrated in an inscripiton recording the arbitration of a dispute between Condaea and an unknown state, 4 where we are fortunate enough to have the actual deposition of an elderly shepherd who has known the disputed territory from boyhood:
...kai Ladikos ho Askurieus emari[t]urêsen marturian tênde: "mart[u]irei Ladikos Harm[od]iou Askurieus | Kondaieusin: ep[is]tamai tên chôra[n], i[hê]n kai parôn enephanizon tois kritais apo tês koruphês tou N[u]seiou | [k]atabainôn ton en[gi]on pros hêma[s] | [t]opon achri tê[s] pharangos, hês kai Kon[dai]ieis epedeik[n]uon tois kritais, k[ai] | tôn presbuterôn êkouon proscho [rein]i [K]ondaieusi kata to[u]ton ton topon k[ai mo]inos epistamai nomeuôn en têi chôra[i] | pleiô chronon kai [K]ondaieis têrounta[s] | to paragôgion en toutôi tôi topô[i]:"
And Ladikos of Askyris testified as follows: "Ladikos, son of Harmodios, of Askyris, bears witness [= is a martus] to the Condaeans. I know [= verb epistamai] the land, which I also pointed out [= verb of epi-deixis] to the judges as I came down from the summit of Nyseion, the place nearer to us, as far as the defile, which the Condaeans too showed to the judges; and I used to hear from the older men that at this spot the land belongs to the Condaeans; and I know [= verb epistamai] of myself that I have been pasturing my flocks in the territory for a considerable time and that the Condaeans keep the passage-duty at this spot. 5
§9. The juridical sense of 'seeing' / 'knowing' as the foundation of evidence in the process of inquiry must be kept in mind as we consider references to the use of historiâ as evidence in
inscriptions recording arbitrations. In some cases such historiai can be identified as known literary works, such as the Histories of Duris of Samos. 1 Even here, however, the juridical heritage of the word historiâ comes through: in the eyes of the law, historiâ as 'inquiry'--even if it also happens to be a literary achievement--is a juridical process. This is as it should be, if indeed the concept of historiâ is derived from the juridical concept of arbitration, as still reflected in the noun histôr 'witness, arbitrator'. This legal point of view, that historiâ even as "history" is still a juridical process, can best be seen in the phraseological combination of apo-deixis 'public display' with historiographoi 'writers of histories' in an inscription recording admissible evidence for an arbitration. 2 We are reminded that the historiâ of Herodotus is technically the apodeixis of his historiâ (Herodotus prooemium). As for the inscription that we are now considering, there is more to the interesting phraseological combination of apo-deixis 'public display' with historiographoi 'writers of histories': besides 'writers of history', we see poiêtai 'poets' also mentioned in the same context, so that the apo-deixis of historians is parallel to that of poets in the eyes of the law.
§10. In this context we may recall the explicit association of the concept of apo-deixis with both logioi 'masters of speech' and aoidoi 'masters of song' in the traditional phraseology of Pindar. 1 For another interesting illustration of such parallelism, I cite the report of Tacitus on the arbitration of a territorial dispute between Sparta and Messenia by the Roman Senate in A.D. 25: the envoys of the Spartans had used as evidence the annalium memoria vatumque carmina 'records of annals and the songs of poets' (Annals 4.43), while the Messenians countered by pointing to the presence of certain ancient statues as evidence for the division of the Peloponnesus among the Herakleidai, the Sons of Herakles (ibid.), and added that si vatum, annalium ad testimonia vocentur, plures sibi ac locupletiores esse 'if they were to cite the evidence of poets and annals, they would have at their disposal more and richer sources' (ibid.).
§11. It is clear that the juridical value of historiâ, as something parallel to poetry, is not confined to the furnishing of factual evidence in our narrowest sense of the word: the admissible evidence to be used in the process of arbitration can include traditional myths as attested by both historiâ and poetry. So also in the Oratio Deliaca of Hyperides, a speech delivered on behalf of Athens' claim to the administration of the Delian Sanctuary in a case of international (again in the sense of inter-polis) arbitration: here the author's copious treatment of myths about the wanderings of Leto and the birth of Apollo and Artemis can be connected with the remark of Maximus Planudes to the effect that Hyperides, 'desirous of proving that the Delian sanctuaries belonged of old time to the Athenians, has made great use of mythology' (Maximus Planudes ad h.l.t. V, p. 481 Walz, = Oratores Attici ii, p. 392 ed. Didot).
§12. For further examples of the use of myths as evidence in cases of arbitration, we have not only the testimony of inscriptions (e.g., SIG 304.35-36) but also such specific anecdotes as the one about Solon's citing two verses from the Homeric Catalogue of Ships (Iliad II 557-558) to the Spartan arbitrators of a territorial dispute between Athens and Megara over the island of Salamis in 519 / 518 B.C. (Plutarch Life of Solon 10). 1 In Plutarch's account the specific word that designates Solon's actual citing of the given verses is apo-deik-numai, the verb of apo- deixis 'public display' (Solon 10.3). Again we see that poetry, the voice of myth, is a source of
authority compatible with the juridical process of arbitration.
§13. There is even an instance where the poetic voice can become the vehicle of arbitration. Thucydides reports that the Corcyraeans, in their dispute with the Corinthians, were willing to submit this dispute to arbitration by the Delphic Oracle (1.28). 1 The choice of the Delphic Oracle as an arbitrator was entertained as a course of action only by the Corcyraeans, not by the Corinthians, and the Corcyraeans did so only as a last resort, so that the choice was in fact unusual. 2 This distinctness of the Delphic Oracle as arbitrator is a function of its poetic mode of communication. In a standard book that surveys the attestations of arbitrations, we find only one instance where the Delphic Oracle actually served as arbitrator, in a dispute between Klazomenai and Kyme over the territory of Leuke, 3 and we can see immediately the distinctness of the situation: "no board of judges is appointed, no inquiry is held, no witnesses are heard." 4 Instead the Oracle simply issues a poetic utterance: in the paraphrase of Diodorus, the Oracle says that it awards Leuke to 'whichever state is the first to sacrifice at Leuke, but each must start out from their own territory at sunrise on the same day, which should be fixed by common
agreement' (15.18.2). The utterance left considerable room for interpretation: the citizens of
Klazomenai quickly founded a settlement that was closer to Leuke and thereby gained the necessary head start to arrive at this destination before the citizens of Kyme (Diodorus 15.18.3).
§14. Despite its authority, then, the utterance of the Delphic Oracle is ambiguous even in cases of arbitration: like the ainos, the spoken word of the Oracle here again functions as a code containing at least two messages, as the citizens of Kyme must have discovered to their distress. 1 The ambiguity of the Oracle may account for its apparently limited use as a court of last resort, but it diminishes in no way its actual authority in upholding the process and even the ideology of arbitration: in fact the sanctuary of the Delphic Oracle was a traditional site for inscribing the records of awards in cases of inter-polis arbitration. 2
§15. I have gone into all this detail in considering the Hellenic institution of inter-polis arbitration because its juridical procedures match so closely the methods used by Herodotus in conducting his historiâ 'inquiry'. As in a case of arbitration, he consistently records divergent as well as convergent testimony and declares his duty to report whatever is being said. A particularly striking illustration is the stance that he takes in considering charges of collaboration between Argos and Persia. 1 As in a typical case of arbitration, moreover, Herodotus too admits as evidence the testimony of historians and poets. We see him, for example, critically examining the findings of his predecessor, Hecataeus of Miletus (e.g., Herodotus 2.143.1, 6.137.1). 2 Also, we see him frequently referring to poetry and song: besides Homer (2.23, 2.53.2, 3; 2.116, etc.) and Hesiod (2.53.2, 3; 4.32), he manages to mention in one context or another such figures as Archilochus (1.12.2), Anacreon (3.121.1), Sappho (2.135), Alcaeus (5.95), Simonides (5.102.3, 7.228.4), Pindar (3.38.4)--whom he explicitly paraphrases (= Pindar F 169.1 SM)--and Aeschylus (2.156.6). Even more frequently Herodotus refers to and quotes the poetic utterances of oracles, especially of the Delphic Oracle.
§16. In view of the established authority of the Delphic Oracle as the repository for recording awards in actual cases of arbitration, it is important to note again the importance of the Oracle in
the Histories of Herodotus as the ultimate authority in assessing who was aitios 'responsible, guilty' in the ultimate conflict that he narrates. The guilt of the tyrant Croesus is determined immediately by the authority of Herodotus, who 'indicates' (verb sêmainô) who is guilty as he conducts a historiâ 'inquiry', and ultimately by the authority of Apollo, who is described by Heraclitus as 'indicating' (again, verb sêmainô) his messages through his ambiguous but authoritative Oracle, and whose true message becomes in the end manifest through the narration of Herodotus. 1 In the end the ambiguous code of Apollo arbitrates the conflict between Europeans and Asiatics through the historiâ of Herodotus.
§17. Though Plutarch does not recognize the juridical stance inherent in the narrative of Herodotus, 1 he does observe condescendingly that this narrative is delivered in a mode that resembles that of Aesop's fables. Moreover, Plutarch is making this specific observation in the context of condemning what he deems to be the malice of Herodotus in his use of the utterances of the Delphic Oracle. After quoting a passage in the Histories where Herodotus is paraphrasing an utterance of the Oracle in favor of the Aeginetans and at the expense of the Athenians (Herodotus 8.122-123), Plutarch goes on to say:
ouketi Skuthais oude Persais oud' Aiguptiois tous heautou logous anatithêsi plattôn, hôsper Aisôpos koraxi kai pithêkois, alla tôi tou Puthiou prosôpôi chrômenos apôthei tôn en Salamini prôteiôn tas Athênas
Plutarch On the Malice of Herodotus 871d
He [= Herodotus] no longer assigns his words, as he makes them up, to Scythians or Persians or Egyptians, in the way that Aesop assigns his to ravens and monkeys, but he uses the persona of the Pythian god [= Apollo at Delphi] in order to prevent the Athenians from receiving the first prize at Salamis. 2
This observation about Herodotus, pejorative though it is, hits the mark in calling our attention to
an affinity between his form of discourse and that of Aesop. Technically a fable of Aesop is an ainos, 3 and the Life of Aesop tradition shows that fables of Aesop, as he is said to have told them, were delivered in the ambiguous manner of the ainos, where whatever he says has both an explicit and an implicit meaning--the implication to be derived from the context in which he speaks. 4
§18. For example, Aesop tells his fable of "The Wolves, the Dogs, and the Sheep" 1 to the citizens of Samos, with the implicit meaning that the Lydian king Croesus is like the wolves, that he is like the dogs, and that the Samians are like the sheep. 2 At the moment Croesus is demanding that the Samians extradite Aesop, who had saved them as a dog saves sheep from the wolf, by having already told them another fable, "The Path of Freedom and the Path of Slavery." 3 According to this fable the path of freedom is harsh 4 at the beginning and pleasant at the end, while the path of slavery is the opposite. The path of slavery is characterized specifically by its initial truphê 'luxuriance', to be followed later by harshness. 5 In response to this fable the
Samians had decided to accept the path of freedom 6 and had rejected the earlier demand of Croesus that they pay him tribute. 7 We are reminded of the lessons to be learned from the Croesus story of Herodotus, who authoritatively accuses the Lydian tyrant of being aitios 'responsible' for the ultimate conflict between Hellenes and Asiatics (1.5.3 in the context of 1.1.1, 1.2.1, and 1.3.4) precisely because he was the first barbarian, according to Herodotus, who reduced Hellenic cities to the status of tributaries (1.6.2). 8
§19. Later on in the same Life of Aesop narrative, Aesop voluntarily visits the court of Croesus and warns the king not to kill him on account of the blame that would be incurred through such a deed; he reinforces this warning by telling the Lydian tyrant the fable of "The Poor Man and the Cicada": 1 a poor man, who resorts to eating locusts in order to stay alive, happens to catch a cicada, who pleads for his life on the grounds that he does not harm men by robbing them of their possessions, as locusts do, but instead benefits them through his song, 'and you will find nothing more in me than my voice'. 2 The last phrase amounts to a warning: in a fragment of an earlier master of the ainos, Archilochus, 3 we see that the cicada is a master of blame whenever he is wronged (F 223 W). 4 Croesus responds to the warning by sparing the life of Aesop and offering to grant him a favor; Aesop then asks for and is granted a peaceful settlement between the Lydians and the Samians. 5
§20. In this way further meaning comes to light from the sêmeion 'sign' 1 that Aesop had partially interpreted at the beginning of his dealings with the citizens of Samos. 2 At a meeting of the Samian assembly, an eagle had seized and flown away with a ring to be worn by whoever was to be newly elected as 'guardian' of the city's laws. 3 Then the eagle had returned and dropped the ring in the lap of a slave. At the beginning Aesop had interpreted the sêmeion 'sign' 4 by drawing a parallel connecting the eagle with Croesus and the transfer of the ring to the slave with the shift from autonomy to tributary status for Samos. 5 As a reward for his interpretation, however, Aesop demands and is granted emancipation from his own status as slave. 6 In the end, then, the chain of events leads to the further interpretation that Aesop himself has effectively become the true guardian of the laws of the Samians. This quasi-juridical stance of Aesop should be kept in mind as we approach the topic of parallelisms between Aesop and Solon in the stories of their encounters with Croesus of Lydia. 7
§21. With these examples of Aesop's fables in mind, we return to the proposition that Plutarch's pejorative comparison of Herodotus with Aesop is apt. Herodotus too, as we have seen, can speak in the manner of the ainos, occasionally even telling an outright fable 1 and frequently manipulating the Hellenic perspective, as Plutarch charges, by applying to Scythians, Persians, or Egyptians what really applies to Hellenes (On the Malice of Herodotus 871d). 2 In fact the language of Herodotus himself provides testimony that his own tradition of discourse and that of Aesop are related: in an incidental mention of Aesop, Herodotus refers to him as a logopoios 'artisan of speech' (aisôpou tou logopoiou Herodotus 2.134.3). 3 This word logopoios is used by
Herodotus to refer to his own predecessor, Hecataeus of Miletus (e.g., hekataiôi tôi logopoiôi Herodotus 2.143.1). 4 Moreover, in the same context where Herodotus incidentally mentions Aesop as a logopoios 'artisan of speech', he mentions the poet Sappho as a mousopoios 'artisan of song' (Sapphous tês mousopoiou Herodotus 2.135.1), and the juxtaposition here of
logopoios / mousopoios in the language of Herodotus seems perfectly parallel to the juxtapositon
of logios / aoidos 'master of speech / song' in the language of Pindar. 5 In fact we have seen that Herodotus is by implication a logios, a 'master of speech' whose function is parallel to that of a Pindar as aoidos, a 'master of song'. 6
§22. Mention of this juxtaposition not only brings us back to the starting point of our discussion, where we had considered the comparative evidence of Pindar's language in investigating the essence of Herodotus' historiâ. It also brings us to a confrontation with a crucial difference between Aesop and Herodotus, Plutarch notwithstanding: whereas the ainos of Aesop the slave, in line with Aesop's own social position, is lowly, 1 that of Herodotus is elevated. As such, the implicit ainos of Herodotus as logios has more in common with the ainos of a figure like Pindar, whose epinician lyric poetry overtly refers to itself as ainos. 2 Though Plutarch may begrudge Herodotus the quoting of oracles as a way of conveying a message (again On the Malice of Herodotus 871d), such a procedure seems perfectly in keeping with the lofty stance of a man who himself sêmainei 'indicates' from a superior position of knowledge akin to that of the oracles. 3 In fact the prose of Herodotus can combine with the poetry of oracles to convey the same sort of message that is conveyed by the uninterrupted lyric poetry of Pindar.
§23. I close this part of the presentation with an illustration of this principle, where we juxtapose a given Herodotean passage with a corresponding Pindaric one. It seems fitting that the message of both the Herodotean and the Pindaric passages about to be quoted concerns an admonition about the evils of hubris. First, let us look at the passage taken from Herodotus, where the sequence of thought runs through a stretch of prose / poetry / back to prose:
chrêsmoisi de ouk echô antilegein hôs ouk eisi alêthees, ou boulomenos enargeôs legontas peirasthai kataballein, es toiade prêgmata esblepsas:
all' hotan Artemidos chrusaorou hieron aktên nêusi gephurôsôsi kai einaliên Kunosouran, elpidi mainomenêi liparas persantes Athênas,
dia Dikê sbessei krateron Koron, Hubrios huion, deinon maimôonta, dokeunt' ana panta piesthai. 1 chalkos gar chalkôi summixetai, haimati d' Arês ponton phoinixei. tot' eleutheron Hellados êmar
euruopa Kronidês epagei kai potnia Nikê. es toiauta men kai houtô enargeôs legonti Bakidi
antilogias chrêsmôn peri oute autos legein tolmeô oute par' allôn endekomai
I cannot speak against the oracles, claiming that they are not true [alêthees]. I do not wish to try to discredit them, when they speak manifestly, as when I consider what follows:
When they bridge the sea from the sacred headland of golden-sworded Artemis, with ships, all the way to seaside Kynosoura,
with frenzied ambition [elpis], after having destroyed shining Athens,
then shall bright Justice [Dikê] quench powerful Insatiability [Koros], son of Outrage [Hubris], who rages terribly, thinking to swallow up the world.
Bronze shall mingle with bronze, and with blood shall Ares
make red the sea. Then will the day of freedom that belongs to Greece
be brought about by wide-seeing Zeus and Lady Nîkê [Victory]. So, looking at what precedes, I do not have the daring [= verb of tolma] to say things that would contradict what Bakis says so manifestly. 2 And I would not stand for it if anyone else would say anything contradictory either. Now let us examine the analogous passage taken from Pindar, where the sequence of thought runs through a stretch of uninterrupted lyric poetry:
en tai gar Eunomia naiei kasignêta te, bathron poliôn asphales, | Dika kai homotrophos Eirêna, tami' andrasi ploutou, | chruseai paides euboulou Themitos.| ethelonti d' alexein | Hubrin, Korou matera thrasumuthon. | echô kala te phrasai, tolma te moi | eutheia glôssan ornuei legein
There [= in Corinth], Eunomiâ, 3 sure foundation-stone of cities, dwells with Justice [Dikê] and Peace, dispenser of wealth to man, her sisters, golden daughters of Lawfulness [Themis], lady of good counsel. They accede to warding off Outrage [Hubris], the one with the rash words [mûthoi], the mother of Insatiability [Koros]. I have fair things to say, and straightforward daring [tolma] impels my tongue to speak. 4
§24. This juxtaposition of passages from Herodotus and Pindar, revealing important convergences in theme as well as divergences in style, leads to a fundamental observation about both the logioi 'masters of speech' and the aoidoi 'masters of song', who are both treated as conveyors of kleos 'glory' in the words of Pindar. 1 We can see from these juxtaposed passages that the logios and the aoidos are parallel not only as masters of kleos: they are parallel also in what they have to say, that is, in the message that they impart. As for the code of this message, it is explicitly designated as ainos in the diction of the aoidos 'master of song' as exemplified by Pindar. 2 In the diction of the logios as exemplified by Herodotus, however, the corresponding designation is reserved for only one aspect of the code, and that is the poetry, not the prose. In the code of the logios, the explicit message is in prose, while the implicit message is to be found in the poetry as bracketed or paraphrased by the prose. A positive example of this code, as presented by Herodotus, is the sum total of his own Histories, which consistently bear out the messages of the Delphic Oracle and other such sources of authority. A typical negative example on the other hand is evident in the narrative of Herodotus about the collaboration of Onomakritos, singer of oracular utterances, with the Peisistratidai and Aleuadai, tyrants respectively of Athens and
Thessaly: Onomakritos is pictured in the act of 'singing oracular utterances [khrêsmoi]' for the purpose of persuading the Great King of Persia (chrêsmôideôn 7.6.5), with the active support of the Peisistratidai and the Aleuadai, who reinforce what he sings by publicly presenting their own supporting judgment (gnômas apodeiknumenoi ibid.). 3 The kind of poetry that is bracketed or paraphrased by the prose of the logios qualifies as ainigma, derivative of ainos, as we see in the use of ainissomai 'utter riddles' in the expression ainissesthai tade ta epea 'to utter in a riddling way the following words' at Herodotus 5.56.1, the end of a prose sequence introducing the quotation of an utterance, in dactylic hexameters, of an oracular dream. 4 Once the poetry of the ainigma is quoted, Herodotus can return to a mode of explicit communication; he therefore reverts to prose.
§25. Herodotus then is like Pindar not only in his self-professed intent to convey kleos. 1 He is also like Pindar in his mastery of the ainos, though his medium is not ainos: rather, it contains ainos. For Herodotus, the heritage of ainos is to be found in the traditions of poetry and song making as they are contained and applied in his Histories by way of quotation, paraphrase, or mere reference.
§26. Even if the medium of Herodotus cannot be called ainos in form, it is parallel to the ainos of a poet like Pindar in both function and content. Just as the songs of Pindar profess the function of upholding kleos, bringing the values of the heroic past into the present, 1 so too the Histories of Herodotus, as he declares in his prooemium. 2
§27. This observation about the function of the traditional forms represented by Pindar and Herodotus can be extended to the level of content as well: just as Pindaric song dwells on the mystical possession of the lyric moment by the epic past of heroes, so too the narrative of Herodotean inquiry falls under the spell of active interventions by the heroes of cult and epic. Let us begin with Pindar: in his songs the heroic past is at times represented as literally intervening into the present through the epiphany of a hero, as when the voice of the poet says that he "met" the hero Alkmaion on the way to Delphi (Pythian8.56-60). 1 In such a context the poet is possessed by the epiphany, in that the intent of his words is controlled by the spirit of the hero. Thus the subtitle of this book, The Lyric Possession of an Epic Past, cuts two ways: while lyric possesses epic as its property, as we have seen from the programmatic assertions of lyric authority to appropriate the content of epic, 2 lyric is also mystically possessed by epic, in that the heroes of epic assert their will, which becomes the content of lyric. 3 So too with Herodotus: the content of his Histories, the narrative, is allowed to be controlled, or at least affected, by the will of heroes. The outcome of a given narrative is frequently marked by an intervention, perceived by the characters within the narrative, of a hero who mystically manifests himself on the scene, as when Herodotus narrates the reports about an epiphany by the local heroes Phylakos and Autonoos in defense of Delphi from the invading Persians (8.34-39). At the very end of the Histories, the first hero who died in the primary epic setting of the Trojan War, Protesilaos, figuratively comes back from the dead to exact retribution and gives meaning to the portent of the preserved fish that come back to life: with this portent the hero Protesilaos literally sêmainei 'indicates' the power of the divine apparatus in bringing about an ultimately just outcome (Herodotus 9.120.2). Meanwhile, the narrative of Herodotus is conveying the same message, that
the Hellenes were in the right when they struggled with the common enemy in the Persian War: thus not only the hero gives a sêma 'sign' here, but Herodotus too, as the narrator of this sêma, who already at the very beginning of his inquiry sêmainei or 'indicates' that the Asians started it all (again Herodotus 1.5.3). 4
§28. Although Herodotus veils the divine apparatus that is at work in his narrative, habitually distancing himself from expressing his own adherence to a world view that is predicated on the gods and heroes of the Hellenes, he nevertheless allows that divine apparatus to work its will in the narrative so that the program of themes in his Histories matches what we find in actual poetry and song. Thus, for example, in his narrative of the sea battle at Artemisium, Herodotus notes that the wind that scattered the Persian fleet before the battle was known to the local Greek population as the Hellêspontiês 'the one from the Hellespont' (1.188.2), a detail that conjures up the idea that the divine apparatus was at work in this event. This idea can be reconstructed from two interconnected themes. First, from the standpoint of epic, the Hellespont is associated with Achilles, whose tomb is prominently located there (e.g., Odyssey xxiv 80-84; called sêma at Iliad XXIII 257). 1 Second, the Persians react to this detail of the name Hellêspontiês by associating it with Achilles, by way of his mother Thetis: after the naval disaster they supplicated Thetis for fear that they had angered her since Thetis had been abducted by Peleus--and thus Achilles had been conceived--near the very locale where their fleet had been scattered by the wind (7.191.2). 2 The linking of the wind that scattered the Persian fleet before the sea battle at Artemisium with the divine apparatus of poetic traditions is reinforced by another detail reported by Herodotus, namely, that the Athenians on this occasion sacrificed and prayed to Boreas the North Wind and his consort Oreithyia to scatter the fleet of the Persians (7.189). This detail in the narrative program of Herodotus links it with the narrative program of a composition by Simonides, The Sea Battle of Artemisium (PMG 532-535), which seems to have featured prominently the theme of the divine intervention of Boreas and Oreithyia in the Battle of Artemisium (cf. PMG 534). 3
§29. The similarities between Herodotus and a master of choral lyric like Simonides extend beyond such parallel treatments of themes linked with the divine apparatus of gods and heroes: even the modes of treating these themes are parallel. As in the songs of figures like Simonides and Pindar, we can see in the prose of Herodotus an approach to myth that shades over local features while it highlights the Panhellenic ones. Even on the level of diction, we have already noted the common pattern of avoidance, in both Pindar and Herodotus, of the word mûthos 'myth' with its connotations of surviving links between local myth and local ritual. 1 In dismissing the authority of a tradition that happens to have been accepted by his predecessor, Hecataeus of Miletus, Herodotus refers to this particular tradition as a mûthos (2.23.1). 2 Just as Hecataeus asserts the Panhellenism of his own discourse by simultaneously claiming control of alêthea 'truth' and dismissing the reports of his predecessors as localized myths tied to localized rituals (FGH 1 F 1), so also Herodotus aims at an ever higher degree of universalism by undermining his own predecessor, Hecataeus. 3
§30. Like Pindar, Herodotus not only dissociates himself from mûthos: he also consistently highlights the more Panhellenic aspects of the Greek mythmaking traditions, while shading over the more localized ones. For example, he mentions at 5.94.2- 95.2 a conflict between Athens and
Mytilene over a disputed territory in the region of Troy, where the focal points are the "Trojan" Sigeion (cf. Herodotus 4.38.2), an outpost of Athenian power, and the Akhilleion, a rival outpost controlled by Mytilene (Herodotus 5.94.1-2), but he avoids in this context a local narrative tradition, native to Lesbos, concerning a victory of Mytilene over Athens in the form of a duel to the death between Phrynon of Athens, an Olympic winner, and Pittakos of Mytilene, tyrant and lawgiver, as recorded in Diogenes Laertius 1.74 and Strabo 13.1.38 C599-600, where Pittakos succeeded in slaying Phrynon (cf. Plutarch On the Malice of Herodotus 858ab). In their reports of the tradition, Diogenes Laertius and Strabo agree that the Mytilenaeans won in this particular conflict, only to lose later in an arbritration undertaken by Periandros, Tyrant of Corinth (this aspect of the tradition is not omitted in Herodotus 5.95.2). 1 While omitting the story about the victory of Pittakos, as a representative of Mytilene, over the Athenians, Herodotus includes a story that he says he knows from a poem of Alcaeus: the speaker of the poem declares that he has abandoned his armor when he fled after a battle between Mytilene and Athens, a battle won by the Athenians, and that this armor is now hanging as a trophy in the precinct of Athena at the Athenian outpost of Sigeion (Herodotus 5.95.1-2; see Alcaeus F 401 B V). Instead of using a story about the defeat of Athens by Pittakos of Mytilene, Herodotus chooses a story about the defeat of Mytilene by Athens, as experienced by Alcaeus of Mytilene, who happens to be the
self-declared enemy of Pittakos (e.g., Alcaeus F 70, 348, 429 V).
§31. In fact one aspect of the Panhellenic stance of Herodotus is the frequency of his cross references to poets who had become or were becoming canonical by the fifth century B.C. Besides Alcaeus (5.95), Herodotus also mentions Archilochus (1.12.2), 1 Anacreon (3.121.1), 2
Sappho (2.135), Simonides (5.102.3, 7.228.4), and even Pindar (3.38.4), whom he explicitly
paraphrases (= Pindar F 169.1 SM). 3 To this list we may add figures like Arion, master of the dithyramb at Corinth (1.23), 4 and Aeschylus, master of the medium of tragedy at Athens (2.156.6). The Histories also include cross references to Homer ( 2.23, 2.53.2, 3; 2.116) and
§32. Besides the numerous cross references to canonical poets, we have observed another Panhellenic trend in Herodotus, that is, the even more numerous cross references to the poetry of oracles, especially the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi. 1 The oracular poetry that is bracketed or paraphrased by the Histories of Herodotus qualifies as ainigma, derivative of ainos: we have seen this in the use of ainissomai 'utter riddles' in the expression ainissesthai tade ta epea 'to utter in a riddling way the following words' at Herodotus 5.56.1, the end of a prose sequence that introduces the quotation of an utterance, in dactylic hexameters, of an oracular dream. 2 To repeat: once the poetry of the ainigma is quoted, Herodotus can return to a mode of explicit communication, and he therefore reverts to prose. Alternatively Herodotus may stay within the medium of prose as he paraphrases the messages that can elsewhere be found in poetic wisdom, as we see in his central story of the encounter between Solon the sage and Croesus the tyrant. 3 Even in such situations, however, the direct quotations of Solon as he addresses Croesus, though in prose, function as the equivalent of the direct quotations of Solon in the poetic tradition that is attributed to him. 4
§33. The use of traditions in oracular poetry and wisdom poetry in the Histories of Herodotus, where the form of prose coexists and interacts with forms of poetry, 1 is analogous to such forms of expression as represented by the Lives of the Seven Sages tradition. 2 The traditions about Solon, described as the wisest of the Seven Sages in Plato (Timaeus 20d), 3 follow this pattern of ad hoc poetry bracketed by prose that situates the supposedly historical contexts of the Sage's advice, as reflected for example in Diogenes Laertius 1.49, with the reworked prose narrative bracketing the poetry of Solon F 10 W. 4
§34. The Panhellenic character of the very concept of the Seven Sages is reflected not only by their canonical status but even by the collectivization of their sayings: as we know from the testimony of Plato, it was believed that they were collectively responsible for such sayings as gnôthi seauton 'know yourself' and mêden agan 'nothing in excess', which were inscribed on the temple of Apollo at Delphi (Protagoras 343a-b). In light of such Panhellenism inherent in the Seven Sages theme, it is worthy of note that the cross references in Herodotus to figures eligible for inclusion in the canonical grouping of the Seven Sages are even more frequent than his cross references to the canonical grouping of lyric poets: 1
• Thales of Miletus: 1.74.2, 75.3, 1.70.3
• Solon of Athens: 1.29.1, 30.1, 31.1, 32.1, 34.1, 86.3, 5; 2.177.2 5.113.2;
Khilon of Sparta: 1.59.2, 3, (as warner about Peisistratos the tyrant), 7.235.2
Pittakos, Tyrant of Mytilene: 1.27.2 (as foil for Solon)
Bias of Priene: 1.27 (as foil for Solon), 170.1, 3
Anacharsis the Thracian: 4.46.1, 76.1-6 (gên pollên theôrêsas kai apodexamenos kat' autên sophiên pollên ekomizeto es êthea ta Skutheôn 'having made a theôriâ 2 over many lands and having publicly presented [= verb apo-deik-numai] throughout these lands much skill in discourse [= sophiâ], he brought it back [i.e., the sophiâ] to the tribes of the Scythians' 1.76.2) 3
Periandros, Tyrant of Corinth: 5.95.2 (as arbitrator between Athens and Mytilene;
omission, in this context, of Pittakos, Tyrant of Mytilene); also Herodotus 1.20, 23, 24.1, 24.7; 3.48.2, 49.1, 50.1, 50.3, 51.1-3, 52.1, 3, 6, 7, 53.1, 2, 6, 7; 5.92 z 1, 2, 3; ê1, 2, 3,
95.2">1.20, 23, 24.1, 24.7; 3.48.2, 49.1, 50.1, 50.3, 51.1-3, 52.1, 3, 6, 7, 53.1, 2, 6, 7;
5.92 z 1, 2, 3; ê 1, 2, 3, 95.2.
§35. The close association of the sayings of the Seven Sages with the sayings of the Delphic Oracle, as emphasized in Plato's Protagoras (again 343a-b), is parallel to the association of Solon's message with the message of the Oracle in the Croesus narrative of Herodotus. The warnings of Solon the sage to Croesus the tyrant combine with the warnings of the Oracle of Apollo in conveying the overall ethical message of the Croesus story in Herodotus, which is encoded in the mode of an ainos. 1 The use of oracular poetry in the prose of Herodotus was condemned by Plutarch as akin to the fable making of Aesop (On the Malice of Herodotus 871d), 2 and in fact the utterances of Aesop as framed by the Life of Aesop tradition function in the mode of ainos. 3 Plutarch's pejorative comparison of Herodotus with Aesop is justified to the extent that Herodotus too can speak in the manner of the ainos, occasionally even telling an outright fable. 4 In this connection I cite again the distinction, made by the scholia to Aristophanes
Birds471, between Aesopic and 'Sybaritic' fables: whereas the Aesopic discourse concentrates on animals, the 'Sybaritic' concentrates on humans. 5 Inasmuch as Herodotus is said to have settled, died, and been buried in Thourioi (Stephanus of Byzantium s.v. thourioi) , a polis founded ostensibly as a Panhellenic venture, with the involvement of both Athens and Sparta (Diodorus 12.10-11), at a site where once stood the city of Sybaris, that ultimate symbol of luxuriance and the hubris that goes with it, 6 I have argued that the setting of Thourioi as a reborn and reformed Sybaris would have been an ideal context for a reaffirmation of the values that bind Hellenes together in an ultimate conflict against hubris. 7 In this kind of context, the composition of 'Sybaritic' discourse could serve the purpose of ethical instruction for the body politic in an exalted sense of including all Hellenes, and we may note again that the reference in Aristophanes Wasps1258-1260 to two kinds of discourse appropriate for learned merriment, the Aesopic and the 'Sybaritic' (Subaritikoi), includes the specific point that both kinds are to be learned at the symposium. 8
§36. The language of Herodotus provides indirect testimony that his own tradition of discourse and that of Aesop are related: in an incidental mention of Aesop, Herodotus refers to him as a logopoios 'artisan of speech' (aisôpou tou logopoiou Herodotus 2.134.3), and this same word logopoios is used by Herodotus to refer to his own predecessor, Hecataeus of Miletus (e.g., hekataiôi tôi logopoiôi Herodotus 2.143.1). 1 Moreover, in the same context where Herodotus mentions Aesop as a logopoios 'artisan of speech', he mentions the poet Sappho as a mousopoios 'artisan of song' (Sapphous tês mousopoiou Herodotus 2.135.1), and this juxtaposition parallels that of logios / aoidos 'master of speech / song' in the language of Pindar. 2
§37. The parallelisms between the discourse of Herodotus and that of such masters of ainos as Aesop on one extreme and Pindar on the other bring to mind yet another example of the Herodotean use of ainos, that is, the frequent references throughout the Histories to the symbol of the hêmionos 'mule', as introduced in an oracular utterance of Apollo, addressed to the tyrant Croesus of Lydia, concerning the birth of Cyrus, the once and future founder of the Persian Empire: like a mule--born of a socially superior mother, the horse, and of an inferior father, the donkey--so also Cyrus is born of a mother who is a Mede and a father who is a Persian
§38. I have saved for last this particular example of ainos making in Herodotus because it resonates simultaneously with the social loftiness of Pindar and the lowliness of Aesop. Let us consider Aesop as he is represented in Plutarch's Banquet of the Seven Sages (150a): at the banquet held in the banquet hall of the tyrant-sage Periandros of Corinth, Aesop is given a place next to Solon, but he is seated on a diphros 'low chair'; it is in this context that Aesop tells the fable of "The Lydian Mule": a mule, seeing his own image reflected in a river, is struck with self- admiration and starts galloping like a horse, proudly tossing his mane, but then, suddenly realizing that he is the son of an ass, he stops running, and his spirit is broken for good (ibid.). 1
§39. The symbol of the mule in Greek traditions of myth and ritual serves to define, as a negative foil, the very essence of political power and legitimacy. Let us consider again the ideology of the Olympic Games, that ultimate symbol of power and sovereignty. 1 In line with this ideology, it is
tabu to breed mules within the territory that serves as the setting for the Games, the region of Elis, and in fact it is said to be impossible to do so (Herodotus 4.30.1); for that reason, during the season when the female horses of that region are in heat, they are herded outside Elis to be mated with male donkeys (4.30.2; Pausanias 5.5.2; Plutarch Greek Questions 52, 303b). The breeding of mules outside Elis, setting for the Olympics, is a foil for the implied breeding of thoroughbred horses inside Elis, as conveyed by the name of Hippodameia, containing the theme of horses and their taming or domination. The marriage of this figure Hippodameia to Pelops constitutes the archetype of political domination in the Peloponnesus. 2 By extension, the symbol of the mule as applied to Cyrus, founder of the Persian Empire and archetypal threat to Greek civilization, serves as a foil for the purebred legitimacy of Pelops as the dynastic prototype of the Hellenes and, in that capacity, as the preeminent hero of the Olympic Games. 3
§40. Such a foil of illegitimacy does not have to be foreign: the symbol of the mule is a traditional theme for testing the essence of sovereignty in Hellenic myths native the Peloponnesus. There is, for example, a story native to Elis about one Oxylos, described as the driver of a mule, whose advice to the Herakleidai was the key to their occupation of the Peloponnesus (Pausanias 5.3.5-6). In return for his advice Oxylos was awarded possession of Elis (ibid.), which is the setting of the Olympic Games. This same Oxylos is credited with the invention of the astrabê 'mule
saddle' (scholia to Pindar Pythian 5.10b Drachmann). In view of the Spartan connections of Oxylos (Pausanias 5.4.1-2), we may note the riddling story in Herodotus 6.67-69 about the Spartan hero Astrabakos , whose name means something like 'the one with the mule saddle'. 1 In this complex story as reported by Herodotus, the hero Astrabakos took the place of King Ariston of Sparta in impregnating the queen, begetting King Demaratos, according to the story within a story told to Demaratos by his mother (6.69.1-5); according to the detractors of King Demaratos of Sparta, in contrast, he was begotten not by Ariston, nor by the hero Astrabakos, but by some onophorbos, a 'stableboy who tends donkeys' (6.68.2, 69.5). Now hêmionoi 'mules' are known to be sterile, and they are said to give birth only by miracle (e.g., Herodotus 3.151.2- 153.2). Moreover, before King Ariston married the queen who gave birth to Demaratos, he had two previous wives with whom he had failed to produce children (Herodotus 6.61.1-2). It seems then that the theme of the stableboy who tends donkeys is linked with the meaning of 'mule' implicit in the name of Astrabakos. There is an air of illegitimacy conjured up by this name. 2 There is also an air of illegitimacy about Demaratos, which seems connected with the themes of his formal disqualification as king (Herodotus 6.65.3-67.3), his subsequent escape from Sparta (6.70.1-2), and, most important, his role as a prominent advisor of Xerxes when the Persians invade Hellas (e.g., 7.101-104). 3 There is room for speculation that had Xerxes succeeded in conquering the Greeks, Demaratos would have been installed by the Persians as an unconstitutional tyrant of the Peloponnesus. 4 Since Astrabakos belongs to the royal patriliny of the Agiadai (Pausanias 3.16.9), while Ariston stems from the Eurypontidai, it has even been suggested that "a Eurypontid king with an Agiad divine father would seem ideally suited for replacing the Spartan dual kingship by a monarchy." 5 In this connection we may note the remark of Herodotus that Demaratos was the only Spartan king up to that time ever to have won in the chariot races at the Olympic Games (6.70.5). Such a feat promotes the kind of legitimation that is sought by tyrants. 6 While giving such feats their due, the narrative of Herodotus, consistently inimical as it is to the
institution of tyranny, undercuts the legitimation that goes with it.
§41. This theme brings us finally to the glorification of such legitimation, as conferred by the epinician themes inherited through the song-making traditions of Pindar. Just as Herodotus parallels the lowly Aesop with themes of ainos reminiscent of the fable, so also he parallels the lofty Pindar, again with themes of ainos, this time reminiscent of the epinician ode. But these themes are used by Herodotus not to promote the legitimation of those who seek or already possess power. Rather they are there to undercut such legitimation; thus the themes are consistently historicized and therefore demystified. Let us take, for example, the exalted theme of phuê 'nature', which is contrasted with the foil of artificial glorification in order to convey "a natural and spontaneous enthusiasm that is divinely inspired" in epinician song making (as in Pindar Olympian2.86, Nemean1.25). 1 In contrast, the concept of phuê in Herodotus is presented in an ambiguous context, where the resources of culture, of artifice, are being used by the tyrant in order to manipulate nature. In a celebrated story of Herodotus about the seizure of political power by Peisistratos of Athens, Phuê is the name of a stunningly beautiful woman, three finger-lengths short of four cubits in stature, whom Peisistratos dresses up in full armor and with whom he then rides from the countryside into the city of Athens (1.60.4). Heralds have prepared the way, announcing the news that Athena herself is installing Peisistratos as the supreme power; the populace, when they see Phuê on the chariot, recognize her as Athena and accept the domination of Peisistratos (1.60.5). 2 The natural endowments of a beautiful woman have been manipulated by the artifice of a tyrant--an artifice comparable to the strategies of epinician ainos. In his public presentation of Phuê, Peisistratos has brought to life a central metaphor of the epinician tradition. 3 In the ideology of epinician song making, phuê 'nature' represents those spontaneous occasions when "the subject must speak for itself." 4 In the ideology of Herodotean ainos, such a spontaneous occasion is in fact an illusion created through artistry, through the artifice of the tyrant. 5
Notes
§3n1. On ainos as a 'fable' of Aesop: sources in N 1979.239 §18n2.
§3n2. For the juridical implications, see Detienne 1973.88-89.
§5n1. Hiller von Gaertringen 1906 no. 500. Also Piccirilli 1973.17, no. 4. On the dating, see Tod 1931.41.
§5n2. Hiller von Gaertringen ibid.
§5n3. In what follows, I shall attempt to demonstrate why the juridical sense of 'inquiries' is more appropriate here for the word historiai than the literary sense of 'histories'.
§5n4. I am following here the interpretation of Piccirilli ibid.
§5n5. On the semantics of apo-deixis: Ch.8§4n1, Ch.8§5 and following.
§5n7. For a dramatic example of a case where Herodotus does indeed express his own opinion, I cite the case of Croesus, as discussed at Ch.8§22 and following.
§6n1. For such cases, see Tod 1913.123-127.
§6n2. Tod 1913.127.
§6n3. Tod 1932.56.
§7n1. For the inscription, see Hiller von Gaertringen 1906, Inschriften von Priene no. 37. See Tod 1913.41 (early second century B.C.).
§7n2. Tod 1932.56-57.
§8n1. Inschriften von Priene no. 37.20-24.
§8n2. Inschriften von Priene no. 37.24-25.
§8n3. Cf. Benveniste 1969 II 173-175.
§8n4. IG 9.2.521, early third century B.C., found at Larisa.
§8n5. Translation after Tod 1913.148-149. See also lines 19-38 of the same inscription, IG
9.2.521, for similar depositions given by local fishermen.
§9n1. Duris of Samos FGH 76 F 25. See Piccirilli 1973.21.
§9n2. SIG 685.93 (Crete, second century B.C.): [poiê]tôn kai historiographôn apodeixeis.
§10n1. Cf. Ch.8§9 and following, especially Ch.8§13n4.
§12n1. The testimony of Plutarch is to be supplemented by Strabo 9.1.10 C394; cf. Aristotle Rhetoric 1375b and Quintilian Institutio oratoria 5.11.40. Cf. Tod 1913.134n2; also Piccirilli 1973.46-56.
§13n1. For a commentary on this passage of Thucydides, see Piccirilli 1973.112-116.
§13n2. Tod 1913.95.
§13n3. Tod ibid. This instance is recorded by Diodorus 15.18 (date: sometime after 383 B.C.). See also Piccirilli 1973.164-165; also pp. 11-16, citing one other exceptional instance where the Delphic Oracle reportedly served as arbitrator; in this case the dispute concerned the possession of a golden tripod fished from the sea.
§13n4. Tod ibid.
§14n1. As for the winners, the people of Klazomenai established a festival, called the
prophthasia 'anticipation', to commemorate their victory (Diodorus 15.18.3).
§14n2. For an inventory of inscriptions recording awards in cases of inter-polis arbitration, see Tod 1913.95n2.
§15n1. Cf. Ch.11§2; cf. also the earlier discussion at Ch.10§46.
§15n2. Survey of Herodotean references to Hecataeus in How and Wells 1928 I 24-25. On Hecataeus as logopoios 'artisan of speech', see Ch.8§13n4.
§16n1. Cf. Ch.8§39 and following.
§17n2. Plutarch is taking Herodotus to task for what he deems to be malice against Themistokles and the Athenians. Herodotus reports that the Delphic Oracle had pronounced Aegina and not Athens as worthy of the first prize for valor publicly displayed at the Battle of Salamis. We know that according to local Athenian traditions as reflected by Isocrates (Panegyric 72), Athens supposedly got the first prize. It surely seems ironic to us, at least, that Herodotus' account here, especially in the subsequent section that is neither quoted nor even mentioned by Plutarch (Herodotus 8.124.1), is in fact diplomatically complimentary to Themistokles.
§17n3. Sources in N 1979.239 §18n2.
§17n4. For an introduction to the Life of Aesop tradition, see N, pp. 279-316. The implicit meaning of a fable may also be derived from the context in which one does something: see Karadagli 1981.75-76 on Herodotus 5.92.
§18n1. Life of Aesop 97 and Aesop Fable no. 153 Perry.
§18n2. Aesop wants the Samians to inscribe this fable on a mnêma 'monument' that is to be dedicated to him after his death (Life of Aesop G 96). See N 1979.286n1: "This narrative device of a self-fulfilling prophecy implies that the Life of Aesop tradition had once been suitable for an inscription in a precinct of Aesop as cult-hero." Note the reference in Life of Aesop W 100 to a temenos 'precinct' set aside in honor of Aesop by the citizens of Samos; at G 100, this precinct is called the Aisôpeion. For further discussion, including a comparison with the cult precinct of Archilochus at Paros known as the Arkhilokheion, see N, pp. 285-286n1.
§18n3. Life of Aesop 94 and Aesop Fable no. 383 Perry.
§18n4. In Life of Aesop 94, the word for 'harsh' (path) is trâkheia, the same word used in a comparable context by Herodotus 9.122.2. See Ch.9§26.
§18n5. Life of Aesop G 94.
§18n6. Life of Aesop 95.
§18n7. For the wording about the tribute, see Life of Aesop 92.
§19n1. Life of Aesop 99 and Aesop Fable no. 387 Perry.
§19n2. Life of Aesop W 99; in version G 99 the distinction between locust (akris) and cicada (tettix) is garbled.
§19n3. On self-references in Archilochean poetry to ainos (e.g., F 174 W), see N 1979.283.
§19n4. Cf. N 1979.283, 302.
§19n5. Life of Aesop 100.
§20n1. The word is related to sêma 'sign', as discussed at Ch.8§21, Ch.8§27 and following.
§20n2. Life of Aesop 81.
§20n3. Life of Aesop G 81. Aesop refers to this ring as stratêgikos 'belonging to the
stratêgos' (G 91). Since the word stratêgos 'general' designates 'lawgiver' at Aesop Fable 348 Perry, a story that reveals striking parallels with the Samian story of Maiandrios, successor to the tyrant Polykrates (Herodotus 3.142-143; see Ch.11§21n1), it may be pertinent also to compare the story of the Ring of Polykrates (Herodotus 3.41-42).
§20n4. Again Life of Aesop 81.
§20n5. Life of Aesop 91.
§20n6. Life of Aesop 90.
§20n7. Cf. Ch.11§32 and following. Note too the preoccupation of Aesopic fables with the juridical theme of guilt (as expressed by aitiâ 'responsibility' and its derivatives): survey by Karadagli 1981.108-109.
§21n1. See also Ch.11§3. For a survey of instances where Herodotus tells fables, see Karadagli 1981 on Herodotus 1.25 (p. 77), 1.41 (pp. 23, 65), 1.158-159 (pp. 78-79), 3.46 (pp. 84-85),
4.131-132 (p. 91), 5.92 (pp. 75-76), 6.86 (pp. 35-37). Note too the close correspondence between the story of Maiandrios of Samos, Herodotus 3.142-143, and the fable of "The Wolf as Lawgiver and the Ass," Aesop Fable no. 348 Perry, as discussed by Detienne and Svenbro 1979.218-221. In this Aesopic fable the title of stratêgos 'general' is applied to the status of a lawgiver.
§21n2. Cf. Ch.11§17. Note, for example, the fable of "The Aulos-Player and the Fish," as told by the Persian king Cyrus (Herodotus 1.141). This kind of manipulation is not limited to fables in the strict sense of the word. I cite the celebrated passage known as the Debate of the Consitutions, Herodotus 3.80-88. I cite also the distinction, made by the scholia to Aristophanes Birds471,
between Aesopic and 'Sybaritic' fables: the latter supposedly concentrate on humans while the former concentrate on animals. Compare the reference in Aristophanes Wasps1258-1260 to two kinds of discourse appropriate for learned merriment, the Aesopic and the
'Sybaritic' (Subaritikoi), both of which are to be learned at the symposium.
§21n3. Aesop gets the same title in Aristotle Constitution of the Samians, F 573 Rose. The context of Herodotus' mention of Aesop suggests that he was aware of the narrative traditions about Aesop in Samos, as attested in the passages of the Life of Aesop (81-95; see Ch.11§21n1, Ch.11§20n3). Herodotus says that both a Thracian woman called Rhodopis and Aesop himself (also referred to as a Thracian in, e.g., Aristotle Constitution of the Samians, F 573 Rose) were slaves of one Iadmon, and that Rhodopis was taken to Egypt by 'Xanthes the Samian', from where she was later ransomed by the brother of Sappho (Herodotus 2.134-135). In the Life of Aesop, a Samian called Xanthos is the last of three masters who own Aesop as slave; in the end Xanthos frees Aesop (90). The first of the three masters, who is not named in the Life, may very well be the same character as the 'Iadmon' of Herodotus. (It should be clear from my choice of the word character that I think of sameness here not in terms of prosopography but rather in terms of story types.)
§21n4. Cf. Ch.11§15n2.
§21n6. Ibid.
§22n1. For a striking illustration of this social perspective, consider the image of Aesop in Plutarch Banquet of the Seven Sages 150a: at the banquet Aesop is given a place next to Solon, but he sits on a diphros 'low chair' (it is in this context that Aesop tells the fable of "The Lydian Mule"). We may note the parallelism between Aesop and Solon as sages who visit the court of Croesus the Lydian: Life of Aesop 99 (Ch.11§19) and Herodotus 1.29.1 ( Ch.8§45).
§22n2. Cf. Ch.6§3 and following.
§22n3. Cf. Ch.8§21, Ch.8§27 and following.
§23n1. An emendation for the manuscript reading pithesthai : discussion in Powell 1939.117. Retaining the manuscript reading, Fontenrose 1978.185 translates dokeunt' ana panta pithesthai as 'thinking to subdue the world'.
§23n2. On the figure of Bakis, see Ch.6§49.
§23n3. On the metaphorical associations of Eunomiâ, a word that conveys the notion of good government achieved through good laws, cf. N 1985.43, 61.
§23n4. In this passage the emphasis is on having the tolma 'boldness' to say good things, whereas in the previous passage the emphasis is on not having the tolma to say bad things. Cf. Hubbard 1986.37-38.
§24n1. Cf. Ch.8§10 and following.
§24n2. Cf. Ch.6§3 and following.
§24n3. See Ch.6§26. Combined with the direct object gnômên / gnômâs 'opinions, judgments', the verb apo-deik-numai 'make a public presentation of' is used in contexts where someone is presenting his views in public, and the contexts include three specific instances of self-expression by Herodotus (2.146.1, 7.139.1, 8.8.3). See Ch.8§5.
§24n4. Cf. also the use of the same verb in Aristophanes Birds970, where the subject is the oracular Bakis. On the figure of Bakis, see again Ch.6§49.
§25n1. Cf. Ch.8§10 and following.
§26n1. Cf. Ch.6§9, Ch.6§84 and following.
§26n2. Cf. Ch.8§8 and following, Ch.8§10 and following.
§27n2. Cf. Ch.6§84 and following. By extension, whatever private individual possesses the lyric performance as his property is thereby also possessing the heroic heritage.
§28n1. N 1979.341, 344-345.
§28n2. Cf. Ch.6§86n1; also N, pp. 344-345.
§28n3. Cf. Ch.6§86n1. For more on the theme of winds as "divine equalizers," cf. Hohti 1976.46, citing Herodotus 8.12-13; 7.178, 189.
§29n2. Ibid. Cf. again How and Wells 1928 I 170.
§29n3. Ibid.
§31n2. Note the context of Herodotus 3.121.1: the tyrant Polycrates of Samos is pictured as reclining in the men's quarters in the company of Anacreon of Teos.
§31n3. Of the nine canonical poets of lyric poetry proper (cf. Ch.3§2), only four are missing in
Herodotus: Alcman, Stesichorus, Ibycus, and Bacchylides.
§31n4. Herodotus 1.24.1 draws attention to the association of Arion with Periandros, Tyrant of Corinth.
§32n1. Cf. Ch.11§17 and following.
§32n2. Cf. also Ch.11§24.
§32n4. Cf. ibid.
§33n1. Cf. the discussion of chantefable at Ch.1§54n3.
§33n2. On this tradition, see Snell 1966 [1954], especially p. 118. On the canonical membership of the grouping known as the Seven Sages, see Ch.8§44n2. See especially Diogenes Laertius 1.35, 61, 71, 78, 85, 91, quoting poetry attributed respectively to Thales, Solon, Khilon, Pittakos, Bias, Kleoboulos (missing here from the group of seven is any repertoire for Periandros); the meter and diction of this poetry point to the fifth century B.C. or earlier (cf. Snell, p. 118).
§33n4. Cf. also Plutarch Life of Solon 25.6, bracketing Solon F 7 W, and the commentary in N 1985.31, comparing Solon F 7 with Theognis 24. Besides the format of poetry bracketed by prose, there is also evidence for the format of poetry bracketed by poetry, such as PSI IX no. 1093, where the sayings of Khilon of Sparta are introduced by a hexameter narrative. The sayings include mêden agan 'nothing in excess' (lines 21-22) and engua, para d' ata 'a pledge, and already there is perdition' (line 22); cf. Plato Charmides 165a and Protagoras 343a-b. Commentary by Snell 1966 [1955] 117-118.
§34n1. The listing that I give here corresponds closely to the canonical membership of the Seven Sages as discussed in Ch.8§44n2. We have already noted in that discussion that such figures as Pythagoras of Samos / Kroton are also eligible for inclusion as variants. There are cross references to him as well in Herodotus (2.81.2; 4.95.1, 2; 96).
§34n2. On the semantics of theôros as 'he who sees [root hor-] a vision [theâ]', see Ch.6§35. On Solon as theôros, see Herodotus 1.30.2; also 1.29.1 and the commentary at Ch.6§42n2.
§34n3. Cf. "Plato" Hipparchus 228b: kala erga sophias apedeixato '[Hipparkhos] presented publicly the beautiful accomplishments connected with his understanding of poetry [sophiâ]', with commentary at Ch.6§31.
§35n1. Cf. Ch.8§45 and following, especially Ch.8§47.
§35n3. Cf. Ch.11§18 and following.
§35n5. Cf. Ch.11§21n2.
§35n6. On the Sybaris theme, see Ch.9§20n1.
§35n8. Cf. Ch.11§21n2.
§38n1. Cf. Ch.11§22n1. In this context, Plutarch Banquet of the Seven Sages 150a, it is made explicit that Aesop has been sent by Croesus of Lydia as an emissary both to Periandros and to the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi.
§39n1. Cf. Ch.4§10 and following on the aetiological centering of the Olympics on the hero Pelops; also Ch.4§20 on Pelops as the inaugurator of a kingship that serves as the model of political power and sovereignty in the Peloponnesus. In the narrative at Herodotus 1.59.1 concerning the portent of the boiling cauldron, presaging the birth of the tyrant Peisistratos of Athens, there is an implied ideological equation of the fire of Olympic victory with the essence of political power: Ch.4§11n2, Ch.4§11n3.
§39n2. On the dynasty of Pelops as the model of political power and sovereignty in the Peloponnesus, see again Ch.4§20.
§39n3. Cf. Ch.4§10 and following. I disagree with the view that the myth of Pelops and Hippodameia may have conveyed some sort of aetiological analogy to the breeding of mules outside of Elis, where the Elian Hippodameia is to a horse as the non-Elian Pelops is to a donkey (bibliography in Calame 1977 I 418-419). In this connection I stress that the Pelopion 'Precinct of Pelops' anchors this figure to Olympia in Elis ( Ch.4§10).
§40n1. Burkert 1965.173n23.
§40n2. We may note that astrabikon is the name of a type of bucolic song supposedly initiated at Karyai by rustic folk as a displacement, after the devastation of the Persian War, of choral performances by aristocratic girls (Probus by way of Servius 3.2, p. 324.8ff Thilo-Hagen; cf. Calame 1977 I 267n182 and 274n194, where further references are given; the pertinent texts are quoted in Nilsson 1906.198n1). On the traditional theme of rustic outsiders, formerly excluded from the city as illegitimate, whose institutions become subsequently included and thereby legitimated, see Ch.13§18 and following.
§40n3. On Demaratos as a "warner" of Xerxes, cf. Boedeker 1987.195-196.
§40n4. Burkert, p. 175n30, with bibliography.
§40n5. Seeberg 1966.74.
§40n6. Cf. Ch.6§21 and following.
§41n1. Bundy [1986] 16; cf. also Bundy 1972.90n113.
§41n2. For a valuable analysis of this episode, with important comparative observations concerning the politics of festivals and festive events in general, see Connor 1987.
§41n3. Cf. Slater 1984.260-263.
§41n4. Bundy [1986] 16.
§41n5. For more on the Pindaric themes of spontaneity and artistry, nature and art, cf. Hubbard 1985.107-124.
§1. Having compared the authority of Pindar's traditions in song with the authority of traditions in poetry and prose, we are ready to consider the actual medium of Pindaric song as a key to understanding the concept of authorship in lyric poetry. So far we have concentrated on the epinician tradition represented by Pindar. But now we must situate this tradition within the broader framework of Archaic Greek lyric poetry.
§2. Let us begin with the concept of choral lyric poetry, which is the specific medium of Pindar. The khoros 'chorus' of choral lyric is a group that represents, by way of singing and dancing, a given community. 1 In Archaic choral lyric poetry, the community can be represented as the city- state, the polis itself. 2 This is not to say, however, that the representation of the polis by the chorus does not aim at Panhellenic prestige. 3
§3. As a representative of the polis, the chorus is concerned partly with local interests, and it can therefore serve as a formal vehicle of ritual, as in the case of the epinicians of Pindar, which constitute part of the ritual chain of athletics. 1 The range, however, of choral self-expression in matters of ritual is certainly not limited to the Games. Besides epinician odes, a given chorus in a given polis may perform a wide variety of other kinds of compositions related to various local or civic rituals. The range of this variety is apparent from the book titles in the Alexandrian editions of Pindar. 2 There are, for example, the maiden songs or parthenia, related ultimately to local / civic rituals of coming of age. 3 This type of song is also attested in compositions from earlier
times, as we see in the upcoming discussion of Alcman and the choral traditions of Sparta. There are also, of course, choral odes connected directly with cults of the gods, such as Pindar's paiânes 'paeans' in honor of Apollo. 4 The list could be extended, but the point has already been made: choral lyric is public, a thing of the polis. 5
§4. Within the general category of song or lyric poetry, however, we have also had occasion to take note of another medium besides choral lyric: monody, that is, solo singing. 1 In studying the traditions of Archaic Greek monody, we have already examined the eventual differentiation of a composer / performer into a mythical protocomposer on the one hand and a contemporary professional performer, the kitharôidos 'lyre singer' or aulôidos 'reed singer' on the other. 2 But this type of differentiation in monody is just one of many possible patterns of evolution.
§5. So also with choral lyric, there are many different patterns of evolution in the traditions of composition and performance. The basic difference between monody and choral lyric is on the level of performance. Whereas monody accommodates a single professional or nonprofessional performer, choral lyric requires a group of strictly nonprofessional polis dwellers as represented by the khoros 'chorus', who both sang and danced the song. 1 So much for distinctions between monodic and choral modes of performance.
§6. Let us turn our attention to distinctions between monody and choral lyric on the level of composition. In the choral medium of Pindar the composer of the performances was clearly a professional, as we see explicitly in Pindar's own words, Isthmian2.1-13. 1 In this sense, Pindar's medium was in fact professional, and it contrasts itself with the good old days when love songs were sung to the lyre, spontaneously and without pay, in the setting of symposia (Isthmian2.1-5). Pindar's diction, describing the lyric poetry of the good old days, is suggestive of monody, in particular the grand old masters of sympotic love lyric, such as Alcaeus, Anacreon, and Ibycus (cf. Aristophanes Women at the Thesmophoria160-163; Athenaeus 600d on Anacreon). 2 But the spontaneity of nonprofessional performance by these figures of the past turns out to be an idealization, once we take fully into consideration the special skills needed for the traditions of performing this and other kinds of monodic poetry. These skills were transmitted professionally, through the medium of professional kitharôidiâ 'lyre singing', either directly in performance or indirectly in the professional teaching of performance.
§7. As a premier example of professional performance in monodic lyre singing, I cite the story of Arion in Herodotus 1.23-24. 1 This figure Arion, who is described as the most prestigious kitharôdios 'lyre singer' of his era (Herodotus 1.23), is represented as giving a monodic performance of lyre singing, in a ploy to save his life, for an audience of greedy sailors who had captured him in order to rob him of his great wealth (1.24.5); it is specified that Arion had amassed his riches, designated as khrêmata 'property', on a musical tour through Italy and Sicily (1.24.1-2).
§8. In Pindar's Isthmian2, this same word khrêmata 'property, possessions' is used in a context where one of the Seven Sages, in reaction to his personal loss of both property and friends (11) exclaims bitterly: chrêmata chrêmat' anêr 'Man is nothing more than khrêmata! Yes,
khrêmata!' (ibid.). 1 Another variation on this bitter reaction is quoted in the monodic poetry of Alcaeus (F 360 V), again in a context where the Sage is bewailing the equation of self-worth with purely material value. 2 In other words the ethic of sympotic monody, as presented by Alcaeus and represented by Pindar, is the transcendence of purely material value. But the anecdote about Arion suggests that the art of sympotic monody is nevertheless founded on the dynamics of material value. So too with choral lyric poetry, as dramatized in Pindar's Isthmian2: the poem is admitting that its art is founded on the dynamics of material value, but it proclaims the intent of transcending the purely material, claiming the ethic of old- fashioned sympotic monody as a model. Pindaric song fuses the contemporary art of monody, which is professional, into the transcendent ethic of monody, which rejects the superficial equation of khrêmata 'possessions' with self-worth. Pindar's fusion of the professional into the ethical--so that the professional aspect of monody is no longer evident--is itself an ethical gesture, corresponding to a parallel fusion that is ongoing within his own choral medium. This ideology of fusion should not lead to our own confusion about professionalism and nonprofessionalism in monody.
§9. Having recovered the reality of professional performance in the art of lyre singing, we may turn to the professional teaching of performance in lyre singing. Again I cite the explicit reference in Aristophanes Clouds961-989 to the schooling of young boys by professionals in the art of lyre singing, back in those "good old days" of the generation that had fought at Marathon. 1 The comic allusions in this passage to an atmosphere of aristocratic pederasty that pervades such schooling (e.g., 966) is indicative of a common theme, typical of not only monodic song but also elegiac poetry, linking aristocratic paideiâ 'education' and aristocratic paiderastiâ 'love of boys' in the context of the symposium. 2 In the comic vision of Aristophanes, even the schooling of the boys is pervaded by this dominant theme. In Pindar's idealized vision of nonprofessional monodic performance at the symposium, the songs being sung are called paideioi humnoi 'songs of boyhood' (paideiouW...humnouW Isthmian2.3), an expression that suggests paideiâ and paiderastiâ simultaneously. 3 The passage from Aristophanes about the old-fashioned schooling of nonprofessionals by professionals in this art helps put the spontaneity of the monodic moment into perspective.
§10. The most we can say for nonprofessionalism in Archaic Greek song making is that the monodic medium, in contexts like the symposium, may at least allow for composition on a nonprofessional as well as professional level, whereas the choral medium of a figure like Pindar, according to his own words, has become restricted to the composition of professionals. Also, the monodic medium allows for performance on a nonprofessional as well as professional level, whereas the choral medium, as performed by the khoros 'chorus', is restricted to performance by nonprofessionals. Moreover, even choral compositions can be reperformed by nonprofessionals at symposia as solo pieces, but then these nonprofessionals are expected to accompany themselves on the lyre, and that in turn requires professional education in the specialized art of kitharôidiâ 'lyre singing'. 1 In fact such solo performance was the ultimate sign of education, of direct access to the old traditions of song. 2
§11. In a word the symposium was a last stand for nonprofessional performance of both monodic and choral compositions. Still the choral medium was already professionalized in the dimension
of composition, and the monodic, in the dimension of transmission through such specialized skills as kitharôdiâ 'lyre singing'.
§12. Given these patterns of differentiation between the choral and monodic media, we may ask about their diachronic relationship to each other. As the discussion proceeds, we encounter a series of indications that the direction of long-range development proceeded from choral lyric to monody as a differentiated offshoot. Further, monody can be seen as a midstage in the differentiation of song into poetry.
§13. Let us observe more closely the patterns of restriction, in the Archaic choral lyric form, to performance by nonprofessionals, for whom such performance was a ritual act of community. This restriction is a fundamental indication that we are dealing with a less differentiated institution. 1 From the standpoint of later standards in the more differentiated world of poetic and musical professionalism, the inherited necessity of performance by a chorus of nonprofessionals imposed limitations on the virtuosity of both performance and composition (cf. "Aristotle" Problems 19.15). Moreover, as we shall now see, the references to nonprofessional choral performance in Homeric and Hesiodic poetry, combined with cross cultural comparative evidence, make it clear that the social institution of what we call the chorus even antedates the institution of the polis. 2
§14. In the song-making traditions of choral lyric poetry, one of several possible patterns of evolution results in the attested differentiation between a protocomposer who is grounded in myth and a succession of contemporary nonprofessional performers, selected by age groupings, who sing and dance a protocomposition grounded in the ritual of seasonally recurring festivals. Such a protocomposition would be subject to potential ongoing recomposition with each seasonally recurring performance. Striking examples of this pattern of evolution can be found in the available testimony about the festivals of Sparta, which were the occasion for seasonal reperformances, in a ritual setting, of the lyric "protocompositions" of Terpander, Thaletas, Alcman, and others. 1
§15. The first katastasis 'establishment', that is, the ostensibly first phase of lyric traditions at Sparta, is traditionally attributed to Terpander ("Plutarch" On Music 1134b). This composer of the so-called 'first katastasis' was reputedly a singer from Lesbos who moved to Sparta, where he was the first of all winners at the reputedly oldest festival of Sparta, the Feast of Karneia (Hellanicus FGH 4 F 85 by way of Athenaeus 635e). 1 The second katastasis is attributed to Thaletas of Gortyn, Xenocritus of Locri, Polymnestus of Colophon (On Music 1134bc). 2 These composers of the so-called second katastasis are associated with the Feast of the Gumnopaidiai at Sparta, as well as the Feast of the Apodeixeis in Arcadia and the Feast of the Endumatia at Argos (On Music 1134c). 3 I draw attention to the opposite notions of ritual undressing and dressing inherent in the names Gumnopaidiai (henceforth "Gymnopaidiai") and Endumatia native to the traditions of Sparta and Argos, respectively. As for the Arcadian Apodeixeis, plural of the noun apo-deixis 'public presentation', we shall appreciate the significance of this name better at a later point, when we consider the related verb apo-deiknumai 'make a public presentation' in the context of a report by Herodotus about a local festival where female choral groups perform (5.83.3). 4 Earlier, we have seen the same word in a different but ultimately related context, the first sentence of the Histories of Herodotus, in referring to the 'public
presentation', apo-deixis, of his historiâ 'inquiry'. 5 For now, however, it is enough to stress that such festivals are a key to our upcoming consideration of the process of ongoing choral recomposition. There is a striking description, in Sosibius FGH 595 F 5 by way of Athenaeus 678bc, of choral events at the Spartan Feast of the Gymnopaidiai, featuring reperformances of compositions attributed to Thaletas, Alcman, and Dionysodotus.
§16. It has been observed, on the basis of this and similar testimony, that "some at least of Alcman's compositions were still being reperformed well into the Hellenistic era." 1 What I argue, further, is that such patterns of sustained seasonal reperformance entail parallel patterns of sustained seasonal recomposition, affecting not only the content of the compositions but also the very personification of the archetypal composer.
§17. In order to understand the progressive reshaping over time of the persona who claims the composition of a choral lyric performance in societies like that of Archaic Sparta, we must explore in greater detail the fundamental characteristics of the Archaic Greek khoros, the singing and dancing ensemble or chorus. To begin, I stress that the khoros is by nature a microcosm of society. 1 The Spartans, for example, actually referred to the interior of their civic space as the Khoros (Pausanias 3.11.9). 2 As a microcosm of society, it is equally important to note, the khoros is also a microcosm of social hierarchy. Within the hierarchy that is the chorus, as the detailed investigation of Claude Calame has shown, a majority of younger members act out a pattern of subordination to a minority of older leaders; this acting out conforms to the role of the chorus as an educational collectivization of experience, including various forms of institutionalized or stylized homosexual experience serving as an initiation into the heterosexual status of marriage. 3 The concept of older leaders, within the hierarchy of the chorus, is in most instances embodied in the central persona of the khorêgos 'chorus leader'. There is a pervasive choral convention of emphasizing the superiority of the khorêgos and the subordination of the "I" that speaks for the choral aggregate; while the collectivity of the choral aggregate is egalitarian, the superiority of the khorêgos is a fundamental model of hierarchy. 4 In this connection Calame has observed in detail how various patterns of institutionalized homosexual sentiment as expressed by the choral "I" tend to center on the person who occupies superior status in the choral group. 5
§18. As a particularly striking example of the choral form as a hierarchical construct, I cite the Spartan song that is sung and danced by the chorus of Spartan girls as dramatized in Alcman PMG 1, where a chorus leader called Hagesikhora (verses 53, 57, 77, 79, 90), focal point of admiration for the aggregate (e.g., 45-57), 1 is described as khorêgos (44); 2 her very name, Hâgêsikhorâ, recapitulates the meaning 'leader of the chorus'. 3 Similarly in Aristophanes Lysistrata1296-1321, a choral song of the Spartan women, Helen in her role as major cult figure of Sparta is pictured by the chorus as the leader of their group, as the ultimate khorêgos (1315). Likewise in Theocritus 18, a composition known as the Epithalamium for Helen, a chorus of Spartan girls pictures Helen as a resplendent chorus leader, in terms that resemble strikingly the description of Hagesikhora in Alcman PMG 1. 4 It is clear from such evidence that a figure like Hagesikhora, as leader of the chorus, is represented as performing a reenactment, a mimesis, 5 of
a given divinity in a given role. 6
§19. Although the specific divinity that matches the choral figure of Hagesikhora seems at first sight to be the local Spartan version of Helen, a strong argument can be made for a variant identification. The real referent for Hagesikhora seems to be one of two less well-known cult figures native to Sparta, that is, a female pair known from other reports as the Leukippides (Pausanias 3.16.1), where the component leuko- means 'radiant, white' while hippo- means 'horse'; these Leukippides are themselves associated with the cult of Helen (Euripides Helen
1465-1466). 1 In the same composition the other of the two Leukippides may possibly be equated with another dominant choral personality, called Agido (Alcman PMG 1.40, 42, 58, 80), who is dramatized as the rival of Hagesikhora (e.g., PMG 1.50-59). 2
§20. It seems then that the two characters of two choral leaders in Alcman PMG 1, Agido and Hagesikhora, are acting out, on the level of the ritual presented by the chorus, the roles of the two Leukippides, who are cult figures that exist on the level of myth. 1 There is in fact independent evidence for such acting out: there is a report about an institution, at Sparta, where girls 'serve as priestesses' (hierôntai) to the Leukippides and are in that capacity explicitly called Leukippides themselves (Pausanias 3.16.1). 2 It is crucial to stress this explicit identification here, by name, of distinct human and superhuman characters. The human characters are acted out by 'priestesses' who are the variable element in the identification, in that they are continually being replaced by upcoming generations, in the progression of time, while the immortal superhuman characters are the constant, with an unchanging identity that provides the ultimate model. 3 Just as the human Leukippides are not, from our standpoint, real people but instead characters filled by different real people at the different times of seasonally recurring ritual events, so also the figures named as Agido and Hagesikhora in Alcman PMG 1 are for me not real people per se but choral characters. Specifically I suggest that Agido and Hagesikhora are characters in a sacred mimesis, through the ritual of choral performance, of the cult figures known to Pausanias as the Leukippides (3.16.1). 4
§21. The actual forms of the names given to these characters, Agido and Hagisikhora, may have been subject to changes over time, but the function of these names, that is, identification with sacred models in the process of mimesis, can be expected to have remained a constant. 1 Such cult names are variables, and the constant element is to be sought in the context of the mimesis, the actual identification of the human character with the sacred model. There is a particularly striking illustration of such an ideology in a passage from Xenophon of Ephesus (1.2.2-7), a narrative describing a local festival of Artemis at Ephesus (êgeto de tês Artemidos epichôrios heortê 2), where the leader of a procession of marriageable maidens, a girl of fourteen called Antheia (5), is viewed by the festive crowd as the incarnation of the goddess Artemis (7). 2
§22. Like Hagêsikhorâ, the feminine name Agidô seems to be generic: in this case it fits into the naming pattern owned by the Spartan royal lineage of the Agiadai, as best known from the name of a particularly distinguished member of this lineage, Agêsilâos. 1 From this example we can see that the role model defined by a choral leader can be expressed in terms of royalty as well as divinity. An analogous case is to be found in Alcman PMG 10(b), where the figure of a yet-
beardless youth (19-20) called Agêsidâmos (3), meaning 'leader of the local population [dêmos]', 2 is addressed specifically as khorêgos 'chorus leader' (11; cf. 15). There is a striking semantic parallel in the case of the choral leader Astumeloisa at Alcman PMG 3 (64, 73), where this generic name is actually translated in the song itself (74) as melêma damôi 'an object of care and affection [melêma] to the local community [dêmos]'--which is exactly what the name means. 3 As with the feminine name Agidô, designating the counterpart of the Hagesikhora figure, the masculine name Agêsidâmos, by way of its semantic components, seems to fit into the naming pattern of the Spartan royal lineage of the Agiadai. 4
§23. That the roles of choral leadership indicated by names such as Agido or Agesidamos demand to be filled, in performance, by real royalty or aspiring royalty is shown indirectly: narrative traditions tell of aberrant situations where an individual Spartan of genuine royalty is denied a prominent position in a choral group, thus affording him the opportunity to assert a wise saying to the effect that it is after all the man in question who determines the status, not the status the man. In one such story, Plutarch Sayings of Spartans 208de, the focus of the story is none other than King Agêsilâos of Sparta, of the royal lineage of the Agiadai, who is pictured as still a boy when, one day at the Spartan Feast of Gymnopaidiai, 1 he is assigned an inconspicuous (a- sêmos) choral position. 2 The narrative emphasizes that, at this moment, as Agesilaos utters the wise saying about man and status, it is not yet clear that he will indeed become the king of Sparta; as Plutarch notes elsewhere, the young Agesilaos was brought up as a private citizen before he became king (Life of Agesilaos 596a, 597b). 3 The fact that other variants of this story are assigned to other kings of Sparta 4 is yet another indication that kingship could and did determine preeminence of status in the choral groups of Sparta.
§24. In short I infer that whoever performs the role of a choral leader in a given seasonally recurring Spartan festival would be performing a mimesis of a mimesis. The performers in the here and now would be experiencing a personal mimesis of choral characters with choral names like Hageskihora and Agesidamos. Such characters or characterizations would be in turn part of a seasonally recurring institutional mimesis of authoritative role models like divinities or royal ancestors. 1 I see no justification for treating a text like Alcman PMG 1 as if it were a composition intended for a given group of historically verifiable persons at one and only one occasion in time. 2
§25. The more generic and impersonal the content of such a composition, in the eyes of the local Spartan community, the more Panhellenic prestige the presentation of this composition can have in the eyes of whatever Hellenes from the outside may be looking in, as it were, on Sparta. The local community's public self-esteem, in order to live up to the proper degree of admiration from both outside and consequently from within, must seek the least occasional and most catholic aspects of its seasonally recomposed choral self-presentation. The impulse of Panhellenism in Archaic Greece begins at home. 1
§26. The preceding sketch of Spartan choral performances is not without interesting ethnographic parallels. Among the Tiv of Nigeria, for example, there is a strong tradition of formal acceptance
or rejection, by society, of choral compositions in the context of their performance: 1 "The most important type of song is called the Icham; this is sung by a soloist with chorus, frequently the soloist being the composer. A new song is submitted to the tribe by its composer for approval, even new words to an old setting can prompt a 'Royal Academy Sitting'!"
§27. It remains to ask what relationship exists between the authority of the role model who is represented as leading the choral group and the authority of the composer who is credited with the representation. To put it another way: how does the authority of the khorêgos 'choral leader', as the focus of potential Panhellenic prestige for the local community, relate to the authority of the composer, real or re-created, who speaks through this persona? The answer should help define the concept of authorship that emanates from such authority.
§28. To begin, it is important to notice that, in a choral composition like Alcman PMG 1, the two chorus leaders represented, Agido and Hagesikhora, seem not to have speaking parts: rather it is the aggregate that speaks about them, represents them, in all admiration. It is as if the chorus leaders were mainly dancing, while the choral group was all along singing and dancing.
§29. The potential differentiation of the chorus leader, the khorêgos, from the singers and dancers, the khoros, can in fact proceed in various different directions. The khorêgos may become specialized as a virtuoso singer, a virtuoso dancer, or a virtuoso player of a musical instrument. The ultimate model is the god Apollo himself, who is conventionally represented by poetry as the leader of the choral group as he performs, in his capacity as leader, various combinations of the three components of choral lyric, that is, song, dance, and instrumental music. Perhaps the most undifferentiated picture can be found in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes
(475-476), where Apollo is represented as simultaneously singing, dancing, and playing the lyre. 1 Elsewhere the specialties become clear. In the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (182-206), Apollo dances and plays the lyre (201-203), while the Muses sing (189-193) and the rest of the gods dance (194-201), most notably the Kharites 'Graces' (194). 2 The emphasis here is on Apollo's specialty, the lyre. In other references, as in Iliad I (603-604), only the specialties are mentioned: Apollo plays the lyre and the Muses sing. A similar situation holds in the Hesiodic Shield of Herakles (201-206), where again Apollo plays the lyre while the Muses are described as choral leaders in song, by way of the verb exarkhô 'lead the chorus' in combination with aoidê
§30. These different patterns of specialization are indirectly reflected in the semantic vicissitudes of a form of choral lyric that is classified in later times as the huporkhêma, where the component of dancing is specified as an accompaniment to the component of song, as indicated by the elements hupo- in the sense of 'in support' and orkh- meaning 'dance'. 1 The supporting role of a given component of choral lyric can entail an intensification of virtuosity for the performer of the supporting component. In Lucian On Dance 16, for example, it is specified that the huporkhêma is composed for a stratified type of chorus where the group in general executes one level of dancing while some of the best dancers stand out from the rest in executing a higher level of dancing to the words being sung. There is similar testimony from Polycrates FGH 588 F 1 by way of Athenaeus 139e on the dancing at the Spartan Feast of Huakinthia: it is specified that dancers who stand out from among the singing khoroi 'choruses' of youths perform an ancient
form of dance that is hupo- 'in support' to the playing of the aulos 'reed' and to the singing of the song. 2 We may compare the picture on a Corinthian aryballos where a virtuoso dancer leaps ahead of four other boys and is labeled prochoreuomenos 'dancing in the forefront' (CEG 452). 3 A stylized example occurs in Odyssey viii 256-265, with a description of a performance of dancing that leads into the description of a song that the blind singer Demodokos sings about Ares and Aphrodite (266-366), followed by yet another description of virtuoso performance, this time, of "ball dancing" by soloists (367-380). It has been observed that "the seated blind bard in all this seems to be a leader with voice and lyre presiding over some kind of elaborate mime." 4 There is a compressed version of such choral lyric performance in Iliad XVIII 603-606, where the group dancing by the chorus is a backdrop to a higher level of dancing by two virtuosi, described as exarkhontes 'leaders' (606); also at Odyssey iv 17- 19, where again there are two virtuosi described as exarkhontes (17). In the world of post-Classical scholarship, the description of the virtuoso dancers as exarkhontes was considered incongruous, in that the singer / lyre player was expected to be the leader (Athenaeus 180de). 5 Still, the application of exarkhôn 'leader' could be legitimately reassigned to a lead dancer so long as the singer / lyre player continued to be the real leader, in that his singing or lyre playing controlled the enactment performed center stage, as it were, by the dancers.
§31. This topic brings us back to the choral lyric traditions of Archaic Sparta. In a composition like Alcman PMG 1, the figures of the choral leaders Agido and Hagesikhora may not necessarily have a speaking part, that is, singing part, in the song (to be contrasted with the reference at line 99 to singing by an ensemble of ten). Even if they do not have a speaking part, they are in the forefront of the dancing. Meanwhile, it is explicitly the choral aggregate who speaks for the chorus leaders, and it is implicitly the composer who speaks through the chorus members. In another example, Alcman PMG 39, the chorus members actually identify the composer of their song: they refer to the figure of Alcman by name, in the third person, as the one who composed what they sing. Further, in Alcman PMG 38, the chorus members praise the kitharistês 'lyre player', a performer on the musical instrument who may or may not be visualized as distinct from the composer.
§32. There are, however, other situations where the singer / lyre player may differentiate himself from the choral group by speaking in his own persona instead of theirs, as most dramatically illustrated by the declaration in Alcman PMG 26, where the singer says that he is too old and weak to dance with the chorus. 1 Such conventions of stylized separation and self-introduction may help explain the distribution of roles in Iliad XVIII 567-572, the description of a lyre playing boy who sings the Linus song in the midst of a festive chorus of boys and girls: here the singing is apparently in accompaniment to the lyre playing and dancing, as we see from the expression linon d' hupo kalon aeide 'he sang, in accompaniment [hupo-], the Linus song' (570). So also in Homeric Hymn to Hermes499-502: Apollo first struck up the lyre, and then hupo kalon aeisen 'he sang beautifully, in accompaniment [hupo-]' (502). Just as dancing in accompaniment required heightened virtuosity and could be described in terms of choral leadership, so also here the singing of Apollo in support, in accompaniment, is a virtuoso performance. The distinction between the patterns of accompaniment in Iliad XVIII 567-572, where the boy's song responds to the lyre, and in Odyssey viii 256-265 / 367-380, where the dancing responds to the song, seems to be missed by later generations in the post-Classical era, as, for example, in Athenaeus 15d
(though his explanation of huporkhêma at 628d takes note of the actual fact of support or accompaniment implied by hupo- in this word). 2
§33. The archetypal virtuoso performance of Apollo, where he first struck up the lyre and then hupo kalon aeisen 'sang beautifully, in accompaniment [hupo-]' (Hymn to Hermes 502), is morphologically a prooimion, which can be translated roughly as 'prelude' but which I prefer to render with the more neutral Latin borrowing, 'prooemium'. 1 The prooimion is a framework for differentiated virtuoso singing by the individual kitharôidos 'lyre [kitharâ] singer', and it literally means 'the front part of the song [oimê]' (just as pronâos means 'the front part of the temple [nâos]'). 2 The prooimion or prooemium took the form of a prayer sung to a given god who presided over the occasion of a given seasonally recurring festival where the song was performed in competition with other songs. A clear reflex of this form can be found in the actual structure of the Homeric Hymns. 3 In fact Thucydides (3.104.3-4) uses the word prooimion in referring to the version of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo that he knew. 4 That the dramatized context of these Hymns is one of seasonally recurring festivals where contests in song are held is clear from the use of hôrâ 'seasonal time' in Hymn 26.12-13 and of agôn 'contest' in Hymn 6.19. 5 That these Hymns are morphologically preludes, with the inherited function of introducing the main part of the performance, is illustrated by references indicating a shift to the performance proper, such as metabêsomai allon es humnon 'I will shift to the rest of the song [humnos]' at Homeric Hymns 5 (verse 293), 9 (verse 9), and 18 (verse 11). 6 To sum up the essence of the prooimion, I quote the wording of Quintilian (Institutio oratoria 4.1.2): quod oimê cantus est, et citharoedi pauca illa, quae antequam legitimum certamen inchoent, emerendi favoris gratia canunt, prooemium cognominaverunt... 'that oimê is song and that the kitharôidoi refer to those few words that they sing before their contest proper, for the sake of winning favor, as prooimion...'. 7
§34. Quintilian's reference to 'those few words' sung by the kitharôidoi 'lyre [kitharâ] singers' is belied by the proportions of some of the larger Homeric Hymns, which had evolved into magnificent extravaganzas that rival epic in narrative power, as in the case of the Hymn to Apollo. It is in fact legitimate to ask whether the Homeric Hymns, especially the larger ones, were functional preludes. 1 For now, however, it is enough to stress that they were formally just that, preludes. As we have seen, Thucydides refers to the Hymn to Apollo as a prooimion (3.104.4-5). Even the Hesiodic Theogony, with its even more imposing proportions, is morphologically a prooimion. 2 So also is the representation of the first theogony ever sung, an archetypal performance of lyre singing by the god Hermes, as described and paraphrased in Hymn to Hermes 425-433. 3 The crucial concept here is anabolê 'prelude', closely parallel to the concept of prooimion. Hermes sings his theogony amboladên 'in the manner of a prelude [anabolê]' (426), just as the song started by Apollo's lyre is elsewhere described in terms of hagêsichorôn [...] prooimiôn ambolas 'the preludes [anabolê plural] of chorus leading [hâgêsikhora] prooemia [prooimion plural]' in Pindar Pythian1.4. 4
§35. Still, the medium of the Homeric Hymns, which is poetry recited in dactylic hexameter, is several stages removed from the medium of kitharôidiâ, that is, song. We have to step back and
ask what form the prooimion 'prelude' would have had in the context of kitharôidiâ 'lyre singing' and, further, what kind of performance can be expected to have followed the prooimion in this same context of kitharôidiâ.
§36. Part of the answer is to be found in the lyric traditions ascribed to Terpander, reputedly the founder of the first katastasis 'establishment' of traditions in song making at Sparta (again "Plutarch" On Music 1134b). 1 We have seen that the figure of Terpander is credited with "inventing" the melodic patterns of kitharôidiâ, which were called nomoi in this context (On Music 1132d). 2 Moreover, we have seen that a figure like Arion, the archetypal kitharôidos 'lyre singer' for the polis of Corinth (Herodotus 1.23), is specifically represented as performing a nomos when he sings a monodic performance to the accompaniment of his lyre (Herodotus 1.24.5). 3 The traditional association of kitharôidiâ with the concept of nomos, which we may intepret most generally as a lyric composition that followed a set mode or melodic pattern, 4 must be compared with a traditional saying, variations of which are strikingly attested in the idiom of Plato, that a prooimion 'prelude' presupposes a nomos (Plato Timaeus 29d; Republic 531d, 532d). 5 This association is made explicit in Plato Laws 722d and following: the prooimion is a 'prelude' to the nomos in the specific context of kitharôidiâ. 6
§37. Another part of the answer to the question about the actual form of the prooimion can be found in the diction of Pindar. So far we have examined the association of prooimion and nomos in the general context of kitharôidiâ, but we have yet to see a reference to this association in a specifically choral context of kitharôidiâ. The references in Plato clearly presuppose a monodic rather than choral context. Turning to the choral context, however, let us examine two passages taken from Pindar, Nemean5.21-26 and Pythian1.1-4. In Nemean5, we see the representation of a khoros 'chorus' of Muses (23) who are specifically singing (aeid' 22), and in their midst is the god Apollo himself, taking control as he strikes up a lyre that is heptaglôssos 'having seven languages' (24), leading the choral performance of 'all sorts of nomoi' (pantoiôn nomôn Nemean5.25). We have seen that the seven-string lyre, supposedly the "invention" of Terpander, could fit a wide variety of set melodic patterns, called nomoi, within a new interrelated system reflecting Panhellenic synthesis. 1 Here too, in the passage from Pindar, these melodic patterns are explicitly called nomoi. But in this case the nomoi that are represented as being performed are not monodic, which was the case when Arion sings his nomos (again Herodotus 1.24.5), but clearly choral: it is the khoros 'chorus' of Muses who are actually singing the nomoi (again
Nemean5.21-26). Moreover, this ensemble of Muses is represented here as actually singing the words of the prooimion. Although the word prooimion is not used in this passage, the phraseology of the Muses' paraphrased words (Nemean5.25- 26) is perfectly in accordance with the proper syntax and rhetorical strategy of attested prooemia. 2 The chorus of Muses is represented as performing not just the subsequent nomoi but also the prooimion that expectedly introduces a nomos, with Apollo's overall control being represented simply by his act of striking up the lyre.
§38. We may now supplement the testimony of Pindar Nemean 5.21-26 with that of
Pythian1.1-4. 1 This passage, another tour de force in descriptive compression, pictures the lyre
of Apollo, as the player strikes up a tune (4), straightaway being heard by the chorus, which starts dancing (2), as soon as the lyre gives off its sêmata 'signals' that are heeded by aoidoi
'singers' (3), thus creating the anabolai 'preludes' (4) of prooimia 'prooemia' (4) that are described as hâgêsikhora 'chorus-leading' (4). In short the diction of Pindar gives indications that even in terms of choral performance the prooimion 'prooemium' precedes what is being consistently called the nomos.
§39. This Pindaric picture, however, of a prooimion as if performed by the chorus is idealized. Another example of such idealization is Pindar Nemean3.1-12, where the chorus members are described, five lines into the composition, as if waiting for the voice of the Muse, which is to be their cue to start their performance; then, at lines 10-11 of the composition, the Muse is invoked to start (arche 10) the humnos 'song' (11), while the "I" of the lyre player, the persona of the composer, distributes the song to the chorus members and to the lyre (11- 12). 1 The word for "lyre" here is twelve lines into the composition, and yet the context itself presupposes that it had started the whole performance, just as the chorus has been presumably performing the entire composition ever since the first line. Still another example is Pindar Nemean2.1-3, 2 where the beginning of the composition describes the prooemium of a performance without being a prooemium itself, in that no divinity has been directly invoked to start the performance. The prooemium being represented in Nemean 2.1-3 is specifically the prelude of a Homeric performance: the Homêridai 'Sons of Homer' (2.1), who are described as the aoidoi
'singers' (2.2.) of 'stitched-together words' (rhaptôn epeôn 2.2), are said to 'start' (archontai) their performance by invoking Zeus Prooimios, the "Zeus of prooemia" (2.3). 3 The first word of Nemean2, hothen 'starting at the point where...', is transitional, to be expected after the given divinity has already been invoked. Then, at the very end of the composition, the chorus as polîtai 'polis-dwellers' (24) are called upon to 'lead', as conveyed by the verb exarkhô (25), in celebration. In a functional prooemium this verb could be expected at the beginning of the performance. 4
§40. The stylized prooemia in Pindar then are idealizations. It is as if the traditions of differentiated monodic composition and performance had never happened. Yet the context of monody had already developed the form of the prooimion far beyond its native choral context of striking up the lyre for the chorus. There is evidence that what we call the prooimion had already undergone, by Pindar's time, a vast stretch of evolution in traditions of composition and performance in monodic song and even in poetry. This evolution serves as backdrop for the use, in Thucydides (3.104.4-5), of the word prooimion in referring to the Homeric Hymn to Apollo. The entire tradition of kitharôidikoi nomoi 'citharodic nomes', as attributed to the "invention" of Terpander, presupposes a corresponding tradition of monodic prooimia or "preludes" that literally led into these "nomes," and it was within the framework of these "preludes" that the kitharôidos 'lyre singer', set apart from the chorus, could speak about himself in his own persona. We have already noted the declaration in Alcman PMG 26, where the singer says that he is too old and weak to dance with the chorus. Elsewhere too, although it may well be the chorus itself that is speaking in the persona of the chorus leader, we can still see that this persona is set apart from the rest of the chorus in the context of self-introduction, the prooemium:
Môs' age Kalliopa, thugater Dios, | arch' eratôn epeôn, epi d' himeron | humnôi kai charienta tithê
choron
Come, Muse Kalliope, daughter of Zeus! Make a start of your lovely words, [put] desire [hîmeros] 1 in my song [humnos], and set up a kharis-filled 2 chorus [khoros]. 3
§41. In the case of Terpander, however, the nomoi with which he is credited are no longer a choral medium. We have seen that he is the traditional "inventor" of these nomoi in the specific context of kitharôidiâ 'lyre singing' ("Plutarch" On Music 1132d), and that he likewise "invented" the genre known as the kitharôidikos nomos 'citharodic nome' (1132c). 1 This genre is monodic, as we have seen in the anecdote about the nomos orthios performed by Arion (Herodotus 1.24.5). 2 In this connection I cite a rare surviving quotation from Terpander: in Suda
s.v. amphianaktizein, it is reported that Terpander 'sang' a nomos, specified as orthios, with a
prooimion that began as follows:
amphi moi auton anachth' hekatêbolon aeidetô phrên
About 3 the far-shooting Lord himself let my mind sing forth. 4
Moreover, according to "Plutarch" On Music 1140f, Pindar himself attributed the "invention" of the skolion to Terpander, 5 and we have already seen that the word skolion, as used in the time of Aristophanes, is an appropriate general designation for the specifically monodic performance,
self-accompanied on the lyre, of compositions by the great lyric masters (as in Aristophanes F
223 Kock, with reference to the performing of compositions by Alcaeus and Anacreon). 6
§42. From the standpoint of a later source, the compositions attributed to Terpander are not just monodic but simply a collection of monodic preludes: it is reported in "Plutarch" On Music 1133bc that the compositions of Terpander were prooimia, supposedly serving as preludes simply to poetry, including specifically the poetry of Homer and the like. This formulation, though it has a validity with respect to etymology, is false with respect to function, as I now argue. 1 We have observed that the Homeric Hymns, as they have come down to us, are indeed prooimia with respect to etymology in that they presuppose, with such phrases as metabêsomai allon es humnon 'I will switch [from the prooimion] to the rest of the song [humnos]', that the performance proper is to follow. 2 This performance to follow is to be imagined as Homeric poetry itself, as we see from the internal evidence of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo: here the self- characterization of the speaker, within the framework of a prooimion, as a blind singer from
Chios whose songs will win over all others in the future (172-173) corresponds to the idealized character of Homer himself. 3 Similarly with Terpander: in a relatively late source like the one that we are considering, "Plutarch" On Music 1133bc, the corpus of Terpander could legitimately be considered a collection of monodic prooimia, composed predominantly in dactylic hexameter and therefore deemed suitable as preludes to Homeric poetry. From the standpoint of such a late source, it is as if the nomoi of Terpander, as introduced by the prooimia, had never existed. 4 Further, it is as if all the prooimia of Terpander had been composed in dactylic hexameter, as suggested in "Plutarch" On Music 1133c and more explicitly in 1132d. Such fragments as Terpander PMG 697 contradict this distorted view. 5 True, the meter of this fragment is closely related to the dactylic hexameter, and there may indeed have been a majority of hexametric prooimia in the Terpander tradition. Still the point is that the medium of kitharôidiâ 'lyre singing' attributed to Terpander is not necessarily a functional prelude, as it is understood in "Plutarch" On Music 1133c. Rather it is a monodic form of lyric composition that evolved out of the morphology of the prooimion.
§43. The solo performance of quasi-lyric monody, as in the case of Terpander, and the solo performance of nonlyric poetry, as in the case of the Homeric Hymns, are not the only media that evolved out of the prooimion 'prooemium' of the kitharôidos 'lyre singer'. The same could be said of the Hesiodic Theogony, which displays all the signposts of a prooimion. 1 The first theogony ever sung, as archetypally performed by Hermes in the Homeric Hymn to
Hermes425-433, is likewise a prooimion: Hermes sings his theogony amboladên 'in the manner
of a prelude [anabolê]' (426), just as the song started by Apollo's lyre is described in terms of hagêsichorôn [...] prooimiôn ambolas 'the preludes [anabolê plural] of chorus-leading prooemia [prooimion plural]' in Pindar Pythian1.4. 2 There are even traces of the prooimion in the solo performance of epic, nonlyric poetry par excellence. Aside from such examples as the second performance of the blind singer Demodokos in Odyssey viii, where the singer assumes a choral personality 3 and where his performance starts with an anabolê 'prelude' (aneballeto viii 266), 4 there are such clearly monodic scenes as the first performance of the singer Phemios, where he too starts his performance with an anabolê 'prelude' (Odyssey i 155; cf. xvii 262). 5
§44. We can perhaps go one step further. It has been argued persuasively that the entire body of Archaic poetry as composed in dactylic hexameter, including Homeric and Hesiodic poetry, evolved out of the monodic medium of the prooimion in kitharôidiâ 'lyre singing'. 1 For such an argument to be taken further, we would have to look back to the close formal affinities between the Homeric and Hesiodic hexameter on one hand and on the other the meters of such figures as Stesichorus, Sappho, and Alcaeus. 2 It so happens that these figures are in fact forerunners of the medium of kitharôidiâ 'lyre singing'. Before we can turn to Stesichorus and the others, however, it is important to explore still further the question of the chorus and the relationship between choral and monodic forms. In particular we must ask how poetry may have become differentiated from monodic song, much as monody had earlier become differentiated from choral performance.
§45. We had started our survey of the prooemium with the vision of Apollo as he had struck up the lyre for the very first time and then hupo kalon aeisen 'sang beautifully, in accompaniment
[hupo-]' (Homeric Hymn to Hermes502). 1 Yet singing in response to the musical instrument of Apollo is a feature not only of Apollo himself as archetypal player of preludes. There are also specialists in the art of the prelude. I mean those supreme experts in song, the Muses, as they execute their special skills: as we have seen in the Hesiodic Shield of Herakles (201-206), the Muses are described as choral leaders in song (exarkhô 'lead the chorus' in combination with aoidê 'song': 205) by virtue of their responsiveness to the lyre of Apollo. 2 Paradoxically the subordination of the Muses to the choral leadership of Apollo in the overall domain of choral performance, where Apollo controls all three components of song, dance, and musical instrumentation, is a key to the choral leadership of the Muses in the specific domain of song. Apollo generally dances and plays the lyre, while the Muses' function is more specifically that of singing or reciting. It is after all a Muse, not Apollo, who inspires the "song" of the Iliad (I 1), the "song" of the Odyssey (i 1). To put it another way: the specialization of the Muses as experts in the words of song, as differentiated from Apollo, who is overall master of all the components of song, is comparable to the specialization of Greek song as differentiated from a general category that I have been calling SONG. 3 As the generalist of SONG, Apollo is the ultimate chorus leader of the Muses, their authority in the choral integration of singing, dancing, and instrumentation. 4 As for the Muses, they are specialized chorus leaders of song, in stylized descriptions such as we have seen in the Shield of Herakles (205).
§46. These divine models for the role of chorus leader are formalized, to repeat, in the noun khorêgos 'chorus leader': in the case of Alcman PMG 1, for example, we have seen that the character Hâgêsikhorâ 'she who leads the chorus' is described as a khorêgos 'chorus leader' (44) and that, as such, she functions on the level of ritual as a substitute for a cult figure on the level of myth. There is a corresponding verb-plus-object combination that expresses the same model: it consists of verb histêmi 'set up, establish' plus the object of khoros, as in the expression theôn | histêsi chorous 'he sets up [= verb histêmi] the choruses [khoros {plural}] of the gods' at Aristophanes Birds219-220, with a lyre playing Apollo as subject. 1 This combination recurs as the compound formation stêsi-khoros 'he or she who sets up the chorus', as in the expression stêsichoron humnon agoisai 'introducing a stêsikhoros song [humnos]' inscribed on a kylix found at Naukratis (PMG 938[c]), where the understood subject of agoisai is apparently "Muses," in the context of a choral presentation. 2 The same compound stêsikhoros recurs on the François Vase, where one of the Muses, whose name elsewhere is Terpsikhorê 'she who delights in the chorus' (e.g., Hesiod Theogony78), is instead labeled Stêsikhorê 'she who sets up the chorus'. 3 Finally, the name of the poet Stesichorus is identical with this epithet stêsikhoros, the mark of divine choral leaders (cf. Suda s.v. stêsichoroW. 4
§47. Another way of expressing the divine model of choral leadership is the verb exarkhô 'lead, lead off, lead the chorus' and its derivatives. We have seen it applied to the Muses in their role as specialists in singing at a choral performance (Hesiodic Shield of Herakles205). The word conveys the fundamental theme of a differentiated individual initiative, followed by an undifferentiated response or reinforcement by the group that joins in. 1 This theme helps explain the choral metaphor built into the extended meaning of the Greek verb hêgeomai, which means not only 'take the lead' (e.g., Iliad IX 168) but also 'think, have an opinion', in the sense of 'think
authoritatively' (e.g., Herodotus passim); it is from this verb that the name Hâgêsikhorâ 'she who leads the chorus' is derived. The verb exarkhô can take as its object the given genre in which the performance is happening, as in Iliad XVIII 51, where Thetis begins her goos 'lament'. 2 In such instances of spontaneous individual initiative as dramatized by the narrative, we can see an ultimate model for the khorêgos as the organizer of the spontaneous occasion, the one who gives it a form, a format, for the group to follow and join. To the extent that the khorêgos gives the occasion its form, the occasion is the genre. 3
§48. With these divine models of individual initiative in mind, it is now time to extend the proposal, articulated in the specific case of Alcman PMG 1, that a lead character like Hâgêsikhora 'she who leads the chorus' is a substitute on the level of ritual for a corresponding cult figure who exists on the level of myth. The analogous name of a figure like Stesichorus, Stêsikhoros 'he who sets up the chorus', implies that a poet, like a lead character in a chorus, may somehow function as a ritual stand-in for the divine models of choral lyric poetry, Apollo and the Muses. As I have argued in another work, the generic poet in Archaic Greek traditions is by definition a ritual substitute, as conveyed by the word therâpôn, in relation to the Muses explicitly and to their leader Apollo implicitly. 1 Further, the concept of ritual substitute is closely associated with that of cult hero. 2 Since this subject has been treated at length in the work just cited, I mention here only the essentials: that there is a pervasive symmetrical pattern of god-hero antagonism on the level of myth and of god-hero symbiosis on the level of cult. 3
§49. A premier example is the figure of Archilochus. The compositions ascribed to Archilochus take the form of a specialized kind of poetry that is differentiated from song: he belongs to the repertoire of a rhapsôidos 'rhapsode', not a kitharôidos 'lyre singer'. 1 Still the figure of Archilochus retains a choral personality, as evidenced by his self-description as an exarkhôn 'choral leader' of the specific genres known as the dithurambos 'dithyramb' (Archilochus F 120
W) and the paiêôn [= paiân] 'paean' (F 121 W). 2 Again we see that the genre is the occasion in such instances of dramatized individual initiative. The choral personality of Archilochus is also evident in the Life of Archilochus tradition as preserved by the Mnesiepes Inscription (Archilochus T 4 Tarditi). This inscription, of a relatively late date (ca. third century B.C.), is highly Archaic in theme: it narrates the life of Archilochus, giving context to "quotations" of the transmitted compositions that were attributed to him. The Life of Archilochus tradition, as memorialized by the Mnesiepes Inscription, motivates the hero-cult of Archilochus; in fact the setting for the Mnesiepes Inscription was the Arkhilokheion, the sacred precinct at Paros where Archilochus was worshipped as a cult hero. 3 The Mnesiepes Inscription gives explicit testimony about a traditional myth, native to the island of Paros, that represented Archilochus as a chorus teacher of his community (T4 III 16-57). 4 Given that the figure of the poet Archilochus remains a choral personality, we may now move on to observe the tradition that represents Archilochus as a ritual substitute of his divine choral models: the story has it that Archilochus is killed through the indirect agency of Apollo, who at the same time promotes his status as cult hero, pronouncing the dead poet to be the 'therapôn of the Muses' (Delphic Oracle 4 PW). 5
§50. The theme of the poet as ritual substitute could be pursued further, but we must stay on track
with the topic at hand, which is, the role that the poet--let us call him or her the author--actually plays in the chorus. What needs to be shown is that the authority of Apollo over song, as formalized by his function as khorêgos, is the fundamental model for the concept of authorship in choral lyric, as embodied in figures like the poet Alcman. A crucial passage in this regard is Herodotus 5.83, a precious glimpse of a local festival on the island of Aegina, where female choral groups perform in worship of two daimones 'spirits' (5.83.3), 1 called Damia and Auxesia (5.83.2), whose wooden statues or agalmata 'cult representations' (5.82, 5.83.2) are the centerpieces of the ritual event. From independent evidence, we know that both these names reflect epithets applied in the cults of the goddess Demeter. 2 We may compare in this regard the name Hâgêsikhorâ in Alcman PMG 1, which is an appropriate epithet for visualizing, through a choral substitute, a cult figure as the focal point of a choral group. Even more important, we must take note of a significant detail in the description of the Aeginetan festival concerning the nature of the leadership over the female choral groups who perform at the Feast of Damia and Auxesia: chorêgôn apodeiknumenôn hekaterêi tôn daimonôn deka andrôn 'and there are ten men who are chorus leaders [khorêgoi], making public presentation [= verb apo-deiknumai] for each of the daimones [= Damia and Auxesia]' (Herodotus 5.83.3). The noun that corresponds to the verb apo-deiknumai 'make a public presentation' is apo-deixis, which we have seen is the name of a premier festival of choral song in Arcadia. 3 I infer that this seasonally recurring festival featured the public presentation of ten presumably competing female choral performances, each one being 'presented' by a male khorêgos whose relationship to the female group corresponds to the stylized relationship of Apollo to the Muses. 4 Such a relationship also corresponds to the relationship of the male figure Alcman to the female choral groups at Spartan festivals who sing and dance "his" compositions. 5 In the description of the Aeginetan festival, it is specified that the worship of the cult figures takes the form of ritual strife, where the characters in the chorus engage in mutual mockery (cf. kertomoisi : Herodotus 5.83.3). 6
§51. It seems that each of the ten choral performances at this local festival on the island of Aegina entailed two rival choral subdivisions, assigned to each of the two figures Damia and Auxesia: I draw attention to the force of hekaterêi 'to each' in Herodotus 5.83.3. We may compare the internal dramatized rivalry of Agido and Hagesikhora in Alcman PMG 1. We may also compare the "setting up" (verb histêmi 'set up, establish' plus the object of khoros) of two choruses in worship of two distinct female cult heroes, Hippodameia and Physkoa, by a collegium of sixteen women at the Feast of Heraia at Olympia in Elis, as reported by Pausanias (5.16.6-7). 1 Tradition has it that this feast in worship of the goddess Hera, along with the collegium of sixteen women who organize it season after season, was established by Hippodameia to celebrate her marriage to Pelops (Pausanias 5.16.4). 2
§52. Another detail in this tradition bears special emphasis: the number sixteen here stems from the fact that two women are chosen from each of the eight phûlai 'tribal divisions' of Elis (Pausanias 5.16.7). Perhaps we are to understand that each of the two representatives of each phûlê 'tribal division' was assigned to one or the other of the two cult figures, Hippodameia and Physkoa. It may well be then that there were eight choral performances entailing two rival choral subdivisions, assigned to each of the two figures Hippodameia and Physkoa, with each of the sixteen women assigned as khorêgos to each of the sixteen choral subdivisions. Whatever the
precise nature of these configurations may have been, I draw attention to the actual patterns of division, modeled on the patterns of division that make up the whole society, that is, the eight phûlai. 1 Such patterns of division in the setting up of the rival choral performances, where the notion of "setting up" is expressed by the traditional combination of verb histêmi 'set up' plus the object of khoros 'chorus', can be connected with the attested negative meanings of stasis as 'conflict'. This noun stasis, derivative of histêmi 'set up, establish, take a stand', means not only 'setting up, establishment, standing, station, status' both in general applications (e.g., Herodotus 9.21.2, Euripides Bacchae 925) and in more specific applications to the chorus (e.g., Suda s.v. chorodektês) 2 but also 'division, conflict, strife' in general applications to the community at large (Theognis 51, 781; Herodotus 3.82.3). The negative theme of conflict is associated with stasis in the navigational sense that we see in the expression anemôn stasin 'stasis of the winds' at Alcaeus F 208.1 V, where the ship's pilot must contend with the contrary 'lie' or 'setting' of the winds. 3 I would argue that stasis in the negative sense of 'conflict' is a metaphor, within the larger metaphor complex of the Ship of State in the crisis of a seastorm (as in Theognis667-682), 4 for the ritualized interpersonal divisions that are acted out in the process of establishing or constituting choral performance; this constitution is in turn achieved through the literal divisions into which chorus members are systematically assigned when the chorus is organized. 5
§53. In this context we may note a variant tradition, again recorded by Pausanias (5.16.5-6), that the same collegium of sixteen women who are charged with organizing the Feast of Heraia at Elis was "originally" selected to settle the internal conflicts of Elis after the tyranny of one Damophon of Pisa in Elis; by extension the prototypical collegium of sixteen women took charge of a female athletic contest, as well as other rituals associated with the Heraia, including the choral events (5.16.6). 1 We may note also a variant tradition, native to Trozen, 2 about Damia and Auxesia: these figures were stoned to death in a setting that is described in terms of stasis 'social conflict' stasiasantôn, (antistasiôtôn : Pausanias 2.32.2). This myth is cited as background for a festival that is named after its central event of ritualized conflict, the Lithobolia 'stone throwing' (ibid.). 3
§54. In sum, the ritual essence of the choral lyric performance is that it is constitutive of society in the very process of dividing it. For this reason, the concept of stasis is simultaneously constitution and division. 1 The notion of constitution is the unmarked member of the opposition, in that it includes and integrates division, which is the marked member. 2 Constitution is integration, and this unmarked-marked opposition can be rephrased in terms of unmarked integration and marked division. The inclusiveness of the unmarked category is the key to understanding the etymology of stasis. The etymology can in turn be correlated with the normal dynamics of collective performance, which is characterized by a gradual progression from dissonance at the beginning to relative consonance at the end. 3
§55. The very constitution of society, as visualized in the traditions of a polis like Sparta, is choral peformance. We have already seen that the name for "civic space" in Sparta is in fact Khoros (Pausanias 3.11.5). 1 Moreover, Spartan myth insists that Chorus had to precede Constitution: in Plutarch's Life of Lycurgus (4.2-3), we see that Lycurgus, the lawgiver of Sparta, who is the culture hero credited with the institutional totality that is the Constitution of Sparta, brought his
laws from Crete to Sparta only after he had already sent ahead the lyric poet Thales / Thaletas, whose songs had in them the qualities of kosmos 'order' (to kosmion 4.3) and katastasis 'establishment' (katastatikon ibid.). 2 This same Thaletas figures in the so-called second katastasis of Spartan traditions in song making ("Plutarch" On Music 1134bc). 3 The Spartan tradition stresses that the social effects of the lyric poet are like those of the most powerful nomothetês 'lawgiver' (Plutarch Life of Lycurgus 4.2). In this particular tradition, poet and lawgiver are differentiated as Thaletas and Lycurgus respectively. But in other traditions, the two roles are represented by one persona, as in the case of Theognis: he speaks not only as a choral lyric personality, singing and dancing to the lyre (Theognis 791) 4 or singing to the lyre and reed (531-534), 5 but also as a lawgiver (Theognis 543-546, 805-810). 6 In the case of a differentiated choral lyric personality like Thaletas, his affinities with the constitution of his community are made explicit.
§56. The metaphor of the chorus, as conveyed by the concept of stasis, helps explain the use of the word koruphaios 'top person, leading figure' in the Debate of the Constitutions, Herodotus 3.82.3, where the Great King of the Persians is represented as cynically restating the poetic tradition, according to which the unmistakable mark of oligarkhiâ 'oligarchy' is the spontaneous generation of stasis, which in turn leads to phonos 'killing', which in turn leads to monarkhiâ 'monarchy', that is, tyranny. The same sequence is attested in Theognis51-52, where stasis (plural, 51) leads to phonoi 'killings' (51), which lead to monarkhoi 'monarchs' (52). 1 In the description of the oligarchy that generates stasis, it is pointed out that each and every member of the society, in his private pursuit of aretê 'excellence', is in effect competing to become the koruphaios, the 'top person' or 'leading figure' (Herodotus 3.82.3); this same word, koruphaios, is the technical term for 'leader of the chorus' as used by Aristotle Politics 1277a11, in the context of arguing that not every citizen of a polis has the same degree of aretê 'excellence', just as a koruphaios in a chorus has more aretê than the other members. 2 This vision of stasis can be compared with the description, in Herodotus 1.59.3, of the division of early Athenian society into three constituencies, each called a stasis and each having a prominent Athenian 'standing in the front' (cf. proestôtos. These three are Peisistratos, the once and future tyrant of Athens; Megakles of the lineage of the Alkmaionidai; and one Lykourgos (ibid.). In such a context the word stasis is conventionally translated as 'faction', and the story as retold by Herodotus reinforces the initial impression that these three "factions" were spontaneously generated by the society of Athens in the era that preceded the tyranny of the Peisistratidai. It can be argued, however, that the three constituencies described here are a reflex of a preexisting institution, a constitutional mechanism of tripartition where the principle of rotating power is expressed by the concept of trittus 'third'. 3
§57. The key to choral performance, then, as we have seen primarily with the help of the description of an Aeginetan festival by Herodotus, is the public presentation of the khorêgos, where the notion of 'public presentation' is conveyed by the verb corresponding to the noun apo- deixis (5.83.3). 1 With further help from such actual compositions as Alcman PMG 1, we have also seen that the authority of the khorêgos is presented through the performance of the "I" that is the chorus. It is from this authority that the authorship of the khorêgos emanates. The presentation through the chorus is the representation that is mimesis. The "I" of the choral ensemble is not just the collectivization of persons who are singing and dancing at the ritual: it is
also the impersonation of characters that belong to whatever myth is being represented in the ritual. 2
§58. We have seen how, in compositions like Alcman PMG 1, a differentiated khorêgos who is composer and who is offstage, as it were, makes the collectivized "I" of the chorus speak about another differentiated khorêgos, the alter ego of the composer, who is the mute virtuoso dancer and who is center stage, the focus of collectivized experience, either male or female. But there are other kinds of "I" besides the collectivized "I" of the chorus. Given that the khorêgos is the choral expression of the individual who momentarily stands out from among the collective, we have yet to see how the persona of the khorêgos itself would speak if it found a voice to go with the role of chorus leader as a composer and performer, on the model of Apollo as he simultaneous sings, dances, and plays the lyre.
§59. One way for such a voice to be present can be found in the "I" of a khorêgos who engages in a dialogue with the rest of the chorus. I cite Bacchylides 18 SM, which represents a dialogue between Aigeus, the father of Theseus, and the chorus. It seems that it is the khorêgos here who represents Aigeus.
§60. Another way for the voice of the khorêgos to be activated can be found in the "I" of a personality like Sappho, whose persona speaks as a khorêgos both to and about members of an aggregate of female characters who are bound together by ties that correspond to the ties that bind a chorus together. 1 In such a reversed situation, the "I" is not the group through whom the authority of the khorêgos finds a voice: rather the "I" who now speaks is the individual whom we have seen in another situation, at center stage, as the mute virtuoso dancer. In that other kind of choral situation, as illustrated in Alcman PMG 1, the "I" is spoken by the aggregate while the "I" of the khorêgos as individual and as composer is potentially mute. But as soon as the "I" of the khorêgos as individual starts singing, as it were, this same figure stops dancing and, even more, the aggregate stops both singing and dancing. This figurative and diachronic scheme of reassigned parts is the essence, I submit, of what we have been calling monody.
§61. Even in choral performance, the singer / lyre player may differentiate himself from the choral group whenever the chorus speaks through his own persona instead of theirs, as most dramatically illustrated by the declaration in Alcman PMG 26 where the singer says that he is too old and weak to dance with the chorus. 1 Such an image reflects what I would call the tradition of diachronic teaching, in that the tired old persona of the protopoet, as seasonally re-created in the here and now of choral performance, is visualized as ever-returning, albeit in a stylized and distanced manner, to teach yet another crop of new choral ensembles as the season of the festival comes round yet again. 2 There is an analogous tradition as evidenced in the poetry of Theognis. The poet is dramatized as being present at crucial stages in the history of his city, Megara, though the local color is consistently screened out in favor of a generalized Panhellenic highlighting. 3 "By implication the undying noos ['consciousness'] of Theognis the poet is ever testing, by way of a timeless poetry that keeps adapting itself through the ages, the intrinsic worth of the citizens of Megara." 4
§62. It should be clear then that I understand the monodic form to be not antithetical to the choral
but rather predicated on it. A figure like Sappho speaks as a choral personality, even though the elements of dancing and the very presence of a choral group are evidently missing from her compositions. Still, these compositions presuppose or represent an interaction, offstage, as it were, with a choral aggregate.
§63. As for the corpus of Stesichorus, it has been argued that it too is representative of monodic rather than choral performance. 1 There is a strong counterargument, however, in the triadic structure of Stesichorean compositions, which points to a persisting choral medium. 2 Moreover, even the name Stêsikhoros 'he who sets up the chorus' projects a choral personality. 3 True, such a characterization is not in itself decisive, as we see from the example of Archilochus, where the poet refers to himself as an exarkhôn 'chorus leader' in a medium that is apparently not even sung but recited. 4 It may also be true that the compositions that are credited to Stesichorus are of such enormous dimensions that we might expect them to defy any sustained singing and dancing by a choral aggregate. 5 Still our expectations may well have to shift, especially if we consider the varying conditions of aristocratic as distinct from democratic settings for choral performance. 6 It is safer to say, then, that the corpus of Stesichorus represents the medium of choral performance, though we may make allowances for the evolution of a derivative medium that entails the monodic mimesis of choral performance. In fact we have already examined a reference to a tradition of monodic performance of Stesichorus, in the Clouds of Aristophanes (967). 7
§64. The repertoire of Stesichorus, as also most of the repertoire attributed to Ibycus, Sappho, Alcaeus, and Anacreon, can find expression in the monodic medium of kitharôidiâ 'lyre [kitharâ] singing'. 1 Alternatively the monodic medium of lyric is aulôidiâ 'reed [aulos] singing'. 2 Just as the protocomposer of a choral performance can be impersonated by the chorus leader (e.g., in Alcman PMG 26), so also the protocomposer in nonchoral lyric is impersonated by a contemporary performer such as the kitharôidos.
§65. The varieties of mimesis in monody correspond to what we have already seen in the choral form. To begin, the monodic form can have the performer impersonate individual figures other than the composer or protocomposer. A clear example is the first-person feminine in Alcaeus F 10 V. As for cases of direct self-presentation, there are particularly arresting examples in Sappho and Alcaeus. Alternatively, self-presentation in the form of first-person interaction and narrative can step backstage, as it were, while the self simply tells a third-person narrative, as in numerous examples from Stesichorus. Moreover, the lyric poetry or song of monody is not far removed from the ultimately differentiated forms of poetry, as in the compositions attributed to Archilochus or Theognis. Here singing is replaced by stylized speaking, but the choral personalities persist. We may note again that the characterization of a khorêgos 'chorus leader', which persists even in poetry, fits the pattern of ritual substitution. Just as the chorus leader in the song of choral performance enters a forcefield of antagonism with the divinity who is being represented in choral performance, so also the author in poetry is ultimately locked into a forcefield of antagonism with the god Apollo himself. 1
§66. There are traces even in Homer and Hesiod of choral personalities. The very name of
Hesiod, Hêsi-odos 'he who emits the voice', 1 corresponds to the characterization of the Muses as ossan hieisai 'emitting the voice' ( Theogony 10, 43, 65, 67), which applies to them in a choral context (7-8, 63). So also the name of Homer, Hom-êros 'he who fits the song together', corresponds to the characterization of the Muses as arti-epeiai 'having words [epea] fitted together' (Theogony29) and phônêi homêreusai 'fitting [the song] together with their
voice' (Theogony39), again in the same choral context. 2 We have already considered the quasi- choral performance of Demodokos in Odyssey viii. Further, the contest won by the figure of Hesiod at the Funeral Games of Amphidamas, described in Hesiod Works and Days 654-658, is presented as if it were a choral competition. 3 The performance with which Hesiod won is actually called a humnos (Works and Days655).
§67. Alternatively the self-characterization of the poet in Homer and Hesiod can suit the more differentiated figure of the kitharôidos 'lyre [kitharâ] singer', appropriate to the differentiated format of poetry. Such is the description of generic poets at Hesiod Theogony94-95. 1 Another example is the image of Hesiod holding a lyre, as attested by a statue seen by Pausanias at Helikon (9.30.3). 2
§68. Earlier, we had examined various possible stages of distinction between performer and composer in poetry. 1 Now we may add that once the performer and the composer become distinct in poetry, as also in both monodic and choral song, the persona of the composer can be reenacted by the performer. In other words the performer may impersonate the poet. The word for such reenactment or impersonation, as we have seen, is mîmêsis. 2 By extension, as we have also seen, mîmêsis can designate not only the reenacting of the myth but also the present reenacting of previous reenactments. 3 In that the newest instance of reenacting has as its model cumulatively all the older instances of performing the myth as well as the "original" instance of the myth itself, mîmêsis is a current 'imitation' of earlier reenactments. 4
§69. The concept of mîmêsis, in conveying a reenactment of the realities of myth, is a concept of authority as long as society assents to the genuineness of the values contained by the framework of myth. Correspondingly the speaker who frames the myth, or whose existence is reenacted as framing the myth, is an author so long as he or she speaks with the authority of myth, which is supposedly timeless and unchanging. The author has to insist on the timelessness and unchangeability of such authority, which resists the pressures of pleasing the interests of the immediate audience by preferring the pleasure of timeless and unchanging values transmitted to an endless succession of audiences by way of mîmêsis.
§70. These thought patterns are particularly evident in two passages from Theognis of Megara. In the first the persona of Theognis declares that only the one who is sophos, that is, 'skilled' in the decoding and encoding of poetry, 1 can execute a mîmêsis 'reenactment' of Theognis:
Gou dunamai gnônai noon astôn hontin' echousin:
oute gar eu erdôn handanô oute kakôs:
mômeuntai de me polloi, homôs kakoi êde kai esthloi: mimeisthai d' oudeis tôn asophôn dunatai.
Theognis 367-370
I am unable to decide what disposition it is that the townspeople [astoi] 2 have towards me. For I do not please [= verb handanô] them, either when I do for them things that are advantageous or when I do things that are disadvantageous. 3
There are many who find blame with me, base and noble men alike.
But no one who is not skilled [sophos] can reenact [mîmeisthai] me. 4
In the second and related passage, we see that the notion of mîmêsis is an implicit promise that no change shall occur to accommodate the interests of any local audience in the here and now, that is, of the astoi 'townspeople'. The reperformance of a composition, if it is a true reenactment or mîmêsis, can guarantee the authenticity of the "original" composition. In the second passage, where the persona of Theognis actually identifies himself by name, thereby authorizing himself, there is an explicit self-description of the author as someone who practices sophiâ, the 'skill' of decoding or encoding poetry, and as one who therefore possesses the authority of timeless and unchanging value, resisting the necessity of having to please merely the audience of the here and now:
Kurne sophizomenôi men emoi sphrêgis epikeisthô toisd' epesin, lêsei d' oupote kleptomena,
oude tis allaxei kakion tousthlou pareontos, hôde de pas tis erei: Theugnidos estin epê
tou Megareôs: pantas de kat' anthrôpous onomastos: astoisin d' oupô pasin hadein dunamai.
Theognis 19-24
Kyrnos, let a seal [sphrâgis] be placed by me, as I practice my skill [sophiâ], upon these my words. This way, it will never be undetected if they are stolen, and no one can substitute something inferior for the genuine thing that is there. And this is what everyone will say: "These are the words of Theognis
of Megara, whose name is known among all mortals."
But I am not yet able to please [= verb handanô] all the townspeople [astoi].
The composer must risk alienation in his own here and now in order to attain the supposedly universal acceptance of the ultimate audience, which is the cumulative response of Panhellenic fame, 5 achieved through the authority and authenticity of mîmêsis. Implicitly, only the pleasure of exact reperformance, the ongoing achievement of mîmêsis, is truly lasting. 6 The pleasure elicited through changes in response to an immediate audience is ephemeral.
§71. Before we leave the topic of solo singers or poets who speak as choral personalities even
though their persona has become detached from the chorus, I draw attention to a remarkable case where the solo singer is represented as potentially becoming attached to a chorus as their khorêgos, only to stay detached in the end. In the Homeric Hymn to Apollo150, there is a description of a festival on the island of Delos where contests in choral performance take place. 1 In this context, the figure of Homer describes a choral ensemble on the island of Delos, known as the Deliades, who can mîmeisthai 'make a mimesis' (Hymn to Apollo163) of anyone who comes to the festival where they perform (162- 164). 2 By implication they could make a mimesis of Homer as well. By performing Homer they could represent Homer. That is, they could be the speakers, the "I" of the performance, with Homer as their khorêgos and speaking through their identity. They would be like the girls in Alcman PMG 1, through whom Alcman speaks when they sing his words in choral ensemble. More fundamentally they would be like the Muses, through whom Apollo speaks when they sing the words of choral performance. But the figure of Homer indirectly declines the occasion, calling on the good will of the Deliades in the same way that the performer of a prelude calls on the good will of the god who is the subject and occasion of the prelude, so that the same performer may go on to the rest of the performance (Hymn to Apollo 166). He promises to sing about them as he proceeds on his way to give performances throughout the various cities of the Hellenic world (174-175). 3 Instead of staying in Delos as a choral personality who finds expression through the local quasi-Muses, the Deliades, he will be a Panhellenic personality whose "I" speaks for itself, and it will be through him that the Panhellenic Muse of the Iliad and Odyssey finds her own self-expression. 4
§72. Although the "I" of Homer is not taken over by the Deliades, it is their voice that is quoted in the glorification of Homer. Asking the Deliades to keep him in mind even as he moves on (Hymn to Apollo 166-167), the figure of Homer instructs them about what to say to anyone who comes to Delos and should ask the question: of the aoidoi 'singers' who have come to the island, which one has delighted you the most (169-170)? What the Deliades should 'answer' in this hypothetical dialogue is expressed as a direct quotation of what they would indeed say: he is a blind man, from Chios, whose songs will win universal approval in the future (172-173). The word here for 'answer' is hupokrînomai (hupokrinasth' : 171), from which the agent-noun hupokritês 'actor' is derived. 1 In this way the Deliades are true to their choral function of serving as speakers, mouthpieces, as it were, of the composer, even though the composer declines in this case to stay as their chorus teacher.
§73. Similarly with the figure of Hesiod, it is through him that the Panhellenic Olympian Muses find expression, transforming themselves from the local Helikonian Muses that they had once been at the beginning of the Theogony. 1 It is through the encounter of Hesiod with the Helikonian Muses that he gets his power to speak alêthea 'true things', that is, to speak with a Panhellenic authority that reciprocally transforms the Helikonian into the Olympian Muses. 2 Similarly it may be that Homer gets his own Panhellenic authority through his encounter with the Deliades, who can represent anyone who comes to Delos. The centripetal model of the Deliades, who assimilate all the different languages that come their way from all the Hellenes converging at their festival at Delos, is the foundation for the centrifugal model of Homer, who leaves the island to spread their fame, their kleos. The kleos of the Deliades is not only what Homer sings about them but also, reciprocally, what they themselves say through Homer about Homer, which turns
into the kleos of Homer. Their repertoire is that of all the Hellenes, who have come to Delos and who have all been represented by these most versatile Muses.
§74. It is time to sum up what we have observed so far about the khoros 'chorus' as a formal expression of the simultaneity of hierarchy and egalitarianism in the polis. It is implicit that the khorêgos 'chorus leader' is diachronically a combination of composer and leading performer, while the rest of the khoreutai 'chorus members' are performers. The key to choral performance is the public presentation, the apo-deixis, of the khorêgos. The authority of the khorêgos is presented through the performance of the "I" that is the chorus, and it is from this authority that his authorship emanates. It is useful to cite a particularly interesting ethnographic parallel, taken from the following description of choral composition and performance in Andamanese society: 1
Every man composes songs, and the boys begin to practise themselves in the art of composition when they are still young. A man composes his song as he cuts a canoe or a bow or as he paddles a canoe, singing it over softly to himself, until he is satisfied with it. He then waits for an opportunity to sing it in public, and for this he has to wait for a dance. Before the dance he takes care to teach the chorus to one or two of his female relatives so that they can lead the chorus of women. He sings his song, and if it is successful he repeats it several times, and thereafter it becomes part of his repertory, for every man has a repertory of songs that he is prepared to repeat at any time. If the song is not successful [...] the composer abandons it and does not repeat it. Some men are recognized as being more skillful song-makers than others.
§75. In what precedes, I have also stressed that the presentation through the chorus is the representation that is mimesis. The "I" of the choral ensemble is not just the collectivization of persons who are singing and dancing at the ritual: it is also the impersonation of characters that belong to whatever myth is being represented in the ritual. We have seen in compositions like Alcman PMG 1 how a differentiated khorêgos who is composer and who is offstage, as it were, makes the collectivized "I" of the chorus speak about another differentiated khorêgos, the alter ego of the composer, who is the mute virtuoso dancer and who is center stage, the focus of collectivized experience, either male or female.
§76. With these observations in mind, let us move away from the patterns of evolution in choral lyric as attested in a polis like Sparta and shift the emphasis to another possible pattern of evolution, within the highly complex institution of the dramatic festivals, especially the Feast of the City Dionysia, in the polis of Athens. 1 Here, to begin, the khorêgos 'chorus leader' has become ultimately differentiated as a contemporary nonperformer, who organizes and subsidizes both the composition and the performance. 2 Meanwhile, the differentiated function of a performing chorus leader is further differentiated by another split in functions, with a marked "first actor" on one hand and an unmarked chorus leader on the other. This further differentiation is represented in the story that tells of Thespis' "invention" of the first actor (Aristotle in Themistius Orations 26.316d; Charon of Lampsacus FGH 262 F 15). 3 A dialogue between the differentiated "first actor" and the undifferentiated chorus leader would be a further differentiation of a dialogue between the khorêgos and the chorus (cf. Aristotle Poetics 1456a25). 4 Finally, there are yet further stages of differentiation with the "invention" of the "second actor," attributed
to Aeschylus (Aristotle Poetics 1449a15), and of a "third actor," attributed to Sophocles (ibid.). 5 The first actor, of course, is diachronically the composer. Such was the situation with Aeschylus, 6 whereas with Sophocles there is further differentiation between composer and actor, in that Sophocles, tradition has it, ceased to act in the later stages of his career. 7 It is in the interaction between first and second actor, I suggest, that the singular form of poetry in dialogue, iambic trimeter, probably becomes differentiated out of the plurality of various different forms of song in choral presentation. 8
§77. After this overview of complex patterns of differentiation, in Athenian drama, of the traditional interaction of khorêgos 'chorus leader' and khoreutai 'chorus members', we may turn back to the simple point of departure, that is, the fundamental component of performance by the chorus. As is still evident in the idiom of Attic Greek, the words tragôidoi 'performers of tragedy' and kômôidoi 'performers of comedy' refer not only to the choruses but also to the actual performances of tragedy and comedy respectively. 1 These terms, in all their categorical inclusiveness, are parallel to kitharôidoi and aulôidoi as well as rhapsôidoi. 2
§78. Turning from this most differentiated and complex pattern of developments in choral traditions at Athens, I shift to my last example, a less differentiated but comparably complex pattern of choral tradition, as best represented by Pindar. In this case the khorêgos as protocomposer / performer remains a contemporary composer: he is a professional whose compositions are occasional, ostensibly performed by a chorus consisting of contemporary nonprofessionals. Here again the chorus as a group serves as the impersonator, the actor, of the khorêgos. Such is the case with the epinician or victory odes of Pindar, commissioned as choral compositions / performances that celebrate the victories of athletes in Panhellenic Games, notably, the Olympian, the Pythian, the Nemean, and the Isthmian Games. 1 In this case, as in other examples, the composer is no longer necessarily a performer, although his persona keeps speaking of himself as not only a composer but also a group of performers, maintaining the impersonation of his choral function as khorêgos. In this way the "I" of Pindar speaks in a diachronic mode that reflects in content the evolution of the khorêgos from "protocomposer" / performer into a differentiated contemporary composer.
§79. In Pindaric as in other choral poetry, it is the chorus who performs the "I," but this "I" can at will refer to the composer. For example, since the chorus at any given epinician occasion consists of local polis dwellers, the references in Pindaric song to an "I" who comes to the polis from afar must be the mark of the poet. 1 Moreover, there are six Pindaric compositions addressed to non- Thebans that bear clear "signatures" of Thebes as the poet's native polis, 2 just as Bacchylides of Keos is surely referring to himself in attributing one of his choral compositions to 'the nightingale from Keos' (Bacchylides Epinician 3.96 SM). 3
§80. Such references to the self in the compositions of Pindar and Bacchylides should help solve the problem of a reference in Pindar Pythian5.75 to the Aigeidai, a lineage orginating in Thebes and extending into important offshoots at Sparta and its colonies. 1 In the case of Pythian5, a composition in honor of a chariot race victory of Arkesilas, king of Cyrene, the Aigeidai are
described as participating in the colonization of Thera, from where the polis of Cyrene was in turn colonized (76 and following). In this context, the Aigeidai are described as emoi pateres 'my ancestors [pateres]', and the problem is whether the word emoi 'my' here refers to Pindar or to the chorus. 2 The second choice is unlikely if the body politic of Cyrene, as ostensibly represented by the chorus, is not ideologically derivable from the single lineage of the Aigeidai, even by way of ellipsis. And it would be special pleading to posit a Cyrenaean chorus consisting exclusively of members of the Aigeidai. It seems more plausible, then, to interpret emoi pateres 'my ancestors' as a proud reference by the poet Pindar to his own lineage. 3 From the standpoint of Panhellenic prestige, the lineage of the Aigeidai can rival in distinction the corresponding lineage of any of the historical personages whom Pindar praises. If we can take Pindar's pride in his own Theban ancestry as a given, we can better understand the ideology of a Pindaric composition like Isthmian8, which extends the symmetry in the reciprocal relation between the giver of praise, the poet, and the receiver of praise, the victor, to an overarching symmetry between their respective cities, Thebes and Aegina: since the nymphs Thebe and Aegina were twin sisters, as myth has it, the noble populations that were generated from them are in turn related to each other (Isthmian8.15-23). 4 The metaphor of a genetic affinity between poet and victor has force, I suggest, if Pindar's lineage is comparable in status to that of the athletic victor from Aegina.
§81. In Pindaric song, as a choral medium, not only the references to the "I" of the occasion reveal the control of the figure who is diachronically the khorêgos and synchronically the poet. Even the references to the occasion itself reveal that control, in that they all are orchestrated to convey what has been called the absolute present of the performance. 1 We have seen, for example, a self-reference, at the end of Pindar's Nemean2, to the prelude that is supposedly getting under way at the poem's beginning. 2 This kind of time warp absolutizes the occasion, as also in general the numerous conventional futures and imperatives in Pindaric diction, the purpose of which is "to collapse into themselves the whole temporal sequence of the epinician occasion." 3
§82. At the end of this rapid survey of different patterns in the development of traditions in the composition and performance of song, it is time to recapitulate. These different patterns reveal different models for the distinction or potential distinction of performer and poet. We have noted not only the model of the rhapsôidoi in the realm of poetry but also the various different models of kitharôidoi, aulôidoi, tragôidoi, and kômôidoi in the realm of song. 1 In all these models, the common point of departure is that the persona of the composer can be reenacted by the performer or performers. In other words the performer may impersonate the composer as well as the characters represented as speaking within the composition. Such reenactment or impersonation is the essence of mîmêsis. 2
Notes
§3n1. See Ch.4, Ch.5.
§3n3. Cf. Calame 1977 I 18-20, 117, 249.
§3n5. Cf. Ch.5§11. For a useful survey of city festivals serving as contexts for choral performance in the Greek-speaking areas of Italy and Sicily, see Burnett 1988.129-147.
§4n1. Cf. Ch.3§5. For a cross cultural view of the maintenance of a distinction between solo and chorus, see Schneider 1957.4-5.
§6n2. Woodbury 1968.532-533.
§8n1. That this figure is one of the Seven Sages, at least in one particular variant of the Seven Sages theme, is made explicit in the scholia to the passage (iii pp. 215-216 Drachmann: the authority is Andron of Ephesus). See also the following note.
§8n2. In Alcaeus the name of the Sage is specified as Aristodemos, and his saying is localized in Sparta (F 360.1-2 V); in Pindar, by contrast, the Sage is called 'the Argive' (tôrgeiou Isthmian2.9). In Diogenes Laertius 1.41, where the traditions about alternative membership in the flexible theme of the Seven Sages are being discussed, Aristodemos is named as one of the Seven. For more on the theme of the poet as a righteous man who is bereft of his possessions and betrayed by his friends, see Ch.14§31.
§9n2. On which see Lewis 1985; cf. N 1982.61-662, 1985.51-56.
§9n3. Kurke 1988.204-207; cf. Burnett 1988.139.
§10n1. Cf. Ch.3§56 and following.
§10n2. Ibid.
§13n1. In this connection I cite Schneider 1957 for a useful cross cultural survey of collective performance. Although this work is in some respects outdated, many of its formulations have a
lasting value, such as the following: "But the participation of a [chorus] not only helps the regularity of the rhythmic movement: it also contributes materially to the unification of the melodic line" (p. 4). As an example, he cites the following observation about collective performance in African pygmy society, which normally begins "with a wild cry for all the singers out of which a comparative union gradually emerges. The melodic line and the various rhythms of the opening gradually adjust themselves to one another and in the end there emerges a completely regular community chant" (ibid.). As Schneider notes further on, "the powerful influence of collective performance on the development of primitive music can be seen from the fact that even funeral music and love-songs are also very largely choral" (ibid.).
§13n2. A pathfinding work in this regard is Calame 1977.
§14n1. On the strict preservation of performance traditions in song at Sparta, see Athenaeus 633f.
§15n2. Cf. Barker 1984.214. On Xenocritus of Locri, as an exponent of Aeolian harmoniâ, see
§15n3. This passage is the only extant reference to either the Arcadian Apodeixeis or the Argive Endumatia. On the Feast of the Gumnopaidiai at Sparta, see also Pausanias 3.11.9, and other passages surveyed by Nilsson 1906.140-142.
§15n5. Ch.8.
§16n1. Herington 1985.25-26.
§17n2. Cf. Calame 1977 I 277. The choral performances at the Feast of Gymnopaidiai (on which see Ch.12§15n3) took place within this space: Pausanias 3.11.9.
§17n3. Cf. Calame 1977 I 437-439.
§17n4. Cf. Calame ibid.
§17n5. Ibid.
§18n1. That the auta of verse 45 refers to Hagesikhora is argued by Calame 1977 II 47n3; cf. also Calame 1983.326.
§18n2. That the mention of khorêgos at Alcman PMG 1.44 refers to Hagesikhora: Calame 1977 II 46-47; also Calame 1983.326.
§18n3. Calame II 46-47. Cf. Griffiths 1972.24-26.
§18n4. Detailed comparison in Calame II 123-126.
§18n5. I am using here the word mimesis in the sense outlined in the discussion of mîmêsis at
Ch.1§46 and following.
§18n6. That the Hagesikhora figure is not divine is clear from the comparison with those quasi- Muses, the Sirens, to whom she is said to be inferior because they are goddesses (siai gar Alcman PMG 1.98); cf. Calame 1983.346-347.
§19n1. On Helen and the Leukippides, see Kannicht 1969 II 381-382. Also Calame 1977 I
326-330, who shows that the theme of radiant horses is a sacred symbol for the dawn, a cult topic shared by the figure of Helen with the Leukippides, who in turn are consorts of the Dioskouroi, brothers of Helen. On the traditional association of Helen and the Dioskouroi with the symbolism of the dawn, see N 1973.172-173n94; note too N 1979.200 for a discussion of the epithet of Helen, Dios thugatêr 'daughter of Sky / Zeus' (Odyssey iv 227), which is inherited from the figure of Eos, the dawn goddess par excellence. It is important to note that the chorus of Alcman PMG 1 seems to be worshipping a dawn goddess, Âôtis (verse 87): see Calame II 124-125.
§19n2. Calame 1977 II 126-133. The possible rivalry of Agido and Hagesikhora is to be noted for a later stage in the discussion.
§20n1. Calame I 323-333.
§20n2. Ibid.
§20n3. In Polyaenus 8.59, we read of the appearance of a priestess of Athena who is dressed in full armor, like the goddess; cf. Connor 1987.46.
§20n4. The association of the Leukippides with the theme of radiant horses can be correlated with the comparison of Agido and Hagesikhora to two resplendent racehorses in Alcman PMG
1.50-59. For the choral application of racehorse imagery, see Calame II 83 on the equation of khorêgos and cheval conducteur. Calame II 70 shows that these horses in the Alcman passage are represented as Scythian and Lydian. Such foreign associations assert the Panhellenic prestige of Spartan traditions, in that they reflect the widespread contacts enjoyed by the polis; they also reinforce the theme of "foreign is native," on which see Ch.10, especially Ch.10§31 and following.
§21n1. Pausanias 3.16.1 gives the names of the Spartan Leukippides as Hilaeira and Phoibê, and Calame I 325 provides indications that they were considered daughters of Apollo.
§21n2. Cf. Calame I 69, 181-182 and II 124; also Connor 1987.44.
§22n1. Calame II 140-141, with n3. For more on the Agiadai, see Ch.6§19.
§22n2. On the reading Agêsidâmos as distinct from Hâgêsidâmos, see Calame 1983.457. On
dêmos as 'local population', see Ch.2§12n1.
§22n3. Commentary in Calame 1983.414-415; also Calame 1977 II 106.
§22n4. Calame II 141-142. Note too the naming of the father of Agêsidâmos, mentioned in the same composition, Alcman PMG 10(b).12: Dâmotîmos 'he who has the honor [tîmê] of the local population [dêmos]'. Specifically the father is named here by way of a patronymic adjective applied to Agesidamos: Dâmotîmidâs. The use of the patronymic form here in Alcman PMG 10 (b).12 seems parallel to the generic application of Polupâidês 'son of the one who possesses much' to the figure of Kyrnos in Theognis191 et passim, as discussed in N 1985.55-56. For more on expressive patronymics, see the references in N 1979.17 §4n1.
§23n1. On the Gymnopaidiai, see Ch.12§15n3; as we shall see later, Ch.12§23n3, this Spartan festival plays a significant role in the narrative strategy at Herodotus 6.67.2.
§23n2. For more on the semantics of sêma 'sign, symbol, distinguishing feature', from which a- sêmos 'without distinction' is derived, see Ch.7§11 and following.
§23n3. Cf. also Plutarch Banquet of the Seven Sages 149a: in this retelling of the story, the person in charge of organizing the choral event, presumably again the Feast of Gymnopaidiai, is specified as the arkhôn 'leader' of the festival. We may compare a passage in Herodotus 6.67.2, where Demaratos, who at this point has been deposed as king of Sparta, is pictured as attending the Gymnopaidiai, and where he is insulted by Leotychides, the king who replaced him. Leotychides addresses to Demaratos the insulting question: how does it feel 'to be leader' [verb arkhô] after having been king [verb basileuô]? By implication Demaratos was an arkhôn 'leader' at the festival. In light of the Spartan lore about king and status at the Gymnopaidiai, the insult here has special pertinence. When Demaratos answers that at least he has experienced both positions, that is, both leadership at the Gymnopaidiai and kingship, whereas Leotychides has occupied only the second of the two (Herodotus 6.67.3), the pointed implication is that the present status of Demaratos as arkhôn at the Gymnopaidiai may have more to do with the question of real political power than does his former status as king of Sparta. Reinforcing such an implication, Demaratos adds that the mocking question of Leotychides will have enormous consequences, either great misfortune or good fortune, for the Spartans, whereupon he leaves the polis and defects to the Persians (Herodotus ibid.). The overall narrative of Herodotus further reinforces this whole set of implications when, at a later point, Demaratos is pictured as returning to threaten all Hellas as chief advisor of the invading Persians.
§23n4. Cf. Plutarch Sayings of Spartans 219e (King Damonidas) and Diogenes Laertius 2.73 (Aristippos). In the former case the King addresses the organizer of the choral event as khorêgos. The usage of khorêgos here may be parallel to what we see in Herodotus 6.67.2, on which see Ch.12§23n3. Or it may reflect, anachronistically, the Classical Athenian meaning, on which see Ch.12§76.
§24n1. For a metaphorical perversion of such institutional mimesis by a Spartan king, at least from a Spartan point of view, see Thucydides 1.95.3, where the suspicions of the Spartans against their king Pausanias are described as follows: turannidos mallon ephaineto mimêsis ê stratêgia 'there was an appearance more of a mimesis of tyranny than a generalship'. As Nehamas
1982.57 points out, it is not that Pausanias is counterfeiting a tyrant: rather that he is emulating
one. I agree with Nehamas that "even in the latter half of the fifth century, [the term mimêsis and
its cognates] did not go hand in hand with the Platonic notions of the counterfeit, the merely apparent, the deceitful, and the fake" (ibid.). For instances of mîmêsis as an emulation of forerunners, Nehamas, p. 75 n49, adduces passages like Herodotus 5.67.1, where Kleisthenes the Reformer of Athens is said to have 'made a mimesis' (emimeeto) of his maternal grandfather, Kleisthenes the Tyrant of Sikyon. In this connection we may note the etymological links in Latin between the adjective aemulus 'striving to equal' and the verb imitârî 'follow the actions or conduct of, imitate'; related to imitârî is the noun imâgô 'representation; death mask of
ancestor' (cf. Pliny Natural History 35.6).
§24n2. Here I part company with previous commentators, who seek to find single historical occasions for compositions like Alcman PMG 1.
§25n1. On the poetics of the oikos 'home, homestead, household' as the centripetal focus of Panhellenic prestige, especially as attested in the words of Pindar, see Kurke 1988.45-65; also Hubbard 1985.12-15.
§26n1. Lane 1954.13; cf. Merriam 1964.174.
§29n1. The verb melpomai, as at Hymn to Hermes 476, covers both singing and dancing. On the undifferentiated designation of both components by this verb, see Calame 1977 I 163-165. In Homeric Hymn to Hermes425-433, Hermes is represented as performing the first song ever performed, a theogony that represents an undifferentiated type of singing; commentary in N 1982.56-57. But when Hermes gives his lyre to Apollo (434-512), a differentiation in their roles happens in the process, on which see N ibid. Given that Hermes is a model for an undifferentiated and prototypical form of SONG, we may note with interest that the most undifferentated representation of Apollo as master of song is presented in the words of Hermes himself (again Homeric Hymn to Hermes475-476).
§29n2. On kharis as 'pleasurable compensation, through song or poetry, for a deed deserving of glory', see Ch.2§28n1.
§29n3. The specialty of the Muses, song, in this case overlaps with dance by way of the verb melpomai at Shield of Herakles206. On melpomai as 'sing and dance', see Ch.12§29n1. For a rare glimpse of the Muses in their less differentiated role as singers and dancers, I cite Hesiod Theogony1-21. Note that the Muses in this less differentiated role are pictured as local, living on Mount Helikon, whereas they become more differentiated as they move up to Panhellenic status at their new home on Mount Olympus (Theogony22 and following); discussion in N 1982.55-57.
§30n1. The earliest attestation of huporkhêma is in Plato Ion 534c, where it is treated as parallel to dithurambos 'dithyramb', enkômion 'encomium', epos, and iambos (all forms occurring in the plural here). Note the usage of huporkhêma in Athenaeus 617b-f, who then quotes as illustration the text of Pratinas PMG 708; for an informative discussion of why Athenaeus refers to this particular composition of Pratinas as a huporkhêma, with special attention to the prescriptive self-references, at lines 6-7 of PMG 708, concerning the traditional subordination of dance to song, see Seaford 1977-1978.87-88. Seaford (pp. 92-94) argues convincingly that this passage from Pratinas, PMG 708, deliberately mocks, by parody, the style of dithurambos 'dithyramb' as perfected by the likes of Lasus of Hermione. On the semantics of huporkhêma, I
have also benefited from the discussion of Mullen 1982.13-17.
§30n2. Cf. Pickard-Cambridge 1968.255n2.
§30n3. Cf. Mullen 1982.16.
§30n4. Mullen, p. 13.
§30n5. I agree with West 1971.309 in adducing the full text of Iliad XVIII 604-605.
§32n1. Cf. Calame 1977 I 394-395.
§32n2. For more on the huporkhêma, see also Seaford 1977- 1978.87-88: it seems clear that the semantics of huporkhêma progressed over time from more general to more specific. So also in the case of skolion, as discussed at Ch.3§48.
§33n1. Cf. Ch.8§3 and following, with reference to the mechanics of the prooimion in Archaic Greek poetry as compared with the first sentence of the Histories of Herodotus.
§33n2. Koller 1956.191.
§33n3. Detailed demonstration by Koller, pp. 174-182, 195-206.
§33n4. Definitive discussion by Koller, pp. 173-174.
§33n5. The latter passage is quoted at Ch.2§47n3.
§33n6. Full repertoire of examples, along with detailed interpretation, discussion, and commentary, in Koller 1956.174-182. More on humnos as 'song' in the discussion that follows. Koller, p. 177, stresses that humnos is the totality of performance; cf. aoidês humnon 'humnos of the song' at Odyssey viii 429. We explore further below whether the 'rest of the song' that supposedly follows each of the Homeric Hymns may be a stylized formal convention rather than an actual sequel.
§33n7. Commentary by Koller, p. 193, who shows that the certamen 'contest' of the kitharôidoi, that is, what the Greeks would call their agôn, corresponds to the agôn 'contest' of the rhetoricians, as in the beginning of Demosthenes On the Crown: prôton men, [...] tois theois euchomai pasi kai pasais, [...] tosautên [sx. eunoian] u(pa/rcai moi par' u(mw=n ei)s toutoni\ to\n a)gw=na 'First of all, I pray to all the gods and goddesses that as much good will [as I have been accorded by the community] will also be accorded to me from you, for this present contest [agôn]'.
§34n1. Cf. N 1982.53-55.
§34n2. Argued at length in N ibid.; cf. Koller, pp. 181-182.
§34n3. On which see Ch.12§29n1.
§34n4. The adjective hâgêsikhoros 'chorus-leading' here is identical with the name Hâgêsikhorâ
'she who leads the chorus', as in Alcman PMG 1.
§36n4. Cf. ibid.
§36n5. Cf. Koller 1956.183.
§36n6. Koller, pp. 183, 188.
§37n2. For humnêsan Dios archomenai 'made a song [humnos], starting with Zeus' at Nemean5.25, cf. hêlion humnein...archeo mousa 'start to make a song [humnos], Muse, about Helios...'; also hothen per kai Homêridai | rhaptôn epeôn ta poll' aoidoi | archontai 'from which point the Homeridai, singers [aoidoi] of stitched- together words, most often take their start, from Zeus Prooimios [= "Zeus of prooemia"]' at Nemean2.1-3 (where "Zeus prooimios" = "Zeus of the prooemium"); further details at Ch.12§39. For prôtiston men... hôs 'at the very beginning, how it happened that...' at Nemean5.25-26, cf. hôs ta prôta (same translation) at Homeric Hymn to Hermes427, where a paraphrase begins to recap the contents of the prooemium sung by Hermes (cf. Ch.12§34 above).
§39n1. I use the word "line" here simply as a visual reference to the text as printed. For an interpretation of Pindar Nemean3.11-12 that differs from the paraphrase just presented, see Hubbard 1987b.
§39n2. On which see also Ch.12§37n2.
§39n3. Commentary by Koller 1956.190-192.
§39n4. Cf. Mullen 1982.27. Mullen, p. 234n36, cites, with reservations, Fränkel [1975] 429n6, who thinks that Pindar's Nemean2, with its concluding sentence calling upon the chorus to start, was composed "so as to be repeated da capo as often as necessary, so that all the spectators lining the streets along the route might hear it in its entirety." Shifting the emphasis from performance to composition, Kurke 1988.29 offers compelling observations about the "looping effect" of an ending that proceeds into the beginning. I would observe, in addition, that it is a lyric ending that comes full circle to a Homeric beginning.
§40n1. Note the prayer in Homeric Hymn10.5 that the god who presides over the occasion of performance may grant an aoidê 'song' that is hîmeroessa 'full of desire'.
§40n2. On kharis as 'pleasurable compensation, through song or poetry, for a deed deserving of
glory', see Ch.2§28n1.
§40n3. The verb tithêmi has two objects here; with the first I translate this verb as 'put'; with the second, as 'set up'.
§41n3. The usage of apphi 'about' here in Terpander PMG 697 is morphologically parallel to what we find in the prooemium framework of Homeric Hymn7.1 and 19.1. Cf. Aristophanes Clouds595; also Euripides Trojan Women 511-513.
§41n4. In Photius s.v. amphianaktizein, it is said that this introductory phraseology can fit three possible nomoi of Terpander: the Boeotian, the Aeolian, or the Orthios (cf. Ch.3§9).
§42n1. Perhaps it is this kind of formulation that led Cicero to think it typical of citharoedi (= kitharôidoi 'lyre singers') to sing a prooemium (= prooimion) that tends to be disconnected thematically from the corpus of the whole performance (De oratore 2.80).
§42n3. Cf. N 1979.5, 8-9.
§42n4. Koller 1956.183-184.
§42n5. On this meter, cf. West 1982.130; also Gentili and Giannini 1977.35- 36.
§43n2. Ibid.
§43n4. Note too the details of usage characteristic of the prooemium: amphi 'about' at viii 267, on which see the parallels at Ch.12§41n1, and . hôs ta prôta 'at the very beginning, how it happened that...', on which see the parallels at Ch.12§37n2.
§43n5. Cf. also Odyssey viii 499 and the commentary of Koller 1956.190n1.
§44n1. Koller 1956.203-206.
§44n2. See the Appendix.
§45n2. Cf. Ch.12§29n1.
§45n3. I am using here the schematic notions of song and SONG as developed in Ch.1.
§45n4. The testimony of Archaic iconography on this theme is neatly articulated in Pausanias 5.18.4, who describes the image, on the Chest of Kypselos, of a lyre playing Apollo in the midst of the chorus of Muses.
§46n1. Cf. also [cho]rostatis = khorostatis 'she who sets up the chorus', applied to Hagesikhora at Alcman PMG 1.84; commentary by Calame 1983.342. For a collection of other passages showing the same traditional combination of verb histêmi 'set up, establish' plus the object of khoros, see Calame I 88-87n91; also p. 61n23.
§46n2. Calame I 107n131.
§46n3. Stewart 1983.56.
§46n4. Calame I 96n114. We may note the prelude in Stesichorus PMG 278, where a single Muse is invoked to sing, accompanied by a lyre. For an argument against the notion, as proposed, for example, by West 1971, that Stesichorean performance is monodic, essentially the performance of a kitharôidos 'lyre singer', see Burkert 1987.51-55, who proposes that it is instead choral. Burkert, p. 52, points to a reference by the "Old Oligarch," pseudo-Xenophon Constitution of Athens 1.13, concerning a lavish type of song-performance that became obsolescent in Athens under the democracy: "Stripped of its polemical overtones, this remains an interesting account of musical events before the democratic revolutions." Burkert associates such "musical events" with Stesichorean performances; I do not agree, however, with his proposal (pp. 51-52) that such events were performed by chorus members who were itinerant professionals. It would be enough to say instead that the scale and the virtuosity of choral performance at festivals and other such events would be different in aristocratic and democratic settings, and that Stesichorus represents a decidedly aristocratic setting. Cf. Burnett 1988.129-147. As a description of the kind of musical event represented by Stesichorus, Burkert adduces the passage in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo where the figure of "Homer" meets the chorus of Deliades at a festival on the island of Delos; he interprets lines 162-165 as a reference to the "performance of choral lyrics" (p. 54). On this passage, see further at Ch.12§71 and following.
§47n1. Cf. Iliad XXIV 721-722, where specialized singers of a differentiated form of lament, thrênoi, are the exarkhoi 'starters' of the performance; then the women respond (epi...722) as a group, in a less differentiated form of lament, the goos. Cf. Ch.1§36n1.
§47n2. The goos is a less differentiated form of lament than the thrênos. Still the goos too has a built-in hierarchy where someone has to lead off in performance, as designated by the verb exarkhô in the case of Andromache at Iliad XXIV 723, Hekabe at 747, and finally Helen at 761.
§47n3. In this context, we may observe that the very concept of genre becomes necessary only when the occasion for a given speech-act, that is, for a given poem or song, is lost. Such is the case of the Hellenistic poets, as described by Williams 1968.35: "so they composed hymns to the
gods, without any idea of performing them, or they wrote epitaphs, without any idea of inscribing them on a gravestone, or they wrote symposiastic poetry, without any real drinking-party in mind." Cf. also Rossi 1971.75.
§48n1. N 1979.279-316.
§48n2. Ibid.
§48n3. Ibid.
§49n1. Cf. Ch.1§9, Ch.1§15, Ch.1§18, Ch.1§19; Ch.13§26 and following.
§49n2. Cf. Ch.1§9; Ch.13§28 and following. For a stylized representation of Apollo as choral leader of the paiêôn [= paiân] 'paean', see Hymn to Apollo 514-519.
§49n3. Details in N 1979.303-308. Note especially my argument at p. 304 §4n3 about the name of Mnêsiepês, 'he who remembers the words [as in epos 'word']': "As the figure to whom Apollo ordains the cult of Archilochus in the Arkhilokheion, Mnesiepes bears a name that seems to correspond to his own function."
§49n4. Details at Ch.13§32 and following.
§49n5. Detailed commentary in N, pp. 301-302.
§50n1. On the appropriateness of this word daimôn in designating either a god or a hero in the realm of cult: N 1979.128- 129, 154.
§50n2. The sources are collected by Nilsson 1906.414.
§50n3. Cf. Ch.12§15 and following.
§50n4. As Calame 1977 I 141 points out, there are attestations of female choruses with male khorêgoi, but not of male choruses with female khorêgoi. For an ethnographic parallel, see Ch. 12§74.
§50n5. Note the first-person feminine in Alcman PMG 3.81, 83 (on the latter, cf. the commentary of Herington 1985.21-22). In light of the internal references to choral competition in Alcman PMG 1, I draw special attention to the use of agôn 'contest, place of contest' in Alcman PMG 3.8.
§50n6. I infer that the expression epikhôriai gunaikes 'local women' in Herodotus 5.83.3 refers to the members of the choruses; the point being made here by Herodotus is that only 'local women' are mocked in these choral performances, and not men. We may compare the scene in the Life of Archilochus tradition where a youthful Archilochus, as he is driving his cow in the countryside, meets a group of females whom he proceeds to mock, thinking that they are farmworkers who are leaving their work behind and heading for the city (Mnesiepes Inscription, Archilochus T 4.27-30 Tarditi). These country women, as it turns out, are the Muses themselves (T 4.37). See N 1979.303. The juxtaposed picture of a mocking Archilochus is analogous to his persona as an exarkhôn 'choral leader', on which see Ch.12§48. At Ch.13§35, we see that the
theme of Archilochus as a master of mockery is connected with the figure of Demeter; moreover, there are distinct parallelisms between Demeter and the figures of Damia and Auxesia (again Nilsson 1906.414-416). The theme of Archilochus and the Rustic Muses may be compared with the traditions about the astrabikon, where choral performance is visualized as shifting from the polis to the countryside: Ch.11§40n2.
§51n1. Commentary by Calame 1977 I 60-62.
§51n2. On the marriage of Pelops and Hippodameia as a fundamental model of power and political authority: Ch.4 above.
§52n1. On phûlê 'tribal division' as a model of simultaneous integration and differentiation, see N 1987. We may compare the latter-day bureaucratic and military usage of division in the sense of a large functioning unit.
§52n2. In the Suda entry, a chorodektês = khorodektês 'chorus receiver' is described as a proexarkhôn who 'receives' the 'stasis' of the chorus. I take it that his function is to approve, by receiving, the constitution or constituency of a given choral group. Cf. Aristophanes Wealth954, where stasis 'station, position' is found in collocation with koruphaios 'chorus leader' (953, used here in a figurative sense; more on this word at Ch.12§56). Cf. also the usage of the compound katastasis 'establishment' in the traditions about the institution of Spartan choral festivals, as discussed at Ch.12§15. As for stasis in the expression stasin melôn at Aristophanes Frogs1281, see Cingano 1986, who shows that the first interpretation offered by the scholia for this line, claiming that the word denotes a stationary position for the chorus, does not square with the facts of choral performance. Cingano argues for the validity of the second interpretation offered by the scholia, that stasis here means sunodos (sunodon, scholia to 1281), where the word sunodos is to be interpreted in the sense of 'the coming together resulting from juxtaposition' (Plato Phaedo 97a, as translated in LSJ s.v.; cf. "Longinus" 10.3). Further, Cingano, p. 143, compares the relationship of stasis and sustasis (as in logôn sustasin Plato Republic 457e) with that of thesis and sunthesis (as in tôn epôn sunthesin Diodorus Siculus 5.74.1). The meaning of thesis, as in the expression epeôn...thesin at Pindar Olympian3.8, is composition, which helps explain the gloss in Hesychius s.v. stasis : here the first three definitions of stasis are thesis. choros. sunedra 'composition [thesis], chorus [khoros], conference [sunedrâ]' (Cingano ibid.). I agree with Pickard-Cambridge 1968.251 that the derivative stasimon means not that the chorus was standing "but that they had reached their station (stasis) in the orchestra (they had not yet done this in the parodos; in the exodos they were leaving it)."
§52n3. Cf. N 1985.24 §2n2. A neutral context for this sense of the 'lie' or 'setting' of the winds is evident in, for example, Herodotus 2.26.2.
§52n4. Extensive commentary in N 1985.22-36, 53, 64-68, 71, 76, 80-81.
§52n5. Cf. Gluckman 1965.165 on the concept of multiple ties that bind, hence "divided loyalties," as an ideological foundation of society.
§53n1. There is a description of the female agôn 'contest' in running by Pausanias 5.16.2-4 (note
especially the specific use of agôn at 5.16.2 and 5.16.6 in referring to the race).
§53n2. Trozen, not "Troizen": Barrett 1966.12.
§53n3. More at Ch.4 above on such formalized relationships between myth and ritual.
§54n1. Cf. Loraux 1987.108-112, 1987d.50-55, with reference primarily to the political aspects of stasis.
§54n2. On the terms unmarked and marked: Intro. §12.
§54n3. This formulation is pertinent to the discussion at Ch.12§13n1.
§55n2. More detailed discussion, with further comparative data, in N 1985.40-41.
§55n3. Cf. Ch.12§15. There is a similar story about Terpander under the entry meta lesbion ôidon in the Suda: when the polis of Sparta was in disorder, an oracle told them to send for the singer from Lesbos; when Terpander arrived at Sparta, he put an end to the stasis 'social strife' (ibid.). Finally, in a fragment of a story reported by Philodemus On Music, p. 18 Kemke, Stesichorus is pictured as putting a stop to discord among the people of a city, by singing in their midst, just as Terpander had reputedly done in Sparta (ibid.); in another mention of this parallelism between Stesichorus and Terpander, Philodemus describes the social discord as stasis (On Music, p. 87).
§55n4. The reference at Theognis791 to singing and dancing accompanied by the lyre is to be supplemented by 776-779, an explicitly choral scene.
§55n5. The reference to the performance of song accompanied by lyre and reed in
Theognis531-534 does not explicitly differentiate the choral element, as in Theognis791 (cf.
776-779), from the monodic. Elsewhere, as at Theognis759-764, the singing accompanied by lyre and reed is dramatized in the context of a symposium (cf. also the references to the reed at
825-830, 943-944, 1055-1058, 1065-1068). Such sympotic contexts indicate the differentiated forms of monody. In general the figure of Theognis speaks less as a generalized choral personality and more as a specialized sympotic personality (cf. especially Theognis239-243).
§55n6. Commentary in N 1985.36-41. Although the figure of Theognis seems to be more differentiated than that of Thaletas in the form of his poetry ( Ch.1§15), he is less differentiated in function: the point remains that his personality as poet is undifferentiated from his personality as lawgiver.
§56n1. See Ch.6§63, Ch.6§64; also N 1985.42-46.
§56n2. Cf. the use of koruphaios 'leading figure' at Herodotus 6.98.2, quoted at Ch.10§47.
§56n3. N 1987.255.
§57n2. Calame 1977 II 126-127 makes a plausible argument that, while the characters Agido and Hagesikhora in Alcman PMG 1 represent the Leukippides, the chorus as a group represent a set of eleven cult figures known as the Dionysiades (on whom see Pausanias 3.13.6-7, Athenaeus 574d; also Calame I 323-333).
§60n1. See Calame 1977 I 367-372 (also 126-127) for a detailed and persuasive discussion.
§61n1. Cf. Ch.12§32. In this connection I note the following observation of Mullen 1982.34: "What is most noticeable about instances of Pindar's going out of his way to distinguish himself from the dancers is that he ususally does so only by way of foil, that is, only in brief passages where he is relinquishing his role as leader to someone else." According to Mullen (ibid.), this pattern of relinquishing choral leadership is simply a rhetorical strategy in Isthmian8.1-4 (let someone other than me start the kômos 'revel') and in Nemean4.13-16 (if the victor's father were still alive, he would be the choral lyric poet for this occasion), while it may be literally happening in other compositions where others are specified as having taken Pindar's place in training and leading the chorus (Aineias in Olympian 6.88 and Nikasippos in Isthmian2.47).
§61n2. On Alcman as didaskalos 'teacher' of the daughters of the Spartans, as also of their ephêboi 'citizen-initiates', in the activity of patrioi khoroi 'ancestral choruses', see lines 30-37 of the commentary in PMG, p. 30 (Oxyrhynchus Papyri xxix 2506); cf. Herington 1985.24. Note too the vivid description of choral performances at the Spartan festival of the Huakinthia, Polycrates FGH 588 F 1 by way of Athenaeus 139e, where the compositions of Alcman were most likely at least part of the repertory (cf. the papyrus commentary to Alcman, PMG 10[a].5).
§61n3. N 1985.30-36.
§61n4. N, pp. 76; cf. 41-46, 74-76. In this case, however, the figure of the poet is less of a choral personality and more of a sympotic one: Ch.12§55n5.
§63n1. West 1971.
§63n2. Burkert 1987.51; Burnett 1988.129-147, especially pp. 133-135.
§63n5. Cf. West 1971.302, 309, 313. On the basis of Oxyrhynchus Papyri xxxii 2617, it has been calculated that the Geryoneis of Stesichorus "contained at least 1,300 verses, the total being perhaps closer to two thousand" (West, p. 302). West concludes (ibid.): "Indeed, these were epic poems, in subject and style as well as in length: epics to be sung instead of recited." Such calculations have been challenged by Burnett 1988.129-133.
§63n6. On this point see Ch.12§46n4.
§64n1. On which see Ch.3§8n3, Ch.3§31, Ch.3§42.
§65n1. Cf. N 1979.279-308.
§66n1. N 1979.296-297.
§66n2. Ibid.
§66n3. Koller 1956.166-167.
§67n1. Koller, p. 167.
§67n2. Pausanias ibid. worries about this visual association, in light of the laurel wand that the Muses give to Hesiod as a skêptron 'scepter' at Theogony30. But there exist iconographical attestations of poetic figures who are pictured simultaneously with laurel branch and lyre, as in the case of Musaeus (documentation in Koller 1956.165n4).
§68n1. See Ch.2§51 and following.
§68n3. Such is the case of Hagesikhora, as discussed at Ch.12§18 and following.
§68n4. This is the sense of mîmêsis in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo 163, as discussed at Ch. 1§48 and following.
§70n1. On sophos 'skilled' as a programmatic word used by poetry to designate the 'skill' of a poet in encoding the message of the poetry, see Ch.6§4. A successful encoder, that is, poet, is by necessity a successful decoder, that is, someone who has understood the inherited message and can therefore pass it on. Not all decoders, however, are necessarily encoders: both poet and audience are decoders, but only the poet has the authority of the encoder. On the terms code and message as applied to general poetics, see Ch.6§6.
§70n2. In this and related contexts, astoi 'townspeople' seems to be the programmatic designation of local audiences, associated with the special interests of their own here and now.
§70n3. The "doing," of course, may amount simply to the performative level of "saying" by way of poetry.
§70n4. The translation here may have veered too far from English idiom, which resists the notion of reenacting a person; accordingly we may choose to paraphrase thus: "But no one who is not skilled can reenact my existence."
§70n5. This theme of the alienated poet is examined at length in N 1985.30 and following.
§70n6. On the reenactment, through poetry, of both choral and sympotic settings in the compositions attributed to Theognis, see Ch.12§55.
§71n1. Thucydides refers to these contests as agôn (3.104 passim), comparing the festival, as he reconstructs it from the Hymn to Apollo, to the contemporary pan-Ionian festival of the Ephesia, on which see Nilsson 1906.243-247.
§71n2. Cf. Ch.1§48 and following.
§71n3. Commentary in N 1979.8.
§71n4. To be contrasted is Iliad II 594-600, with the elliptic description of a negative encounter between the Muses and a figure called Thamyris (on the meaning of thamuris as 'assembly', synonymous with agôn, see N 1979.311 §2n6). This figure Thamyris fits the description of a kitharôidos (Iliad II 599-600, with the commentary of Koller 1956.160).
§72n1. The hupokritês is ordinarily the second actor, as distinct from the prôtagônistês
'protagonist' (cf. Pickard-Cambridge 1968.127).
§73n1. N 1982.53-57.
§73n2. Ibid.
§74n1. Radcliffe-Brown 1948.132; cf. Merriam 1964.175.
§76n1. For a synopsis of the evolution of Athenian dramatic forms, see Ch.13§6 and following.
§76n2. For a review of the facts, see Calame 1977 I 92-93. There is an explicit formulation in Athenaeus 633b, to the effect that the Spartans use the word khorêgos not as 'the one who hires the chorus' but as 'the one who leads the chorus'. The differentiation of the khorêgos as one who sponsors instead of performs is for me schematically parallel to the differentiation of an "athletic" victor in the Panhellenic festivals who has sponsored a four-horse chariot team instead of having driven it himself.
§76n3. Pickard-Cambridge 1968.130-131.
§76n4. See also Pickard-Cambridge, p. 131n3. For an example of dialogue between khorêgos
and chorus, I cite again Bacchylides 18 SM, as discussed at Ch.12§59.
§76n5. For another version, see Pickard-Cambridge, p. 131.
§76n6. Cf., for example, Athenaeus 21e-22a and the comments of Mullen 1982.20; also Pickard- Cambridge, pp. 250-251.
§76n7. Testimonia in Pickard-Cambridge, p. 130 and n4. In earlier stages of his career, Sophocles himself reportedly played the lyre when he played the role of Thamyris in the Thamyris, and he played ball with great skill when he played the role of Nausikaa in the Nausikaa (Athenaeus 20e-f; commentary in Pickard-Cambridge, p. 251). Mullen, p. 20, remarks: "In
Sophocles the unity of poet, dancer, and musician reaches its akmê among dramatists."
§76n8. Cf. Ch.1§8 and following.
§77n1. Pickard-Cambridge, pp. 127-132. Note the phrasing at p. 127: "Without any conscious differentiation of actors and chorus"; for the tendency to apply the words tragôidoi and kômôidoi to the protagonists in old plays, while the other actors are called hupokritai or sunagônistai, see p. 129.
§77n2. Plato Laws 658b, as discussed at Ch.3§42n1.
§78n1. For case-by-case refutations of various theories that various poems in the epinician corpus of Pindar are not really epinicians, see Young 1983.
§79n1. See Mullen 1982.28, who cites Pindar Olympian7.13-14; Pythian2.3-4; Isthmian5.21-22 and 6.20-21 as illustrations. This is not to go so far as to say that the poet of choral lyric should be considered a soloist (for arguments in that direction, see Lefkowitz 1985.47-49; also Lefkowitz 1988).
§79n2. See again Mullen ibid., who cites Pindar Olympian6.84- 86, 10.85; Pythian2.3-4, 4.299; Isthmian6.74-75, 8.16.
§79n3. Ibid. For further discussion of the Pindaric "I," see Lefkowitz 1963, Slater 1969b.89, and Hamilton 1974.113-115, where we see that the "I" of an epinician gravitates toward the khorêgos, while that of, say, a paean gravitates toward the khoros.
§80n1. On the Aigeidai, see Ch.6§61n3. On the Aigeidai as Thebans, see the reference in Pindar
Isthmian7 (14-15), a composition celebrating the victory of a Theban athlete.
§80n2. Cf. Kirkwood 1982.3; cf. Lefkowitz 1985.45-47.
§80n3. Cf. Farnell 1932.178-179; also Hubbard 1985.129n83, in disagreement with Bornemann 1891, who argues that the designation of the Aigeidai applies to Thebans in general. In Pindar Isthmian7.14-15, the Aigeidai are indeed acknowledged as the descendants of Thebes; still, even if the poet were to say that the Aigeidai are the Thebans, such a vaunt could serve to acknowledge the prestige of an exclusive family by way of ellipsis, that is, the definition of the whole by way of a prominent part of the whole. Cf. the remarks on the Aiakidai at Ch.6§60.
§81n1. Mullen 1982.27.
§81n3. Mullen, p. 27; cf. Slater 1969b.
§82n2. Cf. Ch.1§46 and following.
§1. In the roughly defined chronological span of 650 to 450 B.C. covering the era of the nine canonical lyric poets, 1 Pindar is not only the latest but also the best known for what we have been calling occasional poetry and song. Close behind him are his near contemporaries, Simonides and Bacchylides, the two other poets whose lyric poetry is most easily identifiable with historically verified times and places. These three figures are prominently linked with the patronage of individuals whose political power transcends that of the polis. 2 As we move further back in time, by contrast, we find increasingly fewer instances of lyric poetry suited for single occasions. This pattern corresponds to increasingly fewer instances of individual patronage. In earlier lyric, details that may at first strike us as traces of a single occasion usually turn out to be, upon further scrutiny, more generic than historical. Even self-references tend to say more about a generic composer than about a historically situated poet, as we have seen in the case of a figure like Alcman. 3
§2. Having noted that the lyric compositions of Pindar were occasional in the strict sense that they were grounded in the historical circumstances of their performance, we now come to the basic question: how then did they ever even survive in the first place? Throughout this book I have resisted the option of seeking a be-all and end-all explanation in the actual writing down of Pindaric song. True, it seems at first an attractive solution to attribute the survival of occasional lyric poetry by Pindar, Simonides, and Bacchylides to the factor of literacy. After all, Pindar and these two near-contemporaries come closest of all the nine canonical lyric poets to what we conceive as the historical period, where the continuous re-creation of knowledge through oral tradition was being replaced by the episodic recording of knowledge through writing. As the closest to the historical period, Pindar could be expected to be the poet whose compositions are most likely to have been affected by the medium of writing. Even in this instance, however, there is no evidence that writing was a factor in the actual composition of Pindaric song; I have already argued that writing need not be posited as an indispensable factor in at least the earlier phases of transmission. 1 If writing had been the sole original means of transmission for compositions by the likes of Pindar, Simonides, and Bacchylides, why is it that while these "old lyric" poets ultimately became canonical, the later "new lyric" poets of the second half of the fifth century, in a period when literacy was becoming ever more pronounced, did not? Granted, there is no doubt that occasional "old lyric" would need to be recorded ultimately in writing if it were to survive, but there remains the more fundamental question: how did the occasional as well as nonoccasional compositions of "old lyric" actually become Panhellenic in prestige, and thereby canonical?
§3. As long as Pindar's medium of song making depended on the prestige of public performance, we cannot assume that a written record could have maintained, of and by itself, such prestige.
Rather we should be asking the question the other way around: what was it about the public prestige of Pindar's lyric poetry, as it was once performed, that made it possible in the first place for a written record to evolve and to be preserved for later generations?
§4. This question takes us back to the problem inherent in the occasional nature of Pindar's lyric poetry. It is to be expected that occasional poetry is the least likely kind of oral tradition to become a synthetic canonical tradition, in that the Panhellenization of Greek oral traditions in song and poetry entails the gradual elimination of features and details that would tie down a composition to any specific time and place. How, then, did the occasional compositions of Pindar survive?
§5. Part of the answer has to do with the realities of political power in the time of Pindar, which allowed occasional poetry and song to assert the interests of the individual, both patron and poet, in a grand Classical manner characteristic of the older kind of seasonally reperformed poetry and song serving the interests of the polis. 1 Another part of the answer, yet to be formulated, has to do with concepts of Classicism in the time after Pindar, especially at Athens, when the various distinctions between a poet like Pindar and, say, a poet of the polis like Alcman were already becoming blurred. To appreciate these concepts, we have to consider at some length the role of the State Theater at Athens. In examining the traditions of Athenian Theater, it is crucial to keep in mind at all times that the medium of drama in general and tragedy in particular was the central context for the evolution of traditions in song and poetry at Athens.
§6. The primary setting of Athenian State Theater, and by extension of Athenian traditions in song and poetry, was a synthetic festival known as the City Dionysia (or Great Dionysia), the significance of which is captured in the following brief description: 1
The importance of the festival was derived not only from the performances of dramatic and lyric poetry but from the fact that it was open to the whole Hellenic world and was an effective advertisement of the wealth and power and public spirit of Athens, no less than of the artistic and literary leadership of her sons. By the end of March the winter was over, the seas were navigable, and strangers came to Athens from all parts for business or pleasure.
From the text of Aristophanes Birds786-789, we witness the central program of the City Dionysia in a given year, 414 B.C.: three days, each taken up with three tragedies, one satyric drama, and one comedy. 2
§7. Athenian tradition has it that the Feast of the City Dionysia was the occasion for the "first"
contest in tragedy, won by Thespis, at around 534 B.C., under the tyrant Peisistratos (Parian Marble FGH 239 A 43). 1 The institution of contests in comedy at the City Dionysia was formalized by the State at a much later date, around 486 B.C. 2 Athenian tradition also has it that satyric drama was established at the City Dionysia in order to compensate for the loss of Dionysiac elements in the development of tragedy (Chamaeleon F 38 Wehrli, On Thespis; Zenobius 5.40); the introduction of satyric drama at the City Dionysia is particularly associated with Pratinas of Phleious, a city close to Corinth, 3 who is said to have competed in Athens during the 70th Olympiad, 499-496 B.C. (Suda s.v. Pratinas; Palatine Anthology 7.707).
§8. It can be argued that satyric drama amounts to a compensation for the elements lost by tragedy in a process whereby comedy became differentiated from tragedy in the context of the City Dionysia. 1 There are noteworthy typological parallels, such as the Japanese Kyogen, farcical interludes performed between the serious Nô plays and preserving aspects of an earlier and less differentiated form, Sarugaku, from which the serious Nô evolved; 2 a similar point can be made about the English Court Masque and Antimasque. 3 This argument helps explain Aristotle's derivation of tragedy from the satyric medium (saturikon, Poetics 1449a20-21). We could say that this satyric medium represents an undifferentiated form of tragedy / comedy; then comedy and the satyric drama become differentiated from tragedy, with comedy becoming detached from tragedy while the satyric drama stays attached as an ongoing compensation for the nonserious Dionysiac elements that tragedy gives up in its gradual evolution toward seriousness (cf. apesemnunthê, Poetics 1449a20- 21). 4
§9. In trying to envisage an undifferentiated form of tragedy / comedy, we may look for important reflexes in the functioning parts of attested comedy, most notably the two aspects of "entrance" known as parodos and parabasis and the central aspect of a major contest or agôn. 1 Other functioning parts of comedy that reveal features of undifferentiated drama include "the size of the chorus (twice that of tragedy), the persistence of their hostility from parodos to agôn, the antikhoria [= rival choral groups] implied by the epirrhematic structure of the agôn, 2 [and] the extant examples of antagonistic antikhoria." 3
§10. Given that the Theater of Dionysus at Athens is the primary context for the evolution of drama, specifically for the eventual differentiation of choral dramatic contests into the separate categories of tragedy, comedy, dithyramb, and satyr drama, we may look for references to such evolution within drama itself. The ritual essence of Greek drama as a choral performance that takes place at a seasonally recurring festival is highlighted by the Bacchae of Euripides, a tragedy performed some time shortly after the death of the poet in 406 B.C., which represents the actions concerning the god Dionysus and the hero Pentheus as a sort of protofestival, a primitive version of the Feast of the City Dionysia in Athens. 1 "If," it has been argued, "the tradition that Thespis produced a Pentheus as one of the earliest Greek dramas was current in Euripides' time, the choice of subject of Dionysus' introduction of a primitive drama into Thebes would be particularly appropriate." 2
§11. In Bacchae 714-716 and thereabouts, the herdsman is telling how he and his companions, boukoloi 'cowherds' and poimenes 'shepherds', had come together for a contest of words in describing the wondrous things being performed by the devotees of Bacchus. Concerning later traditions of dancing by boukoloi 'cowherds' in worship of Dionysus, it has been observed that such dances "may well have had their aition in such stories as the herdsman tells here." 1 In other words the myth of Dionysus and Pentheus is referring to itself as the motivation or, to put it in Greek, the aition 'cause', of the ritual complex known as the Feast of the City Dionysia, as represented by the Bacchae. 2 Moreover, this aition, telling of boukoloi 'cowherds' and poimenes 'shepherds' who come together (Bacchae 714) to compete in describing the wonders of Bacchus, reenacts the very etymology of the crucial word agôn, apparently derived from the root
ag- of agô as in sun-agô 'bring together, assemble, gather'. 3 The notion of 'assemble', as we have seen, is intrinsic to the general sense of agôn, that is, 'assembly' (e.g., Pindar Pythian10.30). 4 But the word can also specifically mean 'contest' (e.g., Pindar Olympian9.90). Thus agôn conveys not only the social setting for an activity, namely, an assembly of people, but also the activity itself, namely, a contest. 5 Moreover, agôn can designate a festival of contests in poetry, as in Homeric Hymn6.19-20. 6 The ritual aspect of these activities is suggested by attestations of the derivative word agôniâ in the sense of 'agony' (e.g., Demosthenes On the Crown 33). A semantic parallel is the English usage of trial in the sense of ordeal, and we may also note that the cognate of English ordeal in German is Urteil, meaning 'trial'. In the Bacchae of Euripides, Dionysus himself describes the upcoming ordeal of Pentheus, where he will be dismembered by the god's devotees, as a great agôn (975). At the moment Pentheus may interpret agôn on the surface, in the mere sense of a "contest" with adversaries against whom he expects to win (cf. 964, 975), but the real winner will be Dionysus, while Pentheus will undergo an agôn in the deeper sense of the ultimate "agony" of an ultimate "ordeal" (again 964, 975). To that extent the competition of the herdsmen who come together to tell of the wonders of Dionysus is the ordeal of Pentheus.
§12. The name of Pentheus is apt in this regard: it is derived from the noun penthos 'sorrow, lamentation' (as at Bacchae 1244), a word that expresses, in the diction of epic poetry, the actual expression or performance of lamentation in the form of song. 1 The noun penthos is in turn derived from the verb paskhô 'suffer, experience'. Another derivative of paskhô is pathos 'suffering, experience', which is applied specificially, in the plural pathea, to the ultimate agony that awaits Pentheus (Bacchae 971). The theme of the pathos of Pentheus, as dramatized by the verb paskhô, pervades the Bacchae (786, 788), 2 and it should be compared with the context of pathos at Herodotus 5.67.5, describing the dancing by tragikoi khoroi 'tragic choruses', at Sikyon in the time of the tyrant Kleisthenes, in reenactment of the pathea 'sufferings' of the hero Adrastos. 3
§13. The sufferings of Pentheus, as expressed by way of paskhô 'suffer, experience', can be juxtaposed with the activities of the god Dionysus: at that primordial festival conjured up by the Bacchae of Euripides as a prefiguration of the City Dionysia, these activities are described by cowherds and shepherds who have come together to compete in retelling the wondrous things performed by the devotees of the god (Bacchae 714- 716). 1 In this context the performance of Dionysiac wonders is designated by the verb draô (716), which means 'do, perform' within the world of tragedy but also 'sacrifice, perform ritual' within the "real world," the outer world that frames the world of tragedy. 2 There is a grammatical logic built into the antithesis of paskhô and draô: the verb paskhô in the sense of 'experience things done to oneself' is the functional passive of the verb draô, synonym of poieô in the sense of 'do things to someone'. This antithesis of paskhô and draô, which is played out in other tragedies as well (e.g., Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus 538-539, 1644), is also reflected in the nouns that are derived from these verbs: whereas the derivative of passive paskhô is pathos, the derivative of active draô is drâma, which survives as the English word drama. What is pathos or action experienced by the hero within the world of tragedy is drâma, that is, sacrifice and the performance of ritual, from the standpoint of the outer world that frames it. This outer world is constituted by the audience of the theater, who
become engaged in the drâma and who thereby participate in the inner world that is the pathos
of the hero.
§14. It is symptomatic of structures that have lost their elasticity, becoming too rigid to accommodate further development, to intensify the semantics of self-reference as a sort of final act of self-reassurance. The patterns of self-reference by drama to drama as we see them in the Bacchae of Euripides reflect a crisis in the very genre of tragedy, in the context of drastic changes in Athenian society toward the end of the fifth century; the prospect is one of abrupt confrontation and loss. 1
§15. This is not the place to search for a formula that accounts for all the differentiations of poetic forms evolving out of the vast and complex institution of the City Dionysia. Still, a general outline has emerged from what precedes. In brief the City Dionysia is the context for the eventual differentiation of choral dramatic contests into the separate categories of tragedy, comedy, dithyramb, and satyr drama. We must add that the earlier phase of differentiation is followed by a later phase of mutual assimilation. 1
§16. Besides deriving the form of tragedy from the satyric medium (Poetics 1449a20-21), Aristotle derives the performers of tragedy from the exarkhontes 'choral leaders' of the dithurambos 'dithyramb' (1449a10-11). 1 This formulation is useful to the extent that the evolution of tragedy at Athens does become assimilated with the evolution of the dithyramb, an alternative Dionysiac form of Peloponnesian provenience. A key figure in this process of assimilation is Lasus of Hermione, whom tradition credits with the original institution of dithyrambic contests at the City Dionysia (Suda s.v. Lasos). 2 From Herodotus (7.6.3-4), we learn that Lasus was associated with the dynasty of tyrants at Athens, the Peisistratidai. The definitive formalization, however, by the State, of contests in dithyrambs at the Feast of the City Dionysia can be dated at ca. 509/8 B.C., after the expulsion of the Peisistratidai (Parian Marble FGH 239 A 46). It seems reasonable to infer that this tradition "refers to the first victory at the Dionysia as organized under the democracy, and as distinct from such contests as may have been arranged by the tyrants with the assistance of Lasos." 3 This is not to say that the stature of figures like Lasus did not survive the transition from the era of tyranny to that of democracy. In fact Lasus may well have been involved in the reformalization of the dithyramb in the era of democracy. Another such figure, compatible with both eras, is Simonides of Keos, rival of Lasus (Aristophanes Wasps1410- 1411), and a contemporary of Pindar. 4
§17. The Peloponnesian provenience of the dithyramb is made explicit in Herodotus 1.23, where the kitharôidos 'citharode' Arion of Methymna in Lesbos is credited with being the first to institute choral performances of the dithyramb in the city of Corinth during the reign of the tyrant Periandros (cf. Suda s.v. Arion). 1 In Solon (F 30a W) this same Arion is credited with introducing the first performance of tragedy in Athens, in contrast with the alternative tradition that credits Thespis (again Parian Marble FGH 239 A 43; Suda s.v. Thespis). 2 The Solonian version seems older in that Arion is represented as an introducer of tragedy, as if it were not yet differentiated from dithyramb. Thespis in contrast represents the differentiated form of tragedy.
§18. The very name of tragedy, however, implies an earlier, undifferentiated phase of drama, compatible with the attested forms of tragedy, comedy, and satyr drama, all three. It appears that the form tragôidoi means 'goat singers' in the sense of 'singers who compete for the prize of a sacrificial goat'. 1 This meaning is not incompatible with the conventional theme of associating rustic folk with the wearing of goatskin, if we assume that the goatskin worn in performance of song represents the prize won in a continuum of earlier performances, each with its own sacrifice of goats. A key passage illustrating this theme of rustics wearing goatskin is Theognis53- 58, where a crisis within the polis is being described: values are being turned upside-down because the 'base' are now on the top of the social order while the 'noble' are at the bottom, and all this because the 'base' population, explicitly described as wearing goatskins (55), moved inside the city from the outside, where they had lived previously, aware of neither 'justice' (dikai) nor 'customary laws' (nomoi). This description is making an ethical point about social degeneration, 2 but its central image corresponds to an aetiology for an undifferentiated form of drama, functioning as a ritual inversion of social values. 3 We may note that the chorus of satyrs in the Cyclops, a satyr-drama of Euripides, are wearing goatskin (80). 4 The theme of formerly excluded rustic outsiders is suggestive of a fundamental aetiology of comedy: Aristotle pictures the primordial performers of comedy as wandering through the kômai 'countryside districts', deprived of rights and honor within the polis (Poetics 1448a36-b1). 5 This aetiology accepts as a given that comedy, in the present, is a thing of the polis. 6 In contrast the very concept of satyr is a thing of the countryside (e.g., Horace Ars Poetica 236-247; agrestes satyros at 221). 7
§19. The key transformation for the history of drama at Athens is the urbanization of the Feast of Dionysus by the tyrant Peisistratos, as we can observe most clearly from the contrast between the Anthesteria, the oldest of the festivals of Dionysus at Athens (Thucydides 2.15.4 calls it the archaiotera dionusia 'older Dionysia'), 1 and the City Dionysia (Thucydides 5.20: dionusia ta astika) , which took shape under the rule of the Peisistratidai. 2 Whereas satyrs were apparently a traditional feature of the Anthesteria, 3 the satyric element was reduced to a subordinated attachment of tragedy in the City Dionysia.
§20. A central point, then, can be made about all the dramatic competitions originating in the context of the City Dionysia: the differentiations into the distinct forms of tragedy, comedy, dithyramb, and satyric drama must have started in the era of the tyrants, the Peisistratidai, who played a major role in the shaping of the City Dionysia. 1 The dynasty of the Peisistratidai also played a major role in the shaping of the Panathenaia, the context for performance of epic (scholia to Aristides Panathenaicus 3.123; "Plato" Hipparchus 228b). 2 The close association of the Peisistratidai of Athens with the City Dionysia, context for performance of drama, and with the Panathenaia, context for performance of epic, is analogous to the association of the tyrant Kleisthenes of Sikyon with innovations in the performance of both epic (Herodotus 5.67.1) 3 and drama (5.67.5). 4 In sum, I stress the role of the tyrants in the shaping of urbanized festivals of Panhellenic repute, which provided the actual context for the differentiation of major poetic genres, attracting masters of song from all over the Hellenic world. Moreover, even after the
democracy replaced the tyrants in Athens, the leading citizens of the democracy, aristocrats that they were, continued to play a major role in the shaping of the dramatic festivals: thus, for example, the man who financed in 472 B.C. the production of a dramatic trilogy of Aeschylus that included the Persians, celebrating the great naval victory at Salamis in 480 B.C., was none other than Pericles of Athens, 5 serving in the official capacity of khorêgos 'chorus leader' (IG 2 2318 i.4). 6 We may note in this connection the report that Hieron, Tyrant of Syracuse, commissioned Aeschylus to train a chorus for a reperformance of the Persians when Aeschylus was summoned to his realm in Sicily (Life of Aeschylus, p. 333.24-25). 7
§21. This survey of the Athenian heritage in song making, as shaped by the City Dionysia, can serve as a foundation for the task at hand, which is to define Athenian notions of the Classical forms of song and to correlate these notions with the survival of Pindaric song. It is best to start with a reconsideration of the fundamental nature of Pindar's song-making tradition, and how it may be related to the form of drama at a stage preceding the differentiations that took place in the context of City Dionysia. An ideal point of comparison is Archilochus, who represents an undifferentiated tradition that is not only cognate with the differentiated and more specialized tradition of Pindar but also parallels in some striking ways the undifferentiated stages of Athenian drama.
§22. We may begin to explore the undifferentiated nature of Archilochean tradition by considering two instances of fable telling in the poetry of Archilochus, where the fable refers to itself as ainos (F 174 and 185 W). This same word is used in the epinician lyric poetry of Pindar and Bacchylides in referring to the function of this medium. 1 What then does fable telling have in common with epinician lyric poetry? We find a clue in the fables of Aesop, as dramatized in the Life of Aesop tradition. The Life represents various contexts in which the fables of Aesop, traditionally recognized as ainoi, are being told to various audiences. In these contexts we see that the social function of the Aesopic ainos is either praise or blame. 2
§23. Thus one form, the ainos, has two potential social functions, praise or blame, as attested in the praise of epinician and the blame of Archilochean poetics. These two functions of praise and blame are an inherited feature of Archaic Greek poetry and song, as we see from the evidence collected by Marcel Detienne. 1 Among other sources Detienne cites Plutarch's Lycurgus (8.2, 21.1, 25.2; also 14.3, 26.3), where the essence of social regulation in Sparta is described as a matter of counterbalancing praise and blame, primarily through poetry and song. There is much to be said about the way in which these functions of praise and blame are described by poetry or song in general. 2 Also we have seen that there is a heritage of one form for both. 3 Perhaps the clearest testimony about the two-sidedness of the ainos is in Homeric poetry. The poet is represented as respectively praising and blaming what is right and wrong; in this capacity he is the watchdog of ritual and ethical correctness, as we see in the example of the poet whom Agamemnon had left behind to watch over Clytemnestra (Odyssey iii 267-271). 4
§24. But Pindaric song, and Archilochean poetry as represented by Pindar's tradition, reveal specialization. Pindaric song tends to praise more than blame. 1 Archilochus in contrast has at first blush the reputation of blaming only. This is the impression that we get from, say, the ainos in
Archilochus F 174 W: this fable about the fox and the eagle is apparently being narrated within a poem of blame against Lykambes. 2 Our impression is reinforced by Horace: Archilochus is seen one-sidedly as a composer of diatribes against the family of Lykambes (e.g., Epodes 6.11-13; Epistles 1.19.23-25, 28-31). There is further reinforcement from one of the two direct references to Archilochus in Pindar Pythian2.52-56, where Archilochus is described as the exponent of blame and therefore the enemy of praise. 3
§25. Yet, in the other Pindaric passage, Olympian9.1-5, Archilochus is presented not only as a poet of praise but even as the primordial poet of praise. 1 He is being represented as a protopoet of epinician lyric poetry, as if he were some primitive forerunner of Pindar himself. Moreover, as a proto-laudator of the Olympics, Archilochus has as his proto-laudandus none other than a hero who figures as a founder of the Olympics, Herakles (the testimonia are collected in Archilochus F 324 W; the clearest account is in the scholia to Aristophanes Birds1762). 2
§26. The tradition behind Olympian9.1-4 stresses that Archilochus has no musical instrument (again I refer to the testimonia collected in Archilochus F 324 W, especially the scholia to Aristophanes Birds1762). By implication then this primordial mode of epinician composition is not lyric in the strict sense. Such a characterization corresponds to the formal status of Archilochus' poetry, which is composed in meters that are asynartetic, that is, roughly half-way between strophic and stichic. 1
§27. To be more precise about the metrical form of Archilochean poetry: Bruno Snell, in the metrical appendix to his edition of Pindar, offers the view that asynartetic meters of Archilochus are a metrical prototype of one of the two major metrical systems, which are both synartetic, used by Pindar (and Bacchylides), namely, the so-called dactylo-epitrites meters. 1 According to this view the nonlyric asynartetic meters that characterize Archilochus developed into lyric synartetic meters that characterize, say, Pindar. We have, however, already had reason to formulate the progression differently: the nonlyric asynartetic meters are in fact derived from the lyric asynartetic, while there is another line of progression from lyric asynartetic to lyric synartetic. 2
§28. Still we must account for the fact that Archilochean poetry refers to itself as a lyric medium: the persona of Archilochus describes himself as capable of being an exarkhôn 'choral leader' (F 120 and 121 W), that is, the leader of a chorus, a group of singers / dancers; in this description, he is accompanied by the aulos (F 121 W). Such self-reference seems to be an example of what I have called diachronic skewing, that is, where the medium refers to itself in terms of earlier stages of its own existence. 1 As I have argued, the medium of Archilochus was originally undifferentiated lyric, that is, sung and danced, and it developed eventually into differentiated nonlyric recitative in a complex and lengthy process of Panhellenization. 2 It appears that Pindar's medium, which remains lyric all along, takes note of the eventual nonlyric medium of Archilochus aetiologically, by implying a nonlyric origin for epinician (Olympian9.1-5). 3
§29. More pertinent and important for us at this point, Pindar's medium also takes note of an aspect of the original function of Archilochean poetry that seems to have eluded Aristotle: the
poetic tradition of Archilochus is suitable for epinician praise. Pindar's Olympian9 is asserting that Archilochus is a protopoet of praise. We see here what amounts to the other side of the coin, matching the testimony of Aristotle Poetics 1449a and 1448b23, who evidently considered Archilochus exclusively as a protopoet of blame.
§30. In the Poetics 1449a9ff, Aristotle says that both tragedy and comedy had a beginning that is autoskhediastikê 'improvisational' (ap' archês autoschediastikês), 1 and that tragedy was derived from the exarkhontes 'choral leaders' of the dithurambos 'dithyramb' (apo tôn exarchontôn ton dithurambon). 2 Aristotle may have had Archilochus' passage in mind. 3 In Archilochus F 120 W, the persona of the composer declares that he knows how to be the exarkhôn 'choral leader' of the dithyramb, while his mind is thunderstruck with wine. 4 Else remarks: "Archilochus' impromptu, drunken dithyramb is closer than any other dithyramb we know of to being autoskhediastikê [improvisational]." 5 Else notes that Archilochus' meter in F 120 W is indeed trochaic tetrameter catalectic. 6 According to Aristotle the meter of dialogue in early tragedy, before it was replaced by iambic trimeter, was trochaic tetrameter catalectic (Poetics 1449a22ff). In short what Aristotle says about the evolution of comedy and tragedy implies that he thought that Archilochus was a typical exarkhôn of dithyramb, which he understood as characterized by trochaic tetrameter catalectic, typical of both comedy and tragedy.
§31. What Aristotle might not have seen is that the "blaming" side of Archilochus was part of this poet's overall function as a socially redeeming exponent of ainos, one who blames what is ostensibly bad while he praises what is good. This socially redeeming function is a traditional civic function, viewed as integrating the community.
§32. From the testimony of the Mnesiepes Inscription (Archilochus T 4 Tarditi), 1 we learn of a traditional myth, native to the island of Paros, that represented Archilochus as a chorus teacher of his community (T4 III 16-57). I propose to consider in some detail how this myth, preserved in the context of the poet's hero cult in Paros, dramatizes the social function of Archilochean poetry in the civic life of the polis.
§33. In the wording of the Mnesiepes Inscription, it can be argued, we are witnessing a cognate of the source of Aristotle Poetics 1449a and 1448b23, who considered Archilochus an exponent of primitive blame poetry. Let us examine the pertinent passage from the Mnesiepes Inscription, Archilochus T4 III 16-57 Tarditi. 1 The story has it that Archilochus improvises ([auto]ischedias [ 19-20) a composition, which he teaches (didaxanta 22) to some of the citizens of Paros. 2 From the standpoint of the narrative, Archilochus seems to be represented here as a "chorus teacher." 3 The Mnesiepes Inscription then proceeds to quote the words of the composition (F 251 W = 219 Tarditi): the text is fragmentary, but we can see clearly that Dionysus figures prominently (251.1), in the context of the epithet Oipholios (251.5), a derivative of the obscene verb oiphô 'have intercourse [male subject]'. The polis finds this composition 'too iambic' (iambikôtero[ Mnesiepes Inscription T4 III 38). 4 Archilochus is put on trial (en tei krisei T4 III 42) and apparently condemned. But then the polis is afflicted with a plague that affects the genitalia (42-44). Emissaries of the polis consult Delphi (45- 46), and the Oracle tells them that the plague will not
abate until the polis honors Archilochus (47-50). The connection here of Archilochus with Dionysus and the notion of Oipholios institutionalizes the 'iambic' composition of Archilochus. I should stress the explicit testimony of the Mnesiepes Inscription concerning the practice of worshipping various gods, along with the cult hero Archilochus, in the sacred precinct of Archilochus, the Arkhilokheion (T 4 II 14-19 Tarditi): among the gods listed (1-13), Dionysus is accorded a position of particular prominence (10).
§34. The narrative pattern of the story of Archilochus and the punishment of the Parians is typical of aetiologies concerning the founding of a hero cult: (1) some hero is dishonored, sometimes even killed, by a community; (2) the community is then beset by some plague; and (3) the Oracle is consulted and prescribes the hero cult of the given hero as the remedy. 1 In such aetiologies the well-being of the community, as threatened by the plague, is visualized as fertility of crops and inhabitants alike--a fertility that is then restored and guaranteed to continue through the proper maintenance of the hero cult. 2 In the Archilochus story as well, the fertility of the polis is connected in general with the hero cult of Archilochus, which is after all the context for the telling of the story, and in particular with the institutionalization of Archilochus as 'chorus teacher'. Here we have the nucleus of the civic function of Archilochean poetry in that the chorus is the traditional medium for the self-expression of the polis. 3
§35. The theme of fertility is explicit in the story of Archilochus in his stylized role as chorus teacher, which is connected with the cult of Dionysus (cf. T 4 II10 Tarditi and F 251 W; also F 120 W). The same theme of fertility is implicit in the connection of Archilochus with the cult of Demeter, in his stylized role as a participant in the panêguris 'festival' of the goddess and her daughter, Korê (F 322 W). 1 The given festival is that of the Iobakkhoi; the name expresses the complementarity, in terms of the festival, of Demeter with Bacchus, that is, Dionysus (Hephaestion Encheiridion 15.16). 2 Moreover, the fertility of the polis is connected with the 'iambic' nature of what Archilochus teaches to the community (again Archilochus T 4 II 38 Tarditi). 3 We are reminded that the notion of iambic is associated with the cults of both Dionysus and Demeter. 4 Moreover, according to Aristotle Poetics 1449b8, the notion of iambic is inherited by the synthetic genre of Athenian comedy.
§36. The 'iambic' nature of comedy, and Aristotle's claims about the evolution of tragedy from the medium of exarkhontes 'chorus leaders' ostensibly like Archilochus, whose message was too 'iambic' for the people of his own time, reinforce the general notion that comedy and tragedy were once undifferentiated, becoming distinct in the specific context of the City Dionysia. Which brings us to the aition that motivates the City Dionysia, closely parallel to the aition that motivates Archilochean poetry. According to Athenian tradition the Feast of the City Dionysia was instituted in honor of Dionsysus Eleuthereus, whose image had been brought over from Eletherai in Boeotia to the theater precinct of Athens; there the god was not given his due honors, and the men of Athens were accordingly punished with some sexual affliction, from which they were freed only on the condition that they make ritual phalloi for Dionysus (scholia to Aristophanes Acharnians243). Just as the Archilochean 'iambic' tradition participates in a symbiotic relationship with a cult of Dionysus, so does the undifferentiated tradition represented by the entire complex
of dramatic contests at the City Dionysia.
§37. This notion of iambic, with its emphasis on fertility, is analogous to the concept of carnival as applied by M. M. Bakhtin to the traditions inherited by François Rabelais in the sixteenth century. 1 For Bakhtin, carnival is a synthetic description that accommodates a wide range of actually attested European carnivals celebrated on a seasonally recurring basis at various times of the year at various places. The synthetic description is particularly apt in view of the synthetic nature of carnivals: "This word combined in a single concept a number of local feasts of different origin and scheduled at different dates but bearing the common traits of popular merriment." 2 It is not inaccurate to say that the very concept of carnival is a synthesis: "These celebrations became a reservoir into which obsolete genres were emptied." 3 For Bakhtin, carnival is not a safety valve that helps prevent revolution, as was held to be political dogma at the time that his work on Rabelais was taking shape; rather carnival is revolution itself. 4 Its target is whatever happens to be current, the here and now, the differentiated, and it professes nostalgia for the past, the Golden Age, the undifferentiated. The very themes of carnival recapitulate the undifferentiated structures of the past and temporarily overthrow the differentiated structures of the present. 5 The feast of Saturnalia yearns for the ancien régime of Saturn and resists whatever régime is current. 6 Bakhtin argues that carnival attacks the differentiated present by recapitulating the undifferentiated past, with an emphasis on the grotesque, and thus celebrating the renewal of fertility. 7 To this extent I find the notion of carnival useful for the present purposes. Carnival, however, cannot be viewed as independent of the society that frames it. It is not apolitical but just the opposite: a highly political and politicized celebration of the community as a whole. With this proviso in mind, we may return to the subject of the iambic tradition: like the carnival, it attacks whatever happens to be current, the here and now, while all along celebrating the theme of fertility.
§38. The theme of fertility in the story of Archilochus and the punishment of the Parians is pertinent to the implicit relationship between him and Hera. To make this point, I begin with the so-called Cologne Epode of Archilochus (F 196A W), where boy meets girl and boy seduces girl in a beautiful setting, a locus amoenus. There are suggestive points of comparison to be found in the Provençal genre of the pastorela and its Old French equivalent, the pastourelle. 1 In connection with the typical setting of the pastourelle, that is, a locus amoenus of a garden or of the countryside, I draw attention to scraps of evidence, some dating to as early as the eighth century A.D., for countryside rituals that dramatize themes that are analogous to some of the central themes found in the pastourelle, in the form of dances miming chthonic powers of fertility. 2 I would compare the locus amoenus of the Cologne Epode of Archilochus: the setting for the seduction described in this composition is a garden that happens to be a sacred precinct of Hera (Dioscorides Palatine Anthology 7.351), 3 who is the goddess of seasonality, equilibrium, and completion in both nature and society (puberty, marriage, and so on). 4 Yet the Epode is preoccupied with the themes of unseasonality, disequilibrium, and incompleteness. For example, one girl is presented as sexually unripe, and the other, as overripe; also the sex act, with the unripe girl as participant, is itself incomplete. I suggest that the unseasonality dramatized within the precinct of Hera serves to define the seasonality that is encompassed by the potency of Hera, just as the unseasonality of the hero Herakles, caused by Hera, serves to define the goddess's power
of seasonality: the disequilibrium of the hero leads to his famed Labors, earning him the name Hêra-kleês 'he who has the glory [kleos] of Hera'. 5 Thus a sacred framework, the precinct of Hera, encompasses the deviant behavior within the narrative; likewise there is a proper ideology, presumably integrated into rituals sacred to Hera, that encompasses the improper self- characterization of Archilochus. In this connection I draw attention to certain similarities between Archilochus and what folklorists describe as trickster figures: 6 within the narrative the trickster consistently deviates from the norms of society, but outside the narrative and within the society that serves as context for the narrative, the trickster figure's pattern of deviation from social norms reaffirms the pattern of these norms. 7
§39. In the case of Archilochus, the 'iambic' function is manifested in his dramatized alienation from his own here and now. This fact of alienation can be accepted as part of the undifferentiated past by the community that embraces Archilochus as the present guarantor of its fertility. In the case of comedy, especially the Old Comedy of Aristophanes, there is an analogous stance of dramatized alienation from everything that happens to be current. That includes the conventions in the craft of poetry and song as it was current in the time of Aristophanes.
§40. The criticism of current poetry and song in Aristophanes operates on a solid foundation: a thorough education in the Classics of poetry is presupposed, as we can see from the parodic references to such canonical masters as Archilochus (Birds 967-988), Alcman (Lysistrata 1248-1320), Stesichorus (Peace 796-816), and Anacreon (Birds 1373-1374). 1 But the critical area for criticizing what is current in terms of the Classical is the theater itself, the medium par
excellence for the composition and performance of poetry and song in the time of Aristophanes.
The theater, as it developed within the City Dionysia, had absorbed the repertoire of epic, as we can readily see from such individual tragedies as the Seven against Thebes of Aeschylus and more generally from the overwhelmingly epic themes of most of the tragedies composed by Aeschylus and other early dramatists who followed in his wake. 2 As with epic, so also with lyric: the evolving predominance of Athenian theater as the primary poetic medium played a major role in the obsolescence of lyric poetry in other media and, by extension, in other genres. We have already had occasion to note the complaints about theatrokratiâ in Plato's writings (Laws 701a) and about the intoxication of pleasure in the poetry of theater (700d), leading to 'transgressions' of genre (700e). 3 To be contrasted are the good old days, as in the earlier era that followed the Persian Wars (Laws 698b), when there were still distinct genres (700a), five of which are specified as examples: humnos 'hymn', thrênos 'lament', paiân 'paean', dithurambos 'dithyramb', and kitharôidikos nomos 'citharodic nome' (700b). 4 These genres, as well as other genres left unspecified (ibid.), are the structurally distinct aspects of lyric poetry, parallel to the structurally distinct aspects of aristokratiâ in Plato's good old Athenian society (701a). In contrast, as we have seen, the progressive leveling by Athenian theater of generic distinctions in lyric poetry is for Plato parallel to the leveling by Athenian democracy of class distinctions in society. 5 Precisely such generic distinctions characterize the lyric poetry of Pindar, composer of such genres as the humnos, the thrênos, the paiân, the dithurambos, and so on. 6
§41. Given that the Theater of Dionysus at Athens is the predominant context of poetry as current
poetry, it follows that contemporary comedy singles out the current poetics of the theater as the main target of its criticism of poetry. Specifically the current comedy of theater attacks the poetics of current tragedy. One of the clearest examples is the great agôn 'contest' between Aeschylus and Euripides in Hades, as dramatized by Aristophanes in the Frogs (905-1098). 1 That tragedy is the tekhnê 'craft' of poetry par excellence--and this concept recurs frequently-- 2 is the one given that is held in respect by both sides in the contest. 3 What is at issue is the superiority or inferiority of the old and current ways of practicing that craft, as represented by Aeschylus and Euripides respectively:
The two great professionals are made to discuss the correct proportion of song to dialogue, and the character of that dialogue (905-91); then the moral impact of tragedy and poetry (1003-98: the two arts are not distinguished, at least by Aeschylus, who invokes the precedents of Homer, Hesiod, and other early epic composers); iambic prologues, together with the questions of clarity in diction (1119-99) and of the avoidance of metrical / syntactical monotony (1200-1247); choral lyric technique (1248-1329); solo lyric technique (1329-64); and weight of diction (1365-1414). 4 The old-fashioned Aeschylus wins over the innovative Euripides in the judgment of the god Dionysus himself (1467 and following), who is after all the raison d'être of the City Dionysia.
§42. In short the fundamental reason for the loss of Euripides to Aeschylus in the Frogs, and in general for his being singled out as a special target for the comedy of Aristophanes, is that his poetics are current. The definitive statement on what is current in the poetics of tragedy is treated as a foil by the poetics of comedy. Thus Euripides cannot even be a runner-up to Aeschylus: that honor is reserved for Sophocles ( Aristophanes Frogs 787-794, 1515-1519). That it is Aeschylus who wins the contest in the Frogs, thus winning the chance to be brought back to the contemporary world of the living by the god of theater himself, is the wish fulfillment of a nostalgia for the undifferentiated Dionysiac essence of Drama.
§43. The contest of Aeschylus and Euripides in Frogs 905-1098 takes the form of an agôn, and this word is actually used in self-references at lines 785, 867, 873, 882. The very format of the agôn is indicative of an undifferentiated phase of drama as it must have existed before the differentiation of the City Dionysia. It has been argued that the functional part of comedy known as the agôn resulted from an undifferentiated choral agôn consisting of two antagonistic antikhoria, "each combining the aggressive entrance of the parodos with the primitive features of the parabasis: self-presentation and self-praise, invocation and invective, 'literary' polemics." 1 Ironically, however, the very notion of agôn as 'contest' is the basis for the ongoing differentiation of poetics in the theater. The agôn of a poetic contest requires a judgment, the word for which is krisis, and the two words actually occur together at Frogs 785 (krisis and its verb krînô also at 779, 805, 873, 1467, 1473).
§44. At an earlier stage we had observed that the Alexandrian concept of krisis, in the sense of separating, discriminating, judging (verb krînô) those works and those authors that are to be preserved and those that are not, is crucial to the concept of canon in the Classical world. 1 The Alexandrian scholars who were in charge of this process of separation, discrimination, judgment, were the kritikoi 'critics', while the Classical authors who were meant to survive the krisis were
called the enkrithentes. 2 We also observed that the krisis of the enkrithentes starts not with the Alexandrian scholars, nor even with the likes of Aristotle: the crisis of this krisis is already under way in the Archaic and Classical periods of Greece, where songs and poetry were traditionally performed in a context of competition. The premier example of such competition is the tradition of dramatic festivals at Athens, with the krisis 'judgment' of winners by kritai 'judges'. 3 What we see in the agôn of the Frogs of Aristophanes is a dramatization of that competition between drama and drama, and this time the competition is happening within drama. This way the ontogeny of drama is recapitulating its own phylogeny as a competitive medium, an agôn calling for the krisis of selection.
§45. The craft of theater is one of continual crisis, of innovation. Even the older features of the craft, perceived by Comedy as old-fashioned, reveal earlier stages of poetic innovation in the theater. The stage-Aeschylus may be ridiculed by the stage-Euripides for his old-fashioned and monotonous lyric rhythms, as parodied by the lyre-strumming onomatopoeia tophlattothrat tophlattothrat ( Frogs 1286, 1288, 1290, 1292, 1294), and yet the form of these rhythms, from an earlier perspective, represents an innovative appropriation, by the poetics of theater, of the distinct genre of the kitharôidikos nomos 'citharodic nome'. The stage-Euripides says that these old-fashioned Aeschylean rhythms are taken from kitharôidikoi nomoi 'citharodic
nomes' (Frogs 1282). It is precisely the appropriation and hence domination of such genres by the poetics of theater that led Plato to condemn the poetic innovations of the theater as a degeneration of genres: for Plato, the usurpation of the kitharôidikos nomos (Laws 700b) by theater is an example of theatrokratiâ (701a). Thus the Aeschylean use of the kitharôidikos nomos may be old-fashioned synchronically, but it is an innovation diachronically. It represents an earlier stage of the same sort of innovations practiced by Euripides, who is accused by the stage-Aeschylus of freely appropriating to drama such nondramatic forms as skolia and thrênoi (Frogs 1301-1303). Such theatrokratiâ, it seems, goes back to the early days of the City Dionysia, and there is no reason not to take it all the way back to the era of the Peisistratidai, tyrants of Athens. In sum the Theater of Dionysus at Athens, with its theatrocracy of genres, has been appropriating and assimilating, ever since its inception, the traditions of song making that we can still see as independent and unassimilated forms in the repertoire of a figure like Pindar.
§46. Ironically this innovative process of appropriation and assimilation induces a sense of nostalgia, as articulated by Old Comedy, for the older phases of song making. In Aristophanes' Wasps, for example, the old Philokleon is described as spending all night singing and dancing the choral parts of old-fashioned tragedies that Thespis himself had once upon a time composed when he had entered the competition or agôn (êgônizeto 1479). Turning time upside down, the old man claims that his choral singing and dancing can make contemporary tragôidoi 'players of tragedy' seem old-fashioned by comparison, as if the modern were ancient, and the ancient, modern (1480); in this context the notion of old-fashioned is described as kronoi, that is, 'Kronos' in the plural (kronous 1480). The era of Thespis is the era of the Peisistratidai, the dynasty of tyrants that founded the City Dionysia. That the notion of old-fashioned tragôidoi should be represented as the incarnation of Kronos shows that the ideological attitude toward the old tyranny on the part of the newer democracy combines feelings of revulsion and nostalgia. Shaped by the tyrants, the institution of Athenian Theater as later reshaped by democracy teaches against the internal threat of tyranny. 1 So much for the aspect of revulsion. It is true that Kronos, with his horrors of
violence and guile, is a suitable negative model for the state's older phase of existence, under the reign of the tyrants. But Kronos is also a figure of nostalgia, as ruler of the Golden Age. Thus the comic description of primordial players of tragedy as the incarnation of Kronos amounts to an Athenian version of nostalgia for the Golden Age of the Saturnalia. 2
§47. Such nostalgia for the old forms of poetry and song, which reaches the level of ideology in the Old Comedy of Athenian Theater, helps explain the survival of Pindar's compositions as Classical examples of independent and unassimilated traditions in song making.
§48. These considerations bring us back to my argument that the very evolution of what we know as the Classics--as both a concept and a reality--was but an extension of the organic Panhellenization of oral traditions. The evolution of ancient Greek canons in both poetry and song need not be attributed primarily to the factor of writing. 1 Writing would have been essential for the ultimate preservation of these canons once the traditions of performance were becoming obsolete, but the key to the actual evolution of canons must be sought in the social context of performance itself. I argue that the performance traditions of the Classics, as an extension of the Panhellenization of oral traditions in poetry and song, were preserved in the social context of private education for the élite, including the institution of private schools.
§49. For the Greek city-states, the primary mode of education was public, through the performance of song and poetry at festivals. In the case of poetry, performance at festivals tended to be left to professionals such as the rhapsodes at the festival of the Panathenaia at Athens. 1 In the case of song, the situation was more complex, as we have seen in the case of a festival like the City Dionysia at Athens, where poetry was performed by professional actors while song was performed by the nonprofessional chorus. 2 Here the performance by the chorus was a central form of civic education, not only for the audience at large but also for the members of the chorus. The numbers of chorus members selected each year for the annual production of the City Dionysia convey the pervasiveness of the institution: for example, the three competing choruses of the tragedies required a total of not less than thirty-six new chorus members each year, while the ten competing choruses of the dithyrambs, with separate men's and boys' divisions, added up to a yearly total of 500 men and 500 boys. 3 Wherever the traditions of making song and poetry are still alive, as in the documented cases of the City Dionysia and the Panathenaia, 4 we have reason to think that the process of civic education through song and poetry is also alive. But we have also seen that the traditions of public education in song making and poetry at the City Dionysia tended to absorb or displace older traditions of aristocratic education in song making and poetry, such as those represented by Pindar. 5 Here we see a fundamental impetus for the very institution of private schools: if aristocratic education in the public performance of songs was becoming less and less available by way of the chorus, since the State was transforming the old aristocratic poetics into the new popular poetics of the City Dionysia, then the older ways of choral education in the older traditions of song making had to be compensated by way of increased private schooling for the élite. Once State Theater, the creation of tyrants, becomes transformed into the democratic self-expression of the polis, the concept of the private school can become the nondemocratic self-expression of aristocrats, the new breeding ground of tyrants.
§50. Even private schools, however, serve as a setting for changes in the old traditions of song making. In the older poetics we would naturally expect the traditions of composition in performance to survive from one generation to the next through the factor of performance. Yet if the traditions of composition in performance were breaking down, then the need for sample performances would become greater and greater. Which means that education itself would become gradually transformed: the learning of techniques in composition through performance could shift to the learning of sample compositions through reading. Once the performance tradition becomes obsolete, the text is no longer a demonstration of ability to perform: rather the text becomes simply a sample piece of writing, potentially there to be imitated by other sample pieces of writing.
§51. Still the written text can present itself as not just a sample composition but a sample composition as potential performance. It is a privately teachable demonstration of what could be publicly performed, and its accessibility depends on power, political power. To gain access to such a sample composition is to gain knowledge, from a privileged vantage point. The composition, as a mimesis of recomposition in public performance, is a paradigm of authority that is as hard to come by as some treasure in a treasure box, accessible to the rich and powerful. 1 The silent reading of such a sample composition, such a script, is symptomatic of the tyrant's power to control the performance of a composition. 2 The reading out loud of such a script, in contrast, is the metaphor for performance, and in fact the very act of reading out loud is the ultimate metaphor of State Theater. 3
§52. In order to illustrate the effects of private education on the transmission of the Classics, I now turn to two passages in particular, one from the Clouds of Aristophanes and another from the Protagoras of Plato. Let us begin with the Clouds of Aristophanes, with its informative description of old-fashioned Athenian paideiâ 'education' (tên archaian paideian : 961), the kind that purportedly produced the men who fought at the Battle of Marathon (985-986), 1 where boys learn selected compositions of old lyric masters 2 in the house of the kitharistês 'master of the kitharis' (964), who teaches them to learn by heart (promathein: 966) the performance of famous lyric compositions (967) and who insists on their adherence to performing these compositions in the proper harmoniâ 'mode' that had been 'inherited from their fathers' (968; cf. 969- 972). 3 This precious glimpse of old-fashioned paideiâ 'education' in Athens provides us with a model for understanding the gradual metamorphosis of oral traditions into the institutions of private schooling in the "Classics." 4 The oral traditions of the boys' chorus are giving way to the written traditions of the boys' school. Further, if the chorus becomes dispensable in a school for performing choral lyric, then the idea of the chorus as the primary medium of education will also have become dispensable. In which case, it is only a matter of time before the performance itself of choral lyric becomes dispensable. With the passage of time, the performance of choral lyric need no longer be the primary curriculum of boys' schools. Thus the progression from an old-fashioned education in the chorus toward an innovative education in the school inexorably leads to still newer patterns of education in a school that may no longer have anything to do with the chorus. The differentiated new concept of "schools" becomes further differentiated into "old schools," which had taught the performance of choral lyric, and "new schools," with a curriculum emancipated from the medium of chorus altogether. By the time of the late fifth century, in a
rapidly changing polis like Athens, schools were in fact becoming divorced from the traditions of performance in choral lyric. A prime example is the school of Socrates and his disciples, as ridiculed in the Clouds of Aristophanes. 5
§53. With the increasing complexity of society in the context of the polis comes a pattern of differentiation in the passing on of traditions from generation to generation, and the institution of private schools, as we have just seen described in the Aristophanic passage about the good old days of paideiâ 'education' in the era of the Battle of Marathon, may be considered an early reflex of this pattern. Already in this era, schools are not a phenomenon merely confined to Athens but seem to appear throughout Archaic Greece. The earliest attested mention of schools is in Herodotus 6.27.2, alluding to an incident that occurred in Chios around 496 B.C., where a roof collapsed on a group of 120 children as they were being taught grammata 'letters'; only one boy survived. 1 This disaster is explicitly cited by Herodotus as an omen presaging the overall political disaster that was about to befall the whole community of Chios in the wake of the Ionian Revolt against the Persians (6.27.1), namely, the attack by Histiaios (6.26.1-2) and then the atrocities resulting from the occupation of the island by the Persians (6.31-32). Moreover, the disaster that befell the school at Chios is explicitly coupled by the narrative of Herodotus with another disaster, likewise presaging the overall political disaster about to befall Chios: at about the same time that the roof fell in on the children studying their grammata 'letters' in school (again 6.27.2), a choral ensemble of 100 young men from Chios, officially sent to Delphi for a performance at a festival there, fell victim to a plague that killed 98 of them, so that only two returned alive to Chios (ibid.). We have already noted that the oral traditions of the chorus, throughout Archaic Greece, were giving way to the written traditions of the school. In this narrative of Herodotus, then, we see two symmetrical disasters befalling the song-making traditions of a community, presaging a general political disaster befalling the community as a whole: first to be mentioned are the old-fashioned and élitist oral traditions of the chorus, to be followed by the newer and even more élitist written traditions of the school. 2
§54. That the grammata 'letters' that are being taught to these select children of Chios as the roof caves in on them are the belles-lettres or liberal education of song and poetry is made clear if we compare the portrait of old-fashioned education in the Protagoras of Plato. Here again, however, as in the Clouds of Aristophanes, this kind of education is in fact considered no longer new but already old-fashioned. In the Protagoras, with its dramatization of the way things supposedly were in the second half of the fifth century, we can see how schooling is a matter of differentiations in the passing on of traditions from generation to generation. The subject is introduced as we find an old Protagoras debating with Socrates in a company of young Athenian intellectuals that pointedly includes two sons of Pericles himself (314e). In his description of paideiâ, the figure of Protagoras specifically says that the wealthy can afford more of it: they extend the education of their children by starting it earlier and continuing it longer (326c). 1 There are at least three stages to what Protagoras describes. First, there is a period of education at home, where father, mother, trophos 'nurse', and paidagôgos 'tutor' all play a role in one's early ethical formation (325cd). Second, the child is sent to school, where he is taught letters for the explicit purpose of memorizing poetry (325e-326a); that this memorization is for the explicit purpose of performing and interpreting this poetry is made clear in Protagoras' description of the third stage of schooling, where the child is taught to sing compositions of lyric poets while accompanying
himself to the lyre (326ab). 2 Whereas the poetry that is taught in the earlier stage when the child is still learning his letters is described only generally as diexodoi 'descriptions', epainoi 'praises', and enkômia 'encomia' concerning 'noble men of the past' (326a) , it is clear that the poetry taught at the later stage is specifically lyric poetry (the compositions of melopoioi 'lyric poets': ibid.). From the standpoint of Protagoras, the most important aspect of paideiâ (his word) is to acquire skill in the performance and interpretation of poetry (339a), and it is clear that he is thinking in particular of song, that is, lyric poetry: illustrating his point about the primacy of poetry in education, he begins his debate with Socrates by citing and then interpreting a lyric composititon of Simonides (339b and following: Simonides PMG 542), 3 having just made an earlier reference to a famous lyric passage from Pindar (337d: Pindar F 169a.1-5 SM). 4
§55. After Protagoras and Socrates have a contest of wits in interpreting the meaning of the composition by Simonides (and Socrates comes off with the seemingly superior interpretation), Alcibiades challenges Protagoras to continue his debate with Socrates by abandoning the use of poetry as the framework for the discussion (347b and 348b), in the context of a particularly significant remark of Socrates: to use poetry as a framework for the debate between Protagoras and himself is analogous, says Socrates, to the hiring of girl musicians, either string or wind, or girl dancers to entertain at symposia (347cd). Such participants in the symposium reveal their lack of paideiâ 'education' (apaideusiâ: 347c), whereas those who are noble and
'educated' (pepaideumenoi) can entertain themselves with their own conversations (347d). Plato could have had Socrates say, as does the poetry of Aristophanes, that the educated participants in the symposium can also entertain themselves by performing and interpreting lyric compositions, as opposed to the ill-educated participants who hire girl musicians to play for them. But Plato is the champion of a new education where dialogue supplants the primacy of poetry, and Socrates in fact goes on to set up "the poets" as a bad thing that is parallel to the girl musicians (347e). In other words, instead of having girl musicians as a foil for "the poets," Plato has both the girl musicians and "the poets" serving together as a foil for the medium of the dialogue that Socrates and Alcibiades are advocating. The stance of Alcibiades here is particularly suggestive: his generation is ridiculed in the Clouds of Aristophanes for abandoning the ideals of old-fashioned paideiâ. According to these ideals, a sign of the highest achievement was the performance, at a symposium, of a lyric composition by one of the old masters. There is a vivid contrast to these ideals in the Alcibiades of Plutarch (2.6), where the young Alcibiades refuses to learn how to play the reed: let the Thebans, says he, play the reed, since they do not know how to have a conversation at a symposium.
§56. Given the obsolescence, lamented already in the days of Aristophanes, of the old-fashioned paideiâ at Athens, it follows that the survival of the Classics in old lyric poetry, with their antiquated traditions of composition and even performance, was severely threatened. 1 Other cities, such as Thebes in the anecdote that precedes, would doubtless have held on to the antiquated traditions for a longer period, what with their more conservative traditions of paideiâ. Such traditions, it seems, were not so much a matter of composition any longer, and more a matter of performance only. 2 In Athens, by contrast, where traditions in actual composition seem to have survived for a longer time, these traditions could have contributed to the relative sparseness of the Archaic lyric traditions that have survived, in that the Classics of Archaic lyric were being replaced in Athens by the new Classics, as it were, of State Theater. Such trends in Athens, what
with the overarching cultural prestige of this polis, surely had a profound effect on other cities as well, as we can see from occasional traces of a given city's educational repertoire in the performance of song. 3
§57. As we have seen, the occasional lyric poetry of Pindar, Simonides, and Bacchylides, unlike other types of old lyric poetry, does not lend itself to an ongoing process of recomposition in performance, so that its references to a given composition's setting--as also the self-references of the composer--retain a higher degree of historicity than we find elsewhere. Such occasionality is at least partly incompatible with the institutions of public performance in song and poetry as fostered by the polis. The polis, as we have seen, tends to promote its own Panhellenic prestige by fostering a Panhellenic perspective in the public performing of song and poetry, and such a perspective discourages ad hoc references that would become politically obsolete with the passage of time. 1 Only with the rise of the individual above the polis, in the first instance through the advent of tyrants, can ad hoc references to special individual interests in the song and poetry of the polis at last become compatible with the Panhellenization of this song and poetry. 2 Moreover, it is the institution of tyranny that provides an impetus, in the Archaic era, for the Panhellenization of compositions that are linked with specific occasions or persons. 3
§58. To overreach the polis, then, is to become an individual, from the hindsight of recorded history. 1 But the model of the individual, in order to assert itself in the first place, must still conform to the ideals of the polis, as encoded in the traditions of the chorus; in fact the prime metaphor for the individual and the polis is the chorus itself, in its articulation of a complementarity between the khorêgos 'chorus leader' and the rest of the chorus, the aggregate. 2
§59. As a self-expression of the polis, the chorus tends to accentuate the least occasional and most catholic aspects of its seasonally recomposed choral self-presentation, in order to live up to the proper degree of admiration from outside and consequently from within. 1 In the eyes of the polis, the content of a choral composition must look beyond local interests in order to achieve a Panhellenic prestige in the eyes of whatever Hellenes from the outside may be looking in. 2
§60. Like the polis, the chorus is a mechanism of rotating deindividualization and individualization, where the member of the chorus can move up from the status of egalitarianism in the aggregate, the chorus, into the status of leadership in the hierarchy, the status of the khorêgos 'chorus leader', thereafter potentially rotating back down into the status of membership in the aggregate. The necessity of being part of a group is balanced by the desire to have one's day in the sun: in an aristocratic choral model of society, everyone wants a chance to be at the head of the chorus, to become a koruphaios (cf. Herodotus 3.82.3). 1
§61. This choral model is important for understanding not only a new kind of authority sought by tyrants but also a new kind of authority for poets, which approaches the notion of historically verifiable authorship. As we have seen, there is a relationship between the authority of the role model who is represented as leading the choral group and the authority of the composer who is credited with the representation. 1 This relationship is visualized as the authority of Apollo over
song in his function as khorêgos 'chorus leader', which is the fundamental model for the authority of the composer in choral lyric. The key to choral performance is the 'public presentation', the
apo-deixis, of the khorêgos. 2 The authority of the khorêgos is presented through the performance of the chorus. What is presented, through apodeixis, and represented, through mîmêsis, is authority. From this authority a newer and more specialized notion, that of authorship, can develop in the so-called age of tyrants and thereafter. The institution of tyranny, then, was for ancient Greece a watershed in the evolution of authorship as we know it. 3
§62. As we shift our attention from the Archaic to the Classical period, with its realities of historically attested authorship, we must ask ourselves where to draw the line between the generic composer and the real author. From the standpoint of Archaic Greek traditions, what has to happen, for a composer to preserve his historicity, is either (1) the arresting of the process of recomposition in performance--wherein any self-reference by the composer is itself vulnerable to recomposition--or (2) the commissioning of occasional poetry by an authority that goes beyond the polis. As long as the polis is the sole authority presiding over the performance of song and poetry, (1) the factor of recomposition is not likely to be arrested and (2) occasional compositions have little chance of transmission beyond their original occasion. Only with the rise of tyrants can the individuality of a composition and of a composer begin to be protected from being recomposed in the context of performance in the polis. 1 Granted, those who publicly championed the polis against the tyrant held that the truth of poetry must be protected from private possession, since such possession leads to tampering by tyrants. 2 The opposite standpoint of the tyrant, however, held that the truth of poetry must be protected from public recomposition. 3
§63. These two conflicting standpoints are indirectly reflected in the symmetrical account in Herodotus of the twin disasters befalling the community of Chios, the death of the chorus boys and the death of the schoolboys (6.27.2). 1 One particular detail in the story of the schoolboys, that the roof caved in on them as they were being taught grammata 'letters' (ibid.), can be connected with a general attitude that we have found in the Histories of Herodotus, namely, that the medium of writing encourages the private possession of the public media of singing or making speeches, and that such private possession is a characteristic of tyrants. 2
§64. It is the institution of tyranny, I argue, that makes the difference between such figures of Archaic lyric poetry as Stesichorus and Ibycus. If the vita tradition of Stesichorus, both extrinsic and intrinsic to the compositions attributed to him, strikes us as generic 1 while the corresponding vita tradition of Ibycus strikes us as at least in part historical, it is due, I submit, to the historical fact that Ibycus became a protégé of the tyrant Polykrates of Samos. 2 Just as the tyrant fixes his individuality in the collective memory, so too does the poet as the tyrant's protégé. 3
§65. Throughout this presentation I have been developing the argument that the Panhellenic diffusion of occasional compositions like Pindar's victory odes cannot be attributed to the medium of writing alone. Even though they were originally occasional poems, they kept on being performed as masterpieces in the canon of old lyric poets. 1 True, the medium of writing was on hand to record the ultimate phases of performance tradition in the evolving canons of song and
poetry. Still, in the case of occasional song and poetry, what was needed in addition was an authority that went beyond the polis--an authority that could make even an occasional composition definitive enough to be performed as if it were already Panhellenic in stature, so that it could be reperformed from then on as a Classic, beyond its original occasion. Such authority was pioneered by the tyrants, and this authority in turn conferred the first traces of authorship. 2
Notes
§1n1. I am using the term lyric here without including iambic and elegiac.
§1n3. Cf. Ch.12§27 and following.
§5n1. Cf. Ch.6§54 and following.
§6n1. Pickard-Cambridge 1968.58.
§6n2. Pickard-Cambridge, p. 64.
§7n1. See Pickard-Cambridge, pp. 57-101; also Herington 1985.87.
§7n2. Pickard-Cambridge, p. 82. As for the Feast of Lenaia, comedy is formalized there at around 442 B.C.
§7n3. Cf. Seaford 1984.14. The provenience of Pratinas will become more significant as the discussion proceeds.
§8n1. Seaford 1984.10-16.
§8n2. Seaford, p. 12.
§8n3. Ibid.
§8n4. Lucas 1968.85 associates this evolution primarily with Aeschylus, who is hailed in Aristophanes Frogs1004-1005 as the creator of tragedy (cf. rhêmata semna 1004). "Tragedy must have ceased to be satyric at latest by 492 B.C.," the reputed date of the staging of the Capture of Miletus by Phrynichus (Lucas ibid.).
§9n1. Seaford 1984.16. On parabasis as a differentiated "entrance," see also Seaford 1977-1978.85.
§9n2. The term epirrhematic refers to the format of a recited address to the audience, following a sung and danced strophe.
§9n3. Seaford 1977-1978.86. We may compare the Aeginetan example of choruses subdivided
into rival halves, as discussed at Ch.12§51 and following.
§10n1. Cf. Foley 1985.205-258. Note Seaford 1984.43 on the affinities of the Bacchae with the Dionysiac theme of the captivity and liberation of satyrs.
§10n2. Foley, p. 215.
§11n1. Dodds 1960.159.
§11n2. On the semiotics of myth as the aition 'cause' of ritual, see Ch.4§3.
§11n3. Chantraine DELG 17. See Ch.12§50n5. Note the usage of sun-agô in Euripides Bacchae
563 and 564 in the context of Orpheus as he plays the kitharâ..
§11n5. Ibid. Again cf. agônismos 'rivalry' in Thucydides 7.70.
§11n6. Cf. Ch.12§50n5. On agôn as a festival of contests in athletics and in poetry, song, and dance, see Homeric Hymn to Apollo 149-150 and Thucydides 3.10.3 / 5. Note too the following three subjects of the verb agônizomai 'compete, engage in an agôn' in Herodotus: athletes (e.g., 2.160.3-4), warriors (e.g., 1.76.4), and rhapsôidoi 'rhapsodes' (5.67.1).
§12n1. N 1979.94-102.
§12n2. At Bacchae 846 the future form peisomai is ambiguously 'I will be persuaded' (verb peithô) or 'I will suffer' (verb paskhô), in the context of the juxtaposition of peisomestha with paskhomen at 786. See Segal 1982.249-254.
§12n3. This passage has been discussed at Ch.1§47 as an illustration of the concept of mîmêsis as reenactment. That tragikoi here refers to the medium of tragedy is supported by the testimony of Themistius Orations 27.377b on the perfecting of tragedy by the Sikyonians: cf. Gentili 1986.32-33.
§13n1. The countryside setting of this protofestival, this proto-agôn, as it were, is juxtaposed with the urban characteristics of the man who tries to subvert the festival (kai tis planês kat' astu kai tribôn 'and then, a town-wanderer, one experienced in words...' Bacchae 717). We may note the story, preserved in Diogenes Laertius 1.60, that Solon condemned tragedy as a source for the ruses of the tyrant Peisistratos (cf. Petre 1975.570).
§13n2. Burkert 1966. Cf. Ch.1§29.
§14n1. On this concept of confrontation and loss, see Ch.2§24n5.
§15n1. This point is highlighted in the discussion by Seaford 1984.16-21, who follows up his observation that "satyric drama was instituted in the Dionysia to preserve something of what tragedy had ceased to be" with this converse: "But this does not mean that it was itself immune to change" (p. 16). Eventually satyric drama loses its compensatory function and becomes
obsolescent. By 438 B.C., Euripides can substitute the Alcestis in place of a satyr drama as the fourth element of a tetralogy (Seaford, pp. 24-25). In the same decade competitions in tragedy are instituted at the Lenaia, without satyric drama at all (Pickard-Cambridge 1968.40-41; cf. Seaford,
p. 25). On the assimilation of satyric elements by Euripidean tragedy, see Seaford, pp. 31-32, with bibliography. On a larger scale we may note the early assimilation of tragedy at the City Dionysia in the direction of the major themes of epic as performed at the Great Panathenaia: a worthy case in point is the "Homeric" repertoire of Aeschylus, as discussed by Herington 1985.138-144.
§16n1. Cf. Seaford, p. 13n39, on the role of satyrs in Arion's dithyrambs.
§16n2. Cf. Pickard-Cambridge 1962.13-15. See Seaford 1984.15 on the introduction, by Lasus, of actual dithyrambic style at the City Dionysia.
§16n3. Pickard-Cambridge 1962.15. On the tradition claiming Lasus of Hermione as the teacher of Pindar, see the Vita in Drachmann I, p. 4.12 and following (cf. Privitera 1965.60-61).
§16n4. Cf. Ch.6§44n1, Ch.6§52 and following, Ch.6§86n1; also Ch.6§30, Ch.6§31, Ch.6§44, Ch.6§54, Ch.6§78. On the tradition claiming Lasus of Hermione as the teacher of Pindar, see the Vita in Drachmann I, p. 4.12 and following (cf. Privitera 1965.60-61).
§17n1. T. K. Hubbard draws my attention to the words of Pindar Olympian13.18-19, referring to the Corinthian origins of the dithyramb and to its affinities with Dionysus.
§17n2. Commentary on Solon F 30a W (= F 39 GP) by Gentili 1986.32-33; cf. Seaford 1984.13n38.
§18n1. Burkert 1966.97-102, 115-121.
§18n2. Cf. N 1985.44 §29n4.
§18n3. Cf. Figueira 1985.141. There will be more to say about ritual inversion when the discussion turns to the topic of carnival, Ch.13§37.
§18n4. Cf. Seaford 1984.118 for other such references.
§18n5. We do not have to agree with Aristotle (ibid.) that such an etymological connection of kômôidiâ to kômê 'countryside district' is incompatible with another connection, to the word kômos 'group of revelers' and its derivatives. It appears that kômê and kômos are cognate: Levine 1985.177 §2n1.
§18n6. In the case of Athenian comedy, we may add, comedy articulates the authority of the Demos, on which topic I cite the forthcoming work of J. Henderson.
§18n7. Cf. Seaford 1984.32-33.
§19n1. On the Anthesteria as the oldest Dionysiac festival, see Pickard- Cambridge 1968.1-25.
§19n2. On the City Dionysia and the Peisistratidai, see Pickard-Cambridge p. 58. Seaford, p. 31n81, observes: "The urbanization, probably of a preexisting celebration, may have consisted partly in the transference of emergent drama to the city-centre." We may recall the dictum of Aristotle Politics 1319b that the way to achieve democracy is to centralize the cults. Such a policy was already being practiced by the tyrants. In this connection, we should note that the democratic restructuring that resulted in the dêmoi 'demes' of Attica presupposes the existence of the polis of Athens. This fact about the demes affects the very concept of "Rural Dionysia," a transitional stage of development between the Anthesteria and the City Dionysia: these "Rural Dionysia," as celebrated in the demes of Attica, were "closer to the earth than the great festivals of the city, and may have retained their religious content in greater strength and longer," but they are already a thing of the polis, in that they are extensions of the demes and "mimic the city" (Pickard- Cambridge, p. 51).
§19n3. Seaford, pp. 7-9, 30, 39-40, 96-97.
§20n2. Cf. Herington 1985.85-86. For more on the Panathenaia, see Ch.1§10 and following.
§20n5. More on Pericles at Ch.6§22, Ch.10§50 and following, Ch.10§52.
§20n6. Pickard-Cambridge 1968.104; see p. 90 on parallelisms in the relationship of Pericles and Aeschylus, Themistokles and Phrynichus. On the Classical Athenian usage of the word khorêgos 'chorus leader' to designate a contemporary nonperformer, who organizes and subsidizes both the composition and the performance, see Ch.12§76.
§20n7. In the Aeschylus edition of Page 1972.
§22n2. N 1979.279-316.
§23n1. Detienne 1973.18-27; cf. Dumézil 1969.103-124.
§23n2. N 1979.222-242.
§23n4. Cf. N 1979.37-38 §13n5: when Aigisthos persuades Clytemnestra to commit adultery and thus betray Agamemnon, he takes the poet to a deserted island (iii 270-271) so that the poet may not see the adultery; still the shameful behavior of Clytemnestra is heard by the audience of epic since the poet of epic does not depend on seeing (N, p. 16). The blind kleos of epic hears what the poet of ainos needs to see. On the metaphor of seeing in the songs of Stesichorus, in line with the ideology of the applied ainos as distinct from the generalized epic, see Ch.14§13 and
following, especially Ch.14§19.
§24n1. In Simonides we may still see earlier and less specialized stages of epinician etiquette: in PMG 507.1 (cf. Aristophanes Clouds 1355-1356), for example, the name of the athlete Krios, which means literally 'Ram', is turned into a joke in that his defeat in a wrestling contest is described as a 'fleecing' (epexath').
§24n2. Cf. West 1971.62. I cite the wording of Philostratus Imagines 3 (II, p. 298 Kayser): phoitôsin hoi muthoi para ton Aisôpon, agapôntes auton hoti autôn epimeleitai. emelêse men gar kai Homêrôi muthou kai Hêsiodôi, eti de kai Archilochôi pros Lukambên 'myths [mûthoi] are attracted to Aesop, loving him because he practices the art [of myth]; myth was also the practice of Homer and Hesiod; and even of Archilochus, in the context of his addressing Lykambes'.
§24n3. Further discussion in N 1979.224-225.
§25n1. There is an analogue on the level of metrics: the epinician lyric poetry of Pindar is either "Doric" (dactylo-epitrite) or Aeolic, whereas the hexameter of epic is both. So also on the level of function: Pindar must either praise or blame, whereas epic does both.
§25n2. Cf. Miller 1981.140n21; also Simpson 1969.119, who argues that the Herakles myth was part of the kallinikos humnos 'victory song' of Archilochus, which the the voice of Pindar represents as having been sung spontaneously by the friends of the victor immediately after the victory that is now being praised again by Pindar in Olympian9 (1-4).
§26n1. On the terms synartetic and asynartetic, see Ch.1§58 and following.
§27n1. SM vol. 2., p. 162.
§27n2. Cf. Ch.1§58 and following.
§28n1. Cf. Ch.1§9. The use of oida 'I know how' at Archilochus F 120.2 W suggests a potential situation for performance, not actual performance. Cf. West 1974.131 on the possibility that Archilochus F 120 is a continuation of F 118.
§28n2. Cf. Ch.1§9, Ch.1§15, Ch.1§18, Ch.1§19, Ch.12§49. The transition from sung to recited may be a reflex of the transition from an earlier stage where each performance entails recomposition to a later stage where such recomposition no longer takes place. Cf. Ch.2§8.
§28n3. Again the sequence of myth reverses the sequence of diachrony: cf. Ch.3§36.
§30n1. Cf. Else 1957.149.
§30n2. Cf. Else, pp. 155 and following.
§30n3. Else, pp. 157-158.
§30n4. Cf. N 1979.252
§30n5. Else, p. 158.
§30n6. Ibid. Cf. Ch.1§9, Ch.1§39n5.
§32n1. For more on the Mnesiepes Inscription, a prime document of the Life of Archilochus
tradition, see Ch.12§49.
§33n1. The full text is not given in Archilochus F 251 W; but see West 1974.25.
§33n2. The text is too fragmentary for me to be certain, but the expressions paradedom[ena 'transmitted' at line 23 and kekosmême[ 'arranged [derivative of kosmos]' at 24 suggest that a contrast is being made between the "impromptu" effusions of the protopoet and the "deliberate" arrangements of those charged with the transmission of the poetry. Note too the context of mimnêskom[ 'remember' at line 52, which seems to be pertinent to the concept of Mnêsiepês 'he who remembers the words [as in epos 'word']' as discussed at Ch.13§32.
§33n3. Cf. West 1974.25.
§33n4. On the notion of iambic, I cite the succinct formulation of West 1974.22 (following Aristotle Poetics 1448b31): "iambic metre got its name from being particularly characteristic of iamboi [iamboi], not vice versa." I have explored the conventions of the 'iambic' tradition in N 1979.243-252, where I record my indebtedness to the observation of Dover 1964.189 that the word iambos refers basically to the type of occasion for which this form was appropriate. On the choral connotations of the word iambos, revealing a stage when the iambic form could be danced, see N 1979.242-243.
§34n1. Cf. N 1979.285, with the focus on the aetiology for the hero cult of Aesop. For a collection of such narrative patterns, see Fontenrose 1968.73-79. The hero, at the time that he is being dishonored, may be represented by the narrative as either still alive (e.g., Oibotas of Dyme, Pausanias 7.17.13-14) or already dead (e.g., Theogenes of Thasos, Pausanias 6.11.6-8). If he is still alive, the dishonoring may lead directly to his death, as in the story of Aesop.
§34n2. Fertility of crops: e.g., Pausanias 6.11.6-8; fertility of humans: e.g., Pausanias 2.3.6-7.
§34n3. Cf. Ch.5§11, Ch.5§15; also Ch.12§48 and following.
§35n1. On the authenticity of Archilochus F 322 W, I agree with Miralles and Pòrtulas 1983.113 (pace West 1974.24). In the Mnesiepes Inscription (T 4 Tarditi), I note the apparent reference to vegetal fertility (karpôn II 40) in the general context of human fertility in the story of the punishment of the Parians (II 42-46).
§35n2. See again Archilochus F 322 W.
§35n3. For more on the notion of iambic, see N 1979.243.
§35n4. See West 1974.23-25; also Richardson 1974.213-217, especially with reference to the passage about Iambê in Hymn to Demeter 192-205.
§37n1. Bakhtin [1984b]. Cf. Rösler 1986. In the generations that followed the time of Rabelais, that is, in the preclassic times of the seventeenth century in the period preceding the reign of Louis XIV, "Rabelais did not as yet appear exceptional" (Bakhtin, p. 107). Soon thereafter, however, "the atmosphere in which Rabelais was understood vanished almost entirely, and he became a strange and solitary author who needed special interpretation and commentary" (ibid.). To an author like La Bruyère, writing in 1690, Rabelais is to be condemned for his crude obscenity and vulgarity, though he is to be praised for his exquisite genius and originality in the use of language; Bakhtin comments that La Bruyère sees the work of Rabelais as "two-faced" because "he has lost the key that could have locked together its two heterogeneous aspects" (p. 108). That key, in Bakhtin's terms, is carnival. Without insisting on the term, which lends itself to overextended use, I see here a striking analogy with the figure of Archilochus. Else's reference to Archilochus F 120 W as "Archilochus' impromptu, drunken dithyramb" (Else 1957.158) reminds me of the discussion by Bakhtin, pp. 265-266 of the expression "faire courir les personnages des diables," in a document from Amiens dated 1500, referring to the custom of letting characters who are chosen to represent the devils in a passion play run loose.
§37n2. Bakhtin, p. 218.
§37n3. Ibid.
§37n4. On the political and ideological orthodoxies that were prevalent at the time that Bakhtin was formulating his vision of the carnival element in Rabelais, see Holquist in Bakhtin [1984b]
xviii. We should note that in the sixteenth century, the time of Rabelais, "folk merriment had not as yet been concentrated in carnival season, in any of the towns of France" (p. 220). In other words the synthesis under the institutional heading of carnival had not yet reached the stage corresponding to Bakhtin's broadened sense of carnival. Later, when "the carnival [...] became the center of all popular forms of amusement, it diminished all the other feasts and deprived them of almost every free and utopian folk element" (Bakhtin, p. 220). "The other feasts faded away; their popular character was reduced, especially because of their connection with ecclesiastic or political rituals" (ibid.).
§37n5. Cf. Bakhtin, pp. 334-336.
§37n6. On the carnival as heir to the Roman Saturnalia, see Bakhtin, pp. 8, 81. On the tradition of nostalgia for the Golden Age, as implicit in the Saturnalia, see his, p. 48. I should add that the Greek analogue of the Saturnalia, the feast of Kronos, exhibits a similar tradition of nostalgia for the Golden Age: cf. Rösler 1986.36. The theme of Saturnalian nostalgia is also reflected in the Works and Days of Hesiod: cf. N 1979.168-172.
§37n7. I use the term grotesque in the sense outlined by Bakhtin, pp. 30- 58, especially 31-32. On the correlation of the grotesque with the notion of fertility, I cite in particular his following observation on the traditional imagery of the grotesque: it is a "system [...] in which death is not a negation of life seen as the great body of all the people but part of life as a whole--its indispensable component, the condition of its constant renewal and rejuvenation" (p. 50; cf. also pp. 326-328, 405). This thought pattern, which Bakhtin sums up in the formula "death is included in life" (p. 50), amounts to a system of opposition between life and death where life is the unmarked and inclusive member (on the terms marked and unmarked, see Intro. §12). In
Bakhtin's scheme this opposition is a sign of fertility: "Even the struggle of life and death in the individual body is conceived by grotesque imagery as the struggle of the old life stubbornly resisting the new life about to be born, as the crisis of change" (p. 50; emphasis mine).
§38n1. See Miralles and Pòrtulas 1983.135-157, especially p. 135n15.
§38n2. See Zink 1972.93, 102.
§38n3. Commentary by Miralles and Pòrtulas, p. 136 and nn16, 17.
§38n4. Cf. Pötscher 1961; also N 1979.303.
§38n5. Cf. again N 1979.303.
§38n6. Cf. Miralles and Pòrtulas, pp. 11-50.
§38n7. See Radin 1956.
§40n1. Cf. Herington 1985.254n9, with special reference to Fraenkel 1962 ch. 10.
§40n2. Cf. Herington 1985.138-144.
§41n1. The word agôn is actually used in self-references at Frogs 785, 867, 873, 882.
§41n2. Aristophanes Frogs93, 766, 770, 780, 786, 793, 811, 831, 850, 939, 961, 973, 1369,
1495.
§41n3. Herington 1985.106.
§41n4. Ibid.
§43n1. Seaford 1977-1978.86. Again we may compare the Aeginetan example of choruses subdivided into rival halves, as discussed at Ch.12§51 and following. Cf. also Ch.12§50n5.
§44n2. Ibid.
§44n3. For the wording, see again the description in Plato Laws 659ab.
§46n1. A crucial work on this theme is Lanza 1977. According to Lanza (see especially p. 178),
the tyrant of tragedy is born of the Reform of Kleisthenes, which cancels the political need for the tyrant in the here and now. When the people inherit the apparatus of the aristocracy, they also inherit the enemy of the aristocracy, the tyrant.
§46n2. For a direct comparison of the era of the Peisistratidai with the Age of Kronos, see
§48n1. Cf. Ch.3§4. On writing as a medium not for performance but for the 'demonstration' of performance in Herodotus, see Ch.8§6.
§49n2. Cf. Ch.3§5 and following; Ch.12§76, Ch.12§77.
§49n3. Herington 1985.96 and 252n83, following Pickard-Cambridge 1968.234-236.
§49n4. Timotheus was famed for a performance of a composition of his, known as the Persians (Timotheus PMG 788-791), at the Feast of the Panathenaia at Athens, around 408 B.C. (cf. Ch. 3§13n1).
§51n1. Cf. Ch.6§50 and following.
§51n3. Cf. Ch.6§50 and following.
§52n1. See Ch.3§31. The "old" paideusis 'education' (Clouds 986) is explicitly associated with the era that produced the fighters at Marathon (985-986).
§52n2. I say "selected" in light of my earlier discussion of the limited repertoire reflected by references in Old Comedy to the lyric masters: see Ch.3§50 and following.
§52n4. Further discussion at Ch.3§31.
§53n1. Cf. the anecdote recorded by Pausanias 6.9.6 about the mass murder of 60 children in a school at Astypalaea in 492 B.C.; cf. also Thucydides 7.29.5.
§53n2. The symbolism of these symmetrical disasters is signaled by the words prosêmainein
'make a sign [sêma] in advance' at Herodotus 6.27.1 (cf. also (sêmêia megala 'mighty signs' ibid.).
§54n1. On this kind of élitism within the social context of the polis, see Dover 1968.lx, who adduces passages like Demosthenes On the Crown 265.
§54n2. This passage, Plato Protagoras 325e-326a, in conjunction with the earlier passage in Herodotus 6.27.2 alluding to the learning of letters by children in Chios, can be used as the most explicit available testimony to the effect that the medium of writing could indeed be used for the teaching of song and poetry. Still we note that the learning of letters is linked with the notion that such learning is a means for preserving traditions of performance. In any case this sort of testimony is the best evidence for the existence of school texts that could have been passed down to the time of the Alexandrian editors. On which topic see Ch.3§54.
§54n3. On the portrayal of Simonides in the Protagoras of Plato: Privitera 1965.100-10
§54n4. On this Pindaric passage, cf. Ch.3§42.
§56n1. This is not to say that efforts in such education had ceased altogether: cf. Isocrates Antidosis 267 (tên mousikên kai tên allên paideian); also Plato Laws 654a-b, 809b; Republic 376e.
§56n2. Cf. Ch.3§2n2, with a discussion of the Boeotian traditions attributed to Corinna. On the Spartan traditions of reperforming the masterworks of local traditions in song making, see Ch. 12§14 and following.
§57n1. Cf. Ch.2§32 and following; Ch.5§15 and following, especially Ch.5§17.
§57n2. Cf. Ch.6§54 and following.
§57n3. Ibid.
§58n1. Cf. Ch.6§17 and following.
§58n2. Cf. Ch.12§17 and following.
§59n1. Cf. Ch.12§24 and following.
§59n2. Ibid.
§60n1. Cf. Ch.12§56 and following.
§61n1. Cf. Ch.12§50 and following.
§61n2. Cf. Ch.12§50, Ch.12§57.
§62n1. In this connection I cite again Ford 1985, where the sphrâgis 'seal' of Theognis (19-20) is interpreted as an affirmation of authorship through an authority analogous to that of the tyrant Hipparchus of Athens; further discussion at Ch.6§48 and following.
§62n2. Cf. Ch.6§48 and following.
§62n3. Ibid.
§63n2. Ibid.
§64n1. Cf. Ch.12§46, Ch.12§48; cf. further at Ch.14§29. I agree with Burnett 1988.137 that Stesichorus was "a public poet."
§64n2. Cf. Ch.6§75 and following, especially Ch.6§78.
§64n3. Cf. Ch.6§54 and following.
§65n2. For the conceptual linking of authority and authorship, see Ch.2§50, Ch.12§27 and following.
§1. As a lyric poet who flourished in an age when emerging patterns of individual power within
the Greek polis had already established corresponding patterns of individualism, marking the poet as well as the poet's powerful patrons, Pindar was an author. 1 As a figure who served to connect the heroic past with the present, he was a master of the mode of discourse known as the ainos. In this discourse the poet's references to the present identified him as much as his patrons. But this identification had to be expressed in terms of the past, in terms of Homer and the age of heroes. 2 And the question remains: what exactly was Homer to Pindar?
§2. To begin, Pindar's lyric poetry seems to make no distinction between the heroes of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey on the one hand and the heroes of other epic traditions, most notably those of the so-called Epic Cycle, on the other. Within but the briefest space, for example, in Olympian2.81-83, Pindar's words recount how Achilles vanquished three heroes, Hektor (81- 82), Kyknos (82), and Memnon (83). Whereas Hektor was the main opponent of Achilles in the Iliad, Kyknos figured prominently as his antagonist in the Cyclic Cypria (Proclus, p. 105.2-3 Allen) and Memnon, in the Aithiopis (Proclus, p. 106.1-7). One expert on Pindar remarks about Olympian2.81-83: "These lines illustrate Pindar's indebtedness to the post-Homeric epics: from the [Cypria] he draws the episode of the slaying of [Kyknos], and from the Aithiopis of [Arctinus] he derives the translation of Achilles and his slaying of Memnon, a story that haunted Pindar's imagination, for he recurs no less than six times to Memnon in the odes." 1 Instead, what I propose to emphasize is that Pindar's lyric poetry treats Cyclic heroes as equivalents of Homeric heroes. At Isthmian 5.39-42, for example, the victims of Achilles are enumerated as Kyknos (39),
Hektor (39), Memnon (40-41), and Telephos (41-42); the last of these figures is yet another hero of the Cycle (Cypria / Proclus, p. 104.5-7 Allen). Again at Isthmian 8.54-55, Memnon and Hektor are equated as heroic opponents of Achilles. 2 Even more, Pindar's lyric poetry seems at times not to distinguish the authorship of the Iliad and Odyssey from the authorship of the Cycle. From Pindar F 265 SM (by way of Aelian Varia Historia 9.15), for example, it appears that Pindar's words had ascribed the Cypria to Homer. 3 Similarly the words of Callinus (F 6 W) explicitly ascribed the epic Seven against Thebes tradition to Homer, according to Pausanias 9.9.5, who rates this epic as a poem so superior that it is second only to the Iliad and Odyssey (ibid.). 4
§3. This poetic convention, as practiced by Pindar, of equating the themes of Homeric and Cyclic epos may at first seem surprising in view of the clear differences between these two poetic traditions. The nature of these differences, as also the reasons for them, has already been formulated: the Cycle is more localized, less Panhellenic, than the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey. 1 The fact that Pindaric song refers to epic traditions that cross over from the Homeric to the Cyclic, traditions of varying stages in the development of epic, suggests that Pindaric reference is diachronic, stretching across the span of development in epic traditions. The fact that the diachronic differences in the epic medium are not sorted out by Pindaric song implies that Pindar's own medium contains within itself the metamorphoses of epic. If indeed the different epic heroes from different epic phases are treated as multiforms, parallel variants, then it follows that different epic phases are likewise mere multiforms from the standpoint of Pindar's poetics. I am proposing then that there is in Pindaric song an ongoing nondifferentiation of epic traditions--traditions that we see otherwise attested only in their already differentiated forms, for example, the Iliad as distinct from the Odyssey, or, more generally, Homeric poetry as distinct from Cyclic poetry. 2
§4. Pursuing this line of thinking, I shun the common opinion that the Pindaric references to the traditions that survived in the Cycle are merely borrowings from the Cycle. 1 Rather I suggest that Pindar is drawing upon a continuum of epic tradition. I suggest in addition that Pindar's tradition can draw upon such a continuum because it actually contains Homer's tradition within itself.
§5. In support of this suggestion that the diachronic mode of Pindar's references to epic reveals something about the diachronic relationship of Pindar's own medium to epic, we have already had recourse to the references of Pindar's lyric tradition to itself and to epic, where the medium of epic is conventionally treated as an outgrowth of Pindar's own traditional medium. 1 The lyric poetry of Pindar represents epic as extending into the epinician ainos of Pindar, thereby presenting itself as the ultimate authority of tradition. 2
§6. The relationship between the Pindaric tradition and the Homeric is also apparent on the level of metrics. In the case of Pindar we have seen that the heritage of his rhythmical repertory centers on the so-called dactylo-epitrite meters, as attested in the Dorian tradition of Stesichorus, and on the Aeolic meters, as attested in the Aeolian tradition of Sappho and Alcaeus. 1 Of Pindar's epinician songs, roughly half (twenty-three) are composed in Doric dactylo-epitrite meters, and half (twenty) in Aeolic meters. 2 There is one solitary occurrence, Olympian2, of a song
composed in distinctly Ionic meters. In considering the half-and-half proportion of Doric dactylo- epitrite and Aeolic meters in Pindar, we may note an important analogue in the dactylic hexameter of epic, which can be explained as a synthesis of dactylo-epitrite and Aeolic metrical traditions. 3 Roughly half of the hexameters in Homeric poetry are built with phraseology where the main word break (") occurs immediately after the sequence _m_m_ {FORMAT}, which can be traced back to dactylo-epitrite patterns, and roughly another half where it occurs after the sequence
_m_m_o {FORMAT}, which can be traced back to Aeolic patterns. 4 These two sequences,
_m_m_" {FORMAT} and _m_m_o" {FORMAT}, account for the main caesura, or word break, in 99% of Homeric hexameters. 5 To restate in terms of the colon, 6 the cola of the hexameter as defined by the so-called masculine caesura (_m_m_" {FORMAT}) seem to be built from the cola of dactylo-epitrite meters as attested in Pindar and of prototypical dactylo-epitrite meters as attested in Stesichorus. As for the cola defined by the so-called feminine caesura (_m_m_o"),
{FORMAT} these in turn seem to be cognate with the cola that we find in the so-called Aeolic
meters of Pindar, as also in the Aeolic repertory of Sappho and Alcaeus.
§7. Thus the two metrical patterns that combine as one in Homeric diction, namely, the dactylo- epitrite and the Aeolic, are still by and large separate and autonomous in the diction of Pindar. To put it more strongly: Pindar's lyric poetry still preserves the separateness of the prototypical components of epic poetry.
§8. The dactylo-epitrite heritage of dactylic hexameter, however, is not specifically Doric, as in the case of Stesichorus or Pindar. The poetry of Archilochus, a prominent representative of Ionic traditions, is distinguished by metrical building blocks that can be described as cognate with those of the Doric dactylo-epitrite. 1 In other words there is an Ionic as well as Doric tradition of dactylo-epitrite patterns. Still, in the wake of the overlap between Doric dactylo-epitrite patterns and the Ionic patterns that are cognate with them, the term Ionic, as applied to the lyric poetry of Pindar, tends to be restricted to categories not covered by Doric. In other words Ionic is a default category in describing the metrics of Pindar. Thus Olympian2 is the only Pindaric composition where the meters can be described as overtly Ionic because it is the only Pindaric composition where the meters are exclusively Ionic. I would summarize the hierarchy of Pindar's metrical heritage as follows: dominant Doric, recessive Aeolic, and residual Ionic. It seems to me that this proportion of Doric / Aeolic / Ionic meters in Pindaric composition corresponds to the dialectal synthesis of Pindar diction: again we see a pattern of dominant Doric, recessive Aeolic, and residual Ionic. 2
§9. The proportions of this metrical and dialectal synthesis in Pindaric song correspond to the hierarchy established by the traditional story of Terpander's coming to Sparta (Hellanicus FGH 4 F 85; Pindar F 191 SM). 1 The background for this story is a story, originating from the native Aeolic tradition of the Lesbian poets, that claims Terpander as the ancestor of this same Aeolic tradition (Sappho F 106 V). We know from the attested diction of Sappho and Alcaeus that this Aeolic tradition is actually a blend of two dialects, dominant Aeolic synthesized with recessive Ionic. 2 A similar description seems apt for the meters of Sappho and Alcaeus: a synthesis of dominant Aeolic and recessive Ionic (where the Ionic is cognate with the meters of Anacreon and even Hipponax). This blend in traditions as represented by Terpander, that is, dominant Aeolic
synthesized with recessive Ionic, is then further blended in the Doric context of Sparta. As myth has it, Terpander brings with him to Doric Sparta the Aeolic traditions of Lesbos. 3 Thus the story of Terpander's arrival at Sparta accounts for the final and definitively dominant stage, the Doric, in the traditional diction of figures like Alcman and even Pindar. 4
§10. Another way to approach the relationship between the traditions of Pindar and Homer is to compare them both with other traditions that reveal close affinities with both. What follows is a brief survey of a few such traditions, including those of Stesichorus, Theognis, Archilochus, Alcaeus, and Sappho. This survey, it is hoped, will yield a final overview of the effects of Panhellenism on the heritage of ancient Greek song and poetry.
§11. Let us begin with Stesichorus. On the level of form, the dactylo-epitrite meters of Stesichorus are clearly related to what we see in roughly one-half of Pindar's metrical repertory. 1 Also the way in which these dactylo-epitrite meters of Stesichorus frame traditional phraseology is clearly related to the way in which roughly half of the verses in Homeric poetry are built, that is, where the main word break occurs immediately after the sequence _m_m_ {FORMAT} ("masculine" caesura). 2 Paradoxically the dactylo-epitrites of the earlier figure, Stesichorus, seem to be less conservative at least in one respect than those of the later figure, Pindar, in that the rules of Stesichorean meter are moving in the direction of epic by tolerating the substitution of n_oo_oo for x_oo_oo {FORMAT}. 3
§12. The comparison of Homer and Pindar with Stesichorus is also pertinent on the level of theme: the repertory of themes to be found in the more localized Cycle, as distinct from the more Panhellenic Iliad and Odyssey, is remarkably parallel to what we find in the compositions attributed to Stesichorus. Given that the lyric poetry of Stesichorus is related to that of Pindar on the level of form, 1 we may pursue the question, what is Homer to Pindar, by considering the affinities of Stesichorus and Pindar on the level of theme, and, further, the relationship of their shared lyric tradition to the concept of epic in general and Homer in particular.
§13. A singularly useful point of departure is the Stesichorean rendition of the Helen story, which contrasts its own adherence to one particular localized version with the syncretism of the Homeric Helen tradition of the Iliad and Odyssey. In the Stesichorean version Homer is blamed for representing Helen as having allowed herself to be seduced by Paris: the Homeric version, which says that Helen went with Paris all the way to Troy, is specifically rejected (Stesichorus PMG 193.2-5), as is what seems to be the Hesiodic version, which says that she went as far as Egypt, while her eidôlon 'image-double' was taken to Troy (Stesichorus PMG 193.5-7, 12- 16). 1 The rejected story about the eidôlon 'image-double', with the detail concerning the voyage of Paris and Helen to Egypt (cf. Stesichorus PMG 193.15-16 in conjunction with Hesiod F 176.7 MW), affirms the seduction of Helen since the actual adultery of Paris and Helen traditionally took place during their voyage from Sparta to Egypt (cf. Iliad III 445). The celebrated theme of the palinôidiâ 'recantation' of Stesichorus has to do with the story that told how this poet had previously blamed Helen, like Homer and Hesiod, by virtue of telling stories about her that were parallel to theirs, only to recant later and then be rewarded with the restoration of his eyesight, which had been taken away by the supernatural powers of Helen as punishment for defamation
(Isocrates Helen 64, Conon FGH 26 F 1.18, Plato Phaedrus 243a, Pausanias 3.19.11). 2
§14. It could be argued that the words of the recantation, as a composition, actually presupposed the story of how Stesichorus was blinded and how he then had a change of heart: this way the restoration of vision would be a given of the composition, that is, something that is ostensibly caused by the dramatized here and now of the recantation. The recantation of Stesichorus, featuring the restoration of his vision, not only denies the Homeric tradition but also reaffirms another tradition that happens to acknowledge explicitly the thought patterns associated with the cult of Helen as a local goddess. According to Pausanias 3.19.11, the story of Helen and the blinding of Stesichorus is a tradition stemming from the city-state of Kroton, also shared by Himera, the traditional provenience of Stesichorus; in this version Helen abides on the sacred Island of Leuke, as consort of Achilles, through the agency of the gods; from there she sends word to Stesichorus that he compose a recantation. Thus the recantation of Stesichorus seems to be a theme that also reaffirms the traditions native to Kroton and Himera. More important for the moment, the recantation of Stesichorus presupposes the distinctness of Stesichorus and his lyric poetry from the likes of Homer and his epic poetry, in light of another tradition claiming that Homer himself had been blinded as punishment for his having defamed Helen through his story of Helen at Troy (Life of Homer VI 51-57 Allen; Plato Phaedrus 243a). 1
§15. This juxtaposition of Homer and Stesichorus within the tradition of Stesichorus is important in understanding a genuine distinction between two traditions of poetry. The central point of reference, even for Stesichorus, is Homer and the version of Homer in telling the story of Helen. We have already noted the juxtaposition of Homer and Stesichorus in traditional references, such as Simonides PMG 564 and Isocrates Helen 64-65, which I interpret to imply the appropriateness of conventionally juxtaposing performances of Homeric and Stesichorean poetry at given festivals. 1
§16. The variability of the Helen story in fact served as a touchstone in ancient controversies over the attribution of given compositions to Homer. For example, Herodotus has to go out of his way to argue, apparently against beliefs held within certain traditions in his own time, that the poet of the Cypria is not Homer (2.116-117). Herodotus makes his argument on the grounds that the Cypria has Paris and Helen sail directly, within the space of three days, from Sparta to Troy (2.117). The version of the Cypria known to Herodotus is different from the one summarized by Proclus, where we do find the elaboration of one sidetracking: a storm sent by Hera blows Paris and Helen off course and they land at Sidon, but then they sail from there directly to Troy (Cypria / Proclus, p. 103.9-12 Allen). In contrast the Homeric poems, as Herodotus points out, allow for at least two sidetrackings, one at Sidon and one in Egypt (2.116, quoting from Iliad VI 289-292 and Odyssey iv 227-230, 251-252), though these sidetrackings are clearly subordinated by the narrative (as Herodotus also points out: 2.116.1). It is the more complex pattern of the Homeric poems, where one level of narrative is being subordinated to another, as contrasted with
the more simple pattern of the Cypria, that convinces Herodotus that the poet of the Cypria cannot be Homer. Since "Homer" allows for variation in the Helen story and the poet of the Cypria does not, Herodotus infers that the latter cannot be "Homer." The greater tolerance for variation is for me a sign of relatively wider Panhellenism. 1
§17. In contrast with the complex and diplomatic pattern of subordination that characterizes Homer as the most Panhellenic in outlook, the story affirmed by Stesichorus in his Helen song is relatively simplex and uncompromising: Helen did not go to Troy, and that particular story about her is simply not etumos 'genuine' (Stesichorus PMG 192.1). In other words the versions of Stesichorus and the Cycle are comparable to each other by virtue of being less complex, less synthetic, than the version of Homer. In accommodating a version that pictures Helen on the sacred Island of Leuke as consort of Achilles (Pausanias 3.19.11), the tradition of Stesichorus is parallel to the less Panhellenic traditions of the Cycle: in the Aithiopis, the abode of Achilles after immortalization is this same sacred place, Leuke (Proclus, p. 106.15 Allen). This sacred place anchors the epic of the Aithiopis to the local cults of Miletus and its colonies. 1
§18. Besides this specific kind of thematic parallelism between Stesichorus and the Cycle, we may note that even the general organizing subjects of Stesichorean poetry coincide with those of the Cycle: for example, Stesichorus is credited with a composition called the Destruction of Ilion (PMG 196-205), 1 and another called the Nostoi (PMG 208-209), corresponding respectively to the Cyclic Destruction of Ilion, attributed to Arctinus of Miletus, and the Nostoi, attributed to Agias of Trozen. Such convergences are especially significant if the poetry of Stesichorus is indeed closely related to a prototype of the poetry of Pindar. 2 What the experts have been used to perceive as Pindaric borrowings from the Cycle are more likely to be genuine inheritances from traditions preserved in actual prototypes of Pindaric song, as represented by Stesichorean song.
§19. Another indication that the tradition of Stesichorus is less Panhellenic than the Homeric and Hesiodic is to be found in the measuring of the truth-value of the preferred version of the Helen myth in terms of the concept etumo- 'genuine' (Stesichorus PMG 192.1): in Hesiodic poetry, by contrast, a plethora of local versions that are false but seem etuma 'genuine' (Theogony27) is contrasted with an ostensibly unique and absolute Panhellenic version that is described as alêthea 'true' (28). 1 Still another indication of the more local nature of Stesichorean lyric poetry is the privileging of the visual metaphor for poetry: the figure of Stesichorus has his vision restored by Helen, whereas Homer does not (again, Plato Phaedrus 243a). Homeric poetry, in contrast, is marked by the privileging of the auditory metaphor, at the expense of the visual: the inability of the the poet to see is a guarantee of his ability to go beyond personal experience and thus to hear the true message of the Muses, which is the kleos 'glory' (from verb kluô 'hear') of Homeric poetry (Iliad II 486). 2
§20. The emphasis on the metaphor of seeing in Stesichorean lyric poetry, setting it off from the metaphor of hearing in the epic poetry of Homer, is akin to the semantics of historiâ, with its awareness of local testimony grounded in local traditions. With its more localized orientation, Stesichorean lyric poetry can identify itself as damômata charitôn 'the public local performances of the Kharites' (Stesichorus PMG 212.1). The reference to Kharites or "Graces," divine incarnations of kharis, 1 underlines the relationship between the composition and its immediate audience, the local nature of which is conveyed by dâmôma, the act of 'making public', which I translate here as 'public local performance' in light of its derivation from dâmos (dêmos) in the sense of 'local community'. 2 Such local performances, however stylized, properly take place through the agency of the chorus, and we have noted the centrality of the chorus as the formal
expression of a local community. 3 We may note as well the pertinence of the very name of Stesichorus to this formal expression: Stêsi-khoros means 'he who sets up the chorus.' 4
§21. The essence of Stesichorean lyric poetry is not that a given local version, as ordinarily formalized in the song of the chorus, has won out over the Panhellenic version, as formalized in the poetry of Homer. Rather it may be described as a local version in the process of making a bid for Panhellenic status. Such a description fits the lyric poetry of Pindar as well. A typical Pindaric composition presents itself as local in foundation, expressed through the performance of the chorus, and as Panhellenic in intent, expressed through the links of the song with the Homeric world of heroes. But the actual poetry of Homer must be made to look too compromising in face of the uncompromising standard proclaimed by Pindaric song. What we have already observed in the case of Stesichorus applies to Pindar as well: his tradition too puts a strong emphasis on its association with the visual metaphor, as distinct from the auditory metaphor that marks the Homeric tradition, and an equally strong emphasis on the truth-value of local traditions grounded in cult, as distinct from the synthetic complexities attributed to Homer. Just as the voice of Stesichorus in his Helen song proclaims that his version of the logos 'tale' of Helen is etumos 'genuine' by virtue of claiming that the Homeric version is the opposite (Stesichorus PMG 192.1), so also the voice of Pindar, as it proclaims in Nemean7 its mission to praise what is noble, claims the control of a kleos 'glory' that is etêtumon 'genuine' (verse 63). 1 Earlier in the same song, the logos 'tale' of and by the crafty Odysseus, as retold with commensurate craft by Homer, is described as going beyond the bounds of alêtheia 'truth', to which most men are "blind" without the "vision" that is implicit in Pindar's lyric poetry, an uncompromising unified vision that defends the true value of heroes from the compromising complexities of mûthoi 'myths', which are the "hearsay" of Homer:
egô de pleon' elpomai | logon Odusseos ê pathan dia ton haduepê Homêron: | epei pseudesi hoi potanai <te> machanai semnon epesti ti: sophia de kleptei paragoisa muthois. tuphlon d' echei | êtor homilos andrôn ho pleistos. ei gar ên | he tan alatheian idemen, ou ken hoplôn cholôtheis | ho karteros Aias epaxe dia phrenôn | leuron xiphos
I think that the tale [logos] of Odysseus is greater than his experiences [pathâ], 2 all because of Homer, the one with the sweet words. Upon his lies [pseudea] and winged inventiveness there is a kind of majesty; [poetic] skill [sophiâ], misleading in myths [mûthoi], is deceptive. Blind in heart are most men. For if they could have seen the truth [alêtheia], never would great Ajax, angered over the arms [of Achilles], have driven the burnished sword through his own heart.
§22. The fame of the great hero Ajax, grounded in the local hero cult of the Aiakidai on the island of Aegina, 1 setting of Pindar's Nemean7, is threatened by the mûthoi 'myths' of Homeric poetry and rescued by the alêtheia of Pindaric song. 2 The local tradition, as represented by Pindar, is making its bid for Panhellenic status by paradoxically laying claim to the kind of absolute alêtheia
already claimed by Panhellenic poetry. In the process, Pindaric song is dismissing Homer as a perpetuator of mûthoi. In using this word, Pindaric song turns back to the very foil used by earlier Panhellenic poetry in dismissing various uncompromising localized versions slated for displacement by way of synthetic compromise. 3 This is not to say that the poetics of Pindar can dismiss epic itself: Homer is being slighted here only to the extent that he is being accused of becoming a perpetuator of the words of Odysseus; we should note that the figure of Odysseus, whenever he is being quoted by epic, speaks not in the mode of epic but rather as a master of multiple meanings, a man of craft whose discourse is described by epic itself as ainos (Odyssey xiv 508). 4
§23. This point brings us back to Pindar, whose own lyric medium is called, by the medium itself, ainos (e.g., Olympian6.12). 1 As a master of the ainos, Pindar is obliged to be direct and truthful toward his near and dear, the philoi, but at the same time he is entitled to be indirect and deceitful toward his enemies, the ekhthroi (e.g., Pythian2.83-85). 2 The voice of Pindar, the voice of the ainos, can indignantly condemn the multiplicity and deceitfulness of mûthoi that led to the undoing of the hero Ajax, as we have just seen in the use of the word mûthoi at Nemean7.23 (and the same situation holds at Nemean8.33). At the same time it can espouse multiplicity and deceitfulness for the purpose of decoying the unrighteous ekhthros 'enemy'.
§24. There is a particularly striking example of the proclaimed multiplicity of the ainos in a Pindaric song where the wise words of the hero Amphiaraos, who is being represented in the act of instructing his son Amphilokhos, are being directly quoted. The hero's words of instruction center on the image of an octopus:
ô teknon, pontiou thêros petraiou | chrôti malista noon | propherôn pasais poliessin homilei: | tôi pareonti d' epainêsais hekôn | allot' alloia phronei
My son, associate with all the various cities by making your mind [noos] resemble, most of all, the coloring of the animal who lives in the sea, clinging to rocks. Have on your mind different things at different times, being ready and willing, for the occasion, to make ainos [= verb ep- aineô]. 1
There is a close parallel in the poetry of Theognis, another of the poetic figures whose traditions
we are considering as points of comparison with the traditions of Pindar and Homer. In this parallel from Theognis, the central image is again that of an octopus, as the voice of the poet issues the following instruction:
poulupou orgên ische poluplokou, hos poti petrêi têi prosomilêsêi, toios idein ephanê.
nun men têid' ephepou, tote d' alloios chroa ginou.
kressôn toi sophiê ginetai atropiês
Theognis 215-218
Have the temperament of a complex octopus, who looks like whatever rock with which he is associated. 2
Now be like this; then, at another time, become different in your coloring.
I tell you: skill [sophiâ] is better than being not versatile [atropos]. 3
To be atropos 'not versatile' is the opposite of polutropos 'versatile in many ways', epithet of Odysseus (Odyssey i 1), who is actually compared in epic to an octopus (Odyssey v 432-433), and whose qualities of resourcefulness and versatility are being implicitly advocated by the poetics of Theognis as a key to the survival of values worth saving even in disguise, as the figure of the speaker is moving from city to city. We see in the symbol of the octopus the very essence of ainos.
§25. The ainos is multiple, outwardly ever-changing as the poet moves from city to city, like the disguised Odysseus who tests the inner value of the many different people whom he meets in his travels. 1 Each person who is encountered by Odysseus after his homecoming in Ithaca is effectively being challenged to look beyond the hero's outer appearance as a debased beggar and to recognize his inner reality as a noble king whose authority is eventually being reestablished in the Odyssey, a process that parallels the eventual reconstitution of the very identity of Odysseus through a series of encounters with the population of Ithaca. 2 Thus the ainos is also singular, inwardly constant, bearing a true message that is hidden amidst a plethora of possible false interpretations. 3 We may compare the fable of "The Fox and the Hedgehog" as attested in Archilochus F 201 W, where the fox is said to know (verb oida) many things, while the hedgehog knows hen mega 'one big thing'. This traditional dichotomy between the multiplicity of the fox and the unitarianism of the hedgehog can be used in support of emending the textually corrupt phrase pollôn gnousan eti in Theognis670, which can be read as pollôn gnous hen eti 'for I know one thing far better than many other things'. 4 This one thing that is known, introduced by houneka at Theognis 671, is a riddle concerning the crisis of the Ship of State beset by a seastorm of social strife (671-680). 5 When the image of the Ship of State concludes, the poem refers to it as an ainigma 'riddle':
tauta moi êinichthô kekrummena tois agathoisin
Theognis 681
Let these things be riddling utterances [= ainigmata], hidden by me for the noble [agathoi].
§26. As we contemplate these words, it is pertinent to observe the context of sophiâ 'skill' in Theognis218, the same passage that bears the symbol of the octopus (215-218), and I quote an earlier observation of mine: "This word recalls the epithet sophos 'skilled' applied to the man who
can foresee impending misfortunes like some mantis 'seer' [Theognis 682] 1 --a man who speaks in the mode of an ainigma 'riddle' (681) about a ship beset by a storm at sea." 2 In this context the same man, the figure of Theognis, is represented as a model of righteousness who had lost his khrêmata 'possessions' and finds himself in distress as he associates with the agathoi
'noble' (Theognis 667-670, with khrêmata at 667 and agathoi at 668; cf. 649-652). Implicit here is the model of Odysseus, the hidden king in beggar's disguise, intrinsically noble but extrinsically debased through impoverishment, who finds himself in distress as he associates with the extrinsically noble but intrinsically base suitors who are usurping his own realm. Moreover, the figure of Theognis, who hides his own intrinsic nobility with the extrinsic debasedness of impoverishment as he tests the worth of others (Theognis 649- 652), is directly compared to the figure of Odysseus himself (Theognis 1123-1125). 3
§27. In short the medium of the ainos may espouse the same tactics as those used by Odysseus and reported by the medium of epic. The difference is, the medium of epic may represent the medium of the ainos, as when the tactics of Odysseus are being narrated, but it cannot be ainos itself. 1 In contrast, a medium like that of Pindar is ainos and, as such, it claims the authority to judge what is being represented by epic, praising what is noble and blaming what is base. The ainos of Pindar's lyric tradition claims control over epic, as if it represented a more definitive principle of poetics. Whereas epic can just hear, the ainos claims to see as well. Whereas epic is Panhellenic, a delocalized synthesis of native traditions, the ainos purports to be both Panhellenic and local, grounding its Panhellenized truth-values in the legitimacy and authority of native traditions, which shift from city to city and which are the context for the here and now of performance.
§28. This function of the ainos, as proclaimed by the poetics of Pindar, is traditional, shared by the older poetics of Stesichorus. True, these two traditions of lyric poetry are strikingly different in some respects, as we see from the contrasting principles of thematic compression in the typical Pindaric composition on the one hand and on the other of expansion, veering toward epic dimensions, in the typical Stesichorean composition. Still they are strikingly similar in their social purpose, which is to instruct and thus maintain the prestige of a given community by way of selecting those Panhellenic values that reinforce its local interests. Like Pindar, Stesichorus is an exponent of the ainos.
§29. In fact the Stesichorean ainos can assume the specialized form of a fable, as we see from as many as four attested stories reporting various situations where the figure of Stesichorus warns a given city against violence or tyranny. 1 In one of these, as reported by Aristotle Rhetoric 1394b35 (Stesichorus PMG 281b), Stesichorus warns the people of Locri that they should not be hubristai 'men of hubris', and his words are described as ainigmatôdê 'like ainigmata [riddling utterances]' (ibid.). We may compare the words of warning to the people of Megara, as encoded in the celebrated image of the ship threatened by a storm at sea, in Theognis 667-682, where the poetry refers to its message as tauta moi êinichthô 'let these words of mine be ainigmata [riddling utterances]' (681). 2 Aristotle (ibid.) specifies the image used by Stesichorus in his words of warning to the people of Locri: it is a theme from the world of fable, a riddling reference to tettîges 'cicadas' singing on the ground (chamothen; instead of trees, as in Hesiod Works and
Days583). In another reference to the same theme, within the larger context of a discussion of metaphor, Aristotle describes this same fable-image as an example of ta eu êinigmena 'well-made ainigmata [allusive utterances]' (Rhetoric 1412a22). We should note that the figure of the tettîx 'cicada' is a symbol of the poet specifically within the format of the ainos, as in the case of Archilochus F 223W. 3
§30. Another of the four aforementioned stories where the figure of Stesichorus warns the people of a given city in the form of a fable, that is, in a specialized aspect of the ainos, is the story of "The Horse and the Deer," reportedly narrated by Stesichorus to the people of Himera on the occasion of their choosing Phalaris as tyrant of their polis (Aristotle Rhetoric 1393b8; Stesichorus PMG 281a). 1 This particular fable is cited by Aristotle as a direct parallel to the fable of "The Fox and the Hedgehog," reportedly narrated by Aesop to the people of Samos on the occasion of their impending execution of a "demagogue" (Aristotle Rhetoric 1093b22; Aesop Fable 427 Perry). 2 In yet another of the four stories, as reported by Conon FGH 26 F 1.42, Stesichorus is again telling the people of Himera the fable of "The Horse and the Deer," and the word used here by the source to designate the fable is actually ainos (1.42.1), but this time the fable is directed not against Phalaris but another Sicilian tyrant figure, Gelon, who is portrayed as making overtures to the people of Himera (ibid.). 3 Finally, in a fragment of a story reported by Philodemus On Music, p. 18 Kemke, Stesichorus is pictured as putting a stop to discord among the people of a city, by singing in their midst, just as Terpander had reputedly done in Sparta (ibid.); in another mention of this parallelism between Stesichorus and Terpander, Philodemus describes the social discord as stasis (On Music, p. 87).
§31. Such evidence illustrates the fundamental meaning of ainos, as I have defined it from the start: "An affirmation, a marked speech-act, made by and for a social group." 1 As for the social group by which and for which the ainos is encoded in Archaic Greek poetry, it is clearly the polis. Thus, for example, the figure of Theognis, as an exponent of the ainos, can be portrayed as the lawgiver of his own city (Theognis 543- 546, 805-810) 2 or as the kubernêtês 'pilot' of the Ship of State caught in the crisis of a seastorm of social strife (667-682). 3 In this context of the storm besetting the Ship of State, the righteous man is represented as having lost his own khrêmata (Theognis 667). Such a righteous man, exponent of the ainos, is conventionally alienated from the polis of his own time and place. He can be in despair about ever having the chance to witness, in his lifetime, the tisis 'retribution' of Zeus (Theognis 345) against the unjust men who forcibly seized his khrêmata 'possessions' (346) and who seem to go unpunished. These unjust men turn out to be the false philoi who have betrayed the just man, the one who navigates like a kubernêtês 'pilot' (Theognis 575- 576). 4 These are the men who seize khrêmata by force (Theognis 677) as they depose the kubernêtês (675- 676) in the Ship of State afflicted by the seastorm of social strife. 5 Clearly the loss of khrêmata 'possessions' by the righteous man (667), speaker of the ainigmata 'riddles' concerning the Ship of State (681), is linked to the forcible seizure of khrêmata by the unrighteous (677), who have mutinied against the kubernêtês 'pilot' (675-676) and who have thereby caused the breakdown of the kosmos 'social order' (677). In Pindar's Isthmian2, this same word khrêmata is used in a context where one of the Seven Sages, 6 in reaction to his personal loss of both property and friends (11),
exclaims bitterly: chrêmata chrêmat' anêr 'Man is nothing more than khrêmata! Yes, khrêmata!' (ibid.). Another variation on this bitter reaction is quoted in the lyric poetry of Alcaeus (F 360 V), again in a context where the Sage, named here as Aristodemos of Sparta, is bewailing the equation of self-worth with purely material value. 7
§32. The poet's negative outlook on his own situation, as he stands bereft of his possessions and betrayed by his friends, translates ultimately into a positive message, a genuine teaching, for the polis. Thus Pindar's quotation of the Sage's bitter words, to the effect that man is nothing but material possessions, that is, khrêmata (Isthmian2.11), is followed by the following direct address to the recipient of Pindar's words of praise and instruction: essi gar ôn sophos 'for you are skilled [i.e., in decoding these words\fR;]' (2.12). That the hearer of poetry or song must be sophos 'skilled' in decoding its words is a mark of the ainos. 1 As is evident in the poetry of Theognis, the alienation that marks the poet's own there and then on the level of narrative becomes transformed, as a teaching, into the integration that ostensibly marks the audience's here and now on the level of the ainos conveyed by the narrative. 2 In the polis of the past, the setting of the narrative, the figure of the poet decries the ongoing destruction of the social order, the kosmos (kosmos d' apolôlen Theognis677); in the polis of the present, however, which is the audience of the ainos conveyed by such narrative, the same word kosmos means simultaneously both the sum total of its inherited social order (e.g., Herodotus 1.65.4, in the case of Sparta) and the cohesion of its poetic tradition, which upholds that social order (e.g., Pindar F 194 SM, in the case of Thebes). 3 The themes of Theognis will be sung time and again by future generations of youths, in the integrative atmosphere of feasts and symposia, 'in good kosmos' (eukosmôs 242). 4
§33. With this background, we turn from the traditions of Stesichorus and Theognis to those of Archilochus, as we explore further points of comparison between the lyric of Pindar and the epic of Homer. In particular, let us consider the relationship of Archilochus to the island-communities of Paros and Thasos. The poet was traditionally represented as a founder of a colony of Paros on the island of Thasos (Delphic Oracle no. 232 Parke / Wormell). We may note in passing a similar tradition about the iambic poet Semonides: he was reputed to be a founder of a colony of Samos on the island of Amorgos (Suda 360.7). 1 The key to understanding the importance of these traditions is the historical fact that the prevailing pattern of Greek colonizations in the Archaic period was to reduplicate the society of the mother polis in the daughter polis, even to the extent of hierarchically balancing different social strata in the daughter polis to match existing social differences in the mother polis. 2 In the case of the daughter polis at Thasos, we would expect the story of its foundation to be a reenactment, as it were, of the foundation of the mother polis at Paros. Meanwhile, the poet, as a vehicle for the education of the polis in ancestral values, becomes a representative of the polis; again I refer to the tradition about Archilochus as a chorus teacher of the polis. 3
§34. As a representative of the polis, Archilochus becomes a founder of a duplicated Parian society at Thasos, simply by virtue of Archilochean poetry. Archilochus becomes an expression of the function of his poetry. In that sense he is generic. So too are the other characters who figure in the Archilochus tradition. There is, for example, Lukambês (as in Archilochus F 38 W),
whose name is connected with the very notion of iambos 'iamb'. 1 Also there is Kharilâos (Archilochus F 168.1 W), whose name suggests the programmatic notion of 'mirth' for the community. 2 Further, the mother of Archilochus is reportedly a 'slave-woman' called Enîpô (Critias 88 B 44 DK in Aelian Varia Historia 10.13), whose name is formed from the noun enîpê, meaning 'reproach' and specifically applicable to blame poetry. 3 The father of Archilochus is Telesikleês (e.g., Archilochus T 2 Tarditi), whose name combines the notion of poetic fame or kleos with the notion of rites as conveyed by the element telesi- (related to telea 'rites'). 4 Similarly an earlier ancestor of Archilochus is Tellis, husband of one Kleoboia, who is reputed to have introduced the rites of Demeter to Thasos (Archilochus T 121 Tarditi by way of Pausanias 10.28.3); 5 we are reminded of the Archilochus fragment where the poet is represented as participating in the rites of Demeter and Kore (F 322 W). As for Kleoboia 'having poetic fame [kleos] for cows', the name corresponds to the myth where the young Archilochus meets the Muses, who trade him a lyre, and the skill of poetry that goes with it, for the cow that he is tending (Mnesiepes Inscription, Archilochus T 4.27-30 Tarditi). 6
§35. In the local myth Telesikles, the father of Archilochus, 'announces' the colonization of Thasos, but Archilochus leads it. The story goes (Oenomaus, Archilochus T 116 Tarditi) that Telesikles consults the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi, where he is told
angeilon Pariois, Telesiklees, hôs se keleuô nêsôi en Êeriêi ktizein eudeielon astu.
Delphic Oracle no. 230 Parke / Wormell
Announce to the Parians, Telesikles, that I order you to found a sunlit city on the island of Aeria [= Thasos].
The narrative goes on to say explicitly that had Telesikles not 'announced' the command of the Oracle, Archilochus would not have led a colonizing expedition to Thasos and Thasos would never have been colonized by Paros (Oenomaus ibid.). In a variant (again Oenomaus: Archilochus T 114 Tarditi), Archilochus himself consults the Oracle, after having lost his property en politikêi phluariai 'in the course of some political foolishness' (Oenomaus ibid.), and he is told directly to colonize Thasos:
Archiloch' eis Thason elthe kai oikei euklea nêson
Delphic Oracle no. 232 Parke / Wormell
Archilochus! Go to Thasos and colonize that island of good kleos.
In yet another variant (Oenomaus, Archilochus T 115 Tarditi) 1 the Oracle says to Telesikles that Archilochus will be immortalized in poetry:
athanatos soi pais kai aoidimos, ô Telesikleis,
esset' en anthrôpois
Delphic Oracle no. 231 Parke / Wormell
Your son, Telesikles, will be immortal, a subject of song among men.
It is clear that the fame of Archilochus is linked with the theme of his colonizing Thasos, a theme that is also dramatized in his poetry.
§36. Why exactly does Archilochus colonize Thasos? It is because he lost his possessions in civil strife (Archilochus T 114 Tarditi). We may compare the implicit theme of civil strife in the story of the foundation of Syracuse, Archilochus F 293 W. This brings us back to the central themes of Theognis667-682, the riddling passage about the loss of a man's khrêmata 'possessions' (667) and about the crisis of the Ship of State beset by a seastorm of civil strife (671-680), all told in the mode of an ainos. 1
§37. Despite the self-identification of any piece of Archaic poetry or song with the polis of its origin, the strategy of the ainos requires, already in the Archaic period, an impact that is Panhellenic as well as local. Although the poet of the ainos may be addressing specifically the people of the polis, the prestige of the moment is meant to be overheard, as it were, by all Hellenes. This double-sidedness is particularly evident in the poetry of Theognis, who in the space of a single verse identifies himself as a citizen of one particular polis, Megara, while at the same time proclaiming his own Panhellenic fame (Theognis 23). 1 It is also evident that this poetry associates the uncertainties of audience reception with the here and now of performance in Megara (Theognis 24-28, 253-254), and the certainty of audience acceptance with the future of many reperformances throughout the cities of the Hellenes (19-23, 237-252, where we may note the plethora of future tenses). 2 Retrospectively we may say that the format of ainos in the poetics of Theognis represents Panhellenic poetry, but even this representation must be translated into the concept of local performances for local audiences, albeit in the future. 3
§38. The essential point about the pre-Classical phase of the ainos in particular and of Greek lyric poetry in general is that local or epichoric poetry is already becoming Panhellenic through diffusion. In the case of Theognis, for example, we see local Megarian traditions becoming international, that is, inter-polis, by way of the polis. In this case internationalization of the native poetic tradition goes so far as to filter out the native Dorian dialect of Megara. 1
§39. In the earlier phases of attested Greek lyric poetry, the price of Panhellenization is that the identity of the poet as composer becomes progressively stylized, becoming ever further distanced from the reality of self-identification through performance. The key to loss of identity as a composer is loss of control over performance. 1 Once the factor of performance slips out of the poet's control, even if the performers of his poetry have a tradition of what to say about the poet as a composer, nevertheless, the poet becomes a myth; more accurately, the poet becomes part of a
myth, and the myth-making structure appropriates his identity. 2
§40. At times it is hard to tell whether a given Archaic Greek poet is engaged in a given social function or whether it is his composition, performed and continually recomposed by others, that continues to perform that social function. In the case of Alcman, for example, we have seen indications that his choral productions kept being performed at the Spartan festival of the Gymnopaidiai for centuries after the era identified with this poet. 1 What may seem to us uncanny, as we examine the text of Alcman's surviving compositions, is that we can detect traces of self- reference beyond one single historical occasion. Specifically the persona of the poet seems to be referring to himself as being present at performances throughout the ages, continually fulfilling the social function of educating young girls to sing and dance in a chorus. 2 Not only is Alcman's lyric poetry re-created for each performance, but the figure of the creator himself keeps returning as a sort of eternal khorêgos 'chorus leader'. 3
§41. In a place like Sparta of the Classical period, one begins to wonder if there is any current activity at all in the craft of poetry and song that is not a matter of recomposing earlier models. 1 The testimonia concerning a figure like Tyrtaeus of Sparta, for example, suggest that his poetry alone was sufficient for a wide variety of performance occasions (e.g., Philochorus FGH 328 F 216 in Athenaeus 630f; Lycurgus Against Leokrates 106-107).
§42. There is a parallel phenomenon in the poetry of Theognis. The poet is dramatized as being present at crucial stages in the history of his city, Megara, though the local color is consistently screened out in favor of a generalized Panhellenic highlighting. 1 We see the phenomenon of the continually reconstituted poet, who is continually present at the events of his city. But the poet's impact is Panhellenic, even though the vantage point is the here and now of one particular locale. 2
§43. In the Archaic period, then, there are indeed poets of the polis. But they are from the very start more Panhellenic than local. They may be exponents of one polis, but the polis itself makes these poets Panhellenic figures, by way of diffusion in recomposition. The diffusion of a poetic tradition may be represented in myth by way of a poet's travels. The ultimate example is the figure of Homer, who is pictured in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo as traveling throughout the cities of humanmankind (174-175). 1
§44. Approaching the end of this retrospective survey of Panhellenism in Archaic Greek lyric, we arrive at perhaps the most subtle example, the case of Sappho and Alcaeus. Here too, as with the other traditions that we have examined, we find the claim to Panhellenic or catholic status. For example, the expression perrochos ôs ot' aoidos o Lesbios 'outstanding like the poet from Lesbos' in Sappho F 106 V, words of praise for Terpander as the 'poet of Lesbos' who is supreme among poets, 1 presupposes the international status of Terpander, as we see from the parallel theme in a proverb associated with the traditions of Sparta, meta lesbion ôidon 'second in rank only to the poet from Lesbos' (Suda s.v.). 2 By implication Sappho's lyric poetry stems from the traditions of the first-ranking poet of lyric, Terpander. In the Dorian tradition of Pindar, we have seen a comparable acknowledgment of Terpander, but here the stress is on the Dorian layer of the
tradition, which was superimposed on the Aeolian layer of Terpander's native Lesbos when he came to Sparta (Pindar F 191 SM). 3 This superimposition is reflected in the dialectal layering of Pindaric diction: dominant Doric, recessive Aeolic, and residual Ionic. 4 But there are earlier stages of superimposition reflected in the dialectal layering of Sappho and Alcaeus: dominant Aeolic synthesized with recessive Ionic. 5 We may add the testimony of Cologne Papyri 5860, where Sappho is described as the 'educator' of the aristai, the female élite, of Lesbos and Ionia. To say that Sappho is an 'educator' is a prosaic way of saying that her assumed role, through her lyric poetry, is that of khorêgos 'chorus leader', speaking both to and about members of an aggregate of female characters who are bound together by ties that correspond to the ties that bind a chorus together. 6 The ties that bind together the circle of Sappho are not local but international, that is, inter-polis, as we see from the reference to her being an 'educator' of the élite in Lesbos and in Ionia at large. The stance of the poet is local, even personal, but the impact is Panhellenic, in that the self-expression of the lyric poetry is not exclusive, understandable only for the local community. The local color is shaded over except insofar as any detail may already have a claim to Panhellenic fame. The Panhellenic impact of Sappho and Alcaeus accounts for the reports of performances at symposia of compositions attributed to them (e.g., Plutarch Sympotic Questions 622c in the case of Sappho, Aristophanes F 223 Kock in the case of Alcaeus). 7
§45. From this overview of the effects of Panhellenism on the traditions of Archaic Greek song and poetry, we have by now seen a wide range of developments:
ongoing recomposition of nonlyric poetry by way of rhapsodes in formal contexts such as festivals 1
ongoing recomposition of lyric poetry, that is, song, by way of choruses performing in
ongoing recomposition of both kinds of poetry in less formal contexts, most notably symposia. 3
§46. The information that has been assembled in this survey encourages me to stand by a theory
that I articulated in an earlier work, on the poetry of Theognis: 1 the figure of the Archaic poet represents a cumulative synthesis of a given city-state's poetic traditions. The major advantage to this theory is that the poetry of a given poet like Archilochus or Theognis may then be appreciated as a skillful and effective--maybe even beautiful--dramatization of the polis through the ages. The major disadvantage on the other hand is that the notion of a historical figure called, say, Archilochus or Theognis, may have to be abandoned. This is not to say, however, that the persona of the poet does not inform the entire corpus of his or her poetry. The poetry or song actually brings to life the integral and lively personality of one man or one woman, whose complex identity is perhaps the one constant in the changing world of his or her beloved city. If this theory is tantamount to calling the Archaic poet a "myth," then so be it, provided that myth can be understood as a given society's codification of its own traditional values in narrative and dramatic form.
§47. In the earlier phases, then, of Greek lyric poetry, the trend of Panhellenization entails an ongoing recompositon of not only the poetry but also the identity of the poet, which is
appropriated by the poetry. But things are changing in the later phases of Greek lyric poetry, in the era of Pindar and such contemporaries as Simonides and Bacchylides. This is the era when the system of reciprocity within the community at large, as represented by the polis, is breaking down. 1 It is an era when individuals can achieve the power to overreach the polis itself, and the pattern of overreaching extends to the realm of song. As I have argued, such power includes the specific power to arrest the ongoing process of recomposition by the polis, so that both poetry and poet can become Panhellenic and yet remain unchanging, unchanged. In this brave new world, the craft of song is ever in danger of shifting from an expression of community to an expression of the indvidual. That individual is the expressing poet on the one hand and the expressed patron, the "great" man of overarching power, on the other. The power of the individual is a potential threat as well as boon to the community. In the real world, the "great" men who are being praised are the potential tyrants and quasityrants that are being generated by the aristocracy. In the ideological world of a poet like Pindar, in contrast, the aristocracy remains an ideal that must resist the degeneration that breeds tyrants. That ideal is still expressed through Pindar's traditional medium, the ainos. The ainos is not only Panhellenic. Unlike epic, which is exclusively Panhellenic, a delocalized synthesis of native traditions, the ainos purports to be both Panhellenic and local, grounding its Panhellenized truth-values in the legitimacy and authority of native traditions, which shift from city to city and which are the context for the here and now of performance. The tyrant may attempt to use the ainos for his own political ends, but the ainos of a poet like Pindar is also a world apart, drawing its strength from the values of the heroic past that is Pindar's Homer.
§48. In claiming that the form of Pindar contains diachronically the form of Homer, we need never forget the radical differences between Pindar and Homer. If we think of the medium, then Pindar represents song and dance performed by a chorus, while Homer is epic, performed by rhapsôidoi 'rhapsodes'. If we think of the author, then Pindar is a historical person of the fifth century, whereas Homer seems to be a myth-made personification, a stylized retrojection into the dark ages antedating recorded history. The point of contact can be symbolized in the medium of the kitharôidos 'lyre singer'. The diachronic self-references of Homeric poetry, on the one hand, picture the epic poet as a lyre singer. 1 The choral compositions of epinician poets like Pindar, on the other hand, can be reperformed at symposia as solo pieces that are self-accompanied on the lyre. 2 In fact such solo performance was the ultimate sign of education, of direct access to the true old values. 3 The meeting point between Homer and Pindar survives in the medium of the kitharôidos, which reflects the complex patterns of transition from choral to solo performance.
§49. The presence of heroic narrative in Pindar is the continuation of a living tradition, not the preservation of references to lost epic texts. As for things Homeric, they do not necessarily survive in Pindar as the Homer that we know--even if Pindar calls them Homer's tradition-- because the two traditions of Homeric poetry and Pindaric song, though they are cognate with each other, each have their own momentum and direction of development. This is not to say that Pindaric song cannot "cite" Homer. But the form in which Homer is "cited" is a transformation of Homer, in metrical frames that are basic to Pindar's form though admittedly cognate with Homer's form. The Homeric themes are also transformed within the poetic requirements of Pindar's cognate medium. From the lofty vantage point of Pindaric song, Homer is Pindar's Homer. Pindaric song is both staying in the present and reaching back into the past within itself. It does
not have to go outside for the purpose of bringing the epic inside. Epic is within it, and from it Epic shall forever flow.
Notes
§1n1. Ch.6.
§1n2. Ch.6, Ch.7.
§2n1. Farnell 1932.21. Cf. Stoneman 1981, especially p. 63.
§2n2. While taking into account these passages, Nisetich 1989.70-72 nonetheless argues for "Pindar's preference of the Iliad over the poems of the epic cycle" (p. 70). I prefer to say, instead, that Pindar's tradition, evolving as it does well into the fifth century, is therefore responsive to the evolution of epic tradition, crystallized at a much earlier stage. The basic fact in the evolution of early Greek epic tradition is that the Iliad and Odyssey achieved a preeminence over the Cycle: see ch.2. Accordingly, we may expect cases where this preeminence is reflected in Pindaric references to epic. The point remains, however, that there are also cases where Pindar's wording makes no distinction between versions proper to the Iliad and those that we find in the Cycle (as Nisetich concedes at pp. 71-72).
§2n3. Nisetich, p. 73n2, concedes that we may indeed have here a case where the authorship of the Cycle is being attributed by Pindar to Homer, but he insists that Pindar would still have thought the Iliad to be superior to the Cypria. I prefer a different perspective: if indeed we understand Aelian correctly, and Pindar's words had really referred to Homer as the poet of the Cypria, I would interpret this reference to mean that Pindar's tradition accepts the rhapsodic tradition of performing the Cypria as the genuine Homeric tradition.
§2n4. See Ch.1§10n4, Ch.2§43n1, Ch.2§49.
§3n1. Cf. Ch.2§37 and following.
§3n2. On the notion of evolutionary differentiation in Homeric and Hesiodic poetry, see Ch. 2§5n2.
§4n1. Cf. again Farnell 1932.21.
§5n1. Detailed discussion at Ch.7§5 and following. For reinforcement from the self-references of epic, see Ch.6§91 and following.
§5n2. Cf. Ch.7§5 and following.
§6n1. Cf. Ch.1§56 and following.
§6n2. In reaching these figures, I am counting Isthmian3 and 4 as one composition; also I am including the fragmentary Isthmian9. In Olympian13, there is an exceptional case of coexistence between dactylo-epitrite and Aeolic, with Aeolic modulating into dactylo-epitrite.
§6n3. Cf. Appendix §28 and following.
§6n4. In the survey of Archaic hexameters by West 1982.36, the overall ratio of occurrences in word breaking shaped _m_m_" {FORMAT} and _m_m_o" {FORMAT} is respectively 3:4. On the dactylo-epitrite and Aeolic associations of the patterns _m_m_" {FORMAT} and
_m_m_o" {FORMAT} respectively in hexameter, see Appendix §28 and following.
§6n5. West ibid. gives the following statistics for the nonoccurrence of the main caesura: 1.4% in the Iliad, 0.9% in the Odyssey.
§6n6. On this term, see Appendix §1.
§8n2. On the dialectal hierarchy of dominant Doric and recessive Aeolic in Pindaric diction, see Palmer 1980.123-127. On the Ionisms in Pindar, see, for example, Palmer, p. 125. These Ionisms need not be interpreted as direct borrowings from "Homer" but rather as reflexes of an Ionic tradition cognate with the Homeric.
§9n1. On which see Ch.3§8, Ch.3§23.
§9n2. On the evidence for Ionic in Lesbian poetic diction, see the summary in Bowie 1981.136.
§9n4. I cite again, for an overview of the dialectal texture of choral lyric traditions, Palmer 1980.119-130.
§11n2. Cf. Ch.14§6. Roughly another half of Homeric hexameters is taken up by phraseological patterns where the main word break occurs immediately after the sequence _m_m_o {FORMAT} ("feminine" caesura).
§11n3. Cf. Appendix §28 and following.
§12n1. Cf. Ch.1§56 and following.
§13n1. Cf. Cingano 1982.32. On the eidôlon 'image-double' of Helen at Troy (Stesichorus PMG
193.5 and 14), see also Hesiod F 358 MW. On the faulting of Helen for being seduced by Paris, see also Stesichorus PMG 223 in conjunction with Hesiod F 176.7. Cf. Kannicht 1969 I 38-41.
§13n2. Kannicht 1969 I 28-29 argues, from the wording of Isocrates Helen 64, that the blaming and the recantation would have taken place not in two separate poems but within a single poem, where Stesichorus shifts from blaming to recantation. Cf. also Woodbury 1967. In the discussion that follows, I propose to build on this argument by positing a dramatized change of heart within the framework of the composition. For other sources concerning the recantation of Stesichorus, see Cingano 1982.22-23, who argues that Stesichorus was traditionally credited with two, not
one, recantations offered to Helen.
§14n1. Other references in Cingano, p. 31n42.
§16n1. Cf. Ch.2§37 and following.
§17n1. Cf. Ch.2§37 and following.
§18n1. For an updated repertory, see Stesichorus SLG 88-147.
§18n2. Cf. Appendix §28. I avoid saying that the lyric poetry of Stesichorus is a direct prototype of the lyric poetry of Pindar. Similarly I avoid saying that the lyric poetry of Sappho and Alcaeus is another direct prototype.
§19n2. Fuller discussion in N 1979.16-17.
§20n2. See Ch.2§12n1 and Ch.9§2n4.
§20n3. Cf. Ch.5§11, Ch.5§15. Cf. Burnett 1988.129-147, with special reference to Stesichorus.
§21n1. Quoted at Ch.6§3. Commentary in N 1979.222-223. For an instance of etumos 'genuine' as applied to logos, in the sense of 'what men tell', see Pindar Pythian1.68, where we note that the collocation includes the verb diakrînô in the sense of 'discriminate' what is genuine from what is false.
§21n2. This word can be understood in the context of Odyssey i 5: polla...pathen algea 'he experienced many pains'. The multiplicity of Odysseus' experiences is thematically pertinent. On the convention of juxtaposing a single absolute alêtheia 'truth' with a multiplicity of mûthoi 'myths', which are deceptive, see Ch.2§28 and following.
§22n2. It is typical of Panhellenic poetics to juxtapose a single absolute alêtheia 'truth' with the multiplicity of mûthoi 'myths', which are deceptive because they are mutually contradictory, like the lies of Odysseus; see N 1982.47-49. Also Ch.2§28 and following.
§22n3. Cf. Ch.2§28 and following.
§22n4. Further discussion in N 1979.231-242, especially p. 235.
§23n1. N 1979.222-223.
§23n2. N, pp. 241-242. Cf. Hubbard 1985.99-100.
§24n1. These "quoted" words of Amphiaraos to Amphilokhos are described as a parainesis by Athenaeus 513c; cf. also the cognate passage, composed in dactylic hexameters and not attributed to any specific author, cited by Athenaeus 317ab. In this passage, the word that designates the different communities is not polis but dêmos (on which see Ch.2§12n1).
§24n2. The verb prosomileô 'associate with' anticipates a person or community of persons as an object, as at Theognis31-32, but here the language of the tenor ("a person associates with a certain kind of company") crosses over into the language of the vehicle ("just as an octopus clings to a certain kind of rock"). For the terms tenor and vehicle: Richards 1936.96. Cf. Steiner 1986, especially p. 2. Further application of Richards' terms in Petegorsky 1982.
§24n3. This passage is cited by Athenaeus 317a, as a parallel to the anonymous passage in dactylic hexameters "quoting" the instructions of the hero Amphiaraos to his son Amphilokhos.
§25n1. Cf. Ch.8§24 and following, especially Ch.8§30.
§25n2. Cf. N 1979.231-237; also 1983.36 (with p. 52n5) and 1985.75-76.
§25n3. Ibid.
§25n4. See van Groningen 1966.265. We may compare Sophocles Electra 690: hen d' isthi 'I want you to know this one thing'.
§26n1. On the implication of a mantis at Theognis682, see the commentary by N 1985.24-25.
§26n2. N, p. 76.
§26n3. Extensive discussion in N 1985.74-81.
§27n1. Cf. Ch.6§3 and following, especially Ch.6§90.
§29n1. There is a list in West 1971.302-303. On the ambivalence of the ainos in either warning about tyranny or on other occasions praising given tyrants as "kings," see Ch.6§54 and following.
§29n2. See Ch.6§6; also N 1985.22-24.
§29n3. N 1979.302.
§30n1. As Lefkowitz 1981.34 points out, Phalaris was tyrant of Akragas, not Himera. But perhaps the story here concerns an invitation issued by one city to the tyrant of another, as in the story about Stesichorus and Gelon, to be discussed presently.
§30n2. This fable of "The Fox and the Hedgehog" is cognate with what we find in Archilochus F 201 W, discussed at Ch.14§25.
§30n3. We may compare the stories about Aesop and his warnings to the people of Samos, by way of fables directed against the tyrant Croesus of Lydia: Ch.11§18 and following.
§31n1. Cf. Ch.1§28; also Ch.6§4.
§31n2. Commentary in N 1985.36-38.
§31n3. Commentary in N, pp. 22-24, 63, 64-68.
§31n4. Commentary in N, pp. 67-68, 71.
§31n5. N, p. 71.
§31n6. On the theme of the Seven Sages, see Ch.8§44n2.
§32n2. This point is argued at length in N 1985.27-46.
§32n4. For the corresponding negative situation, where social disorder is marked by the absence of kosmos at a feast, see Solon F 4.10 W.
§33n1. Cf. Schmid 1947.17.
§33n2. See Figueira 1981.192-202, especially p. 199. Also Ch.2§37n1.
§34n1. N 1979.248-252.
§34n2. N 1979.258-259 (and 91-93).
§34n3. Further discussion, with bibliography, in N 1979.247-248. The lowly social status of Enîpô makes Archilochus a nothos 'bastard', the product of socially unequal parents; as such, his persona resembles that of Kyrnos, the prime recipient of loving admonition in the poetry of Theognis. As I argue at length in N 1985.51-60 (cf. also Ch.6§66), the name Kurnos conveys the notion of 'bastard', in the transcendent sense of one who is debased by material excess; the name simultaneously conveys the notion of 'prince', as an appropriate designation of a Heraclid (N, p. 33). Thus the very name Kurnos is a riddle, an ainos.
§34n4. Cf. West 1974.24
§34n5. From Pausanias' description (10.28.3) of the painting of Polygnotus located in the Lesche of the Knidians (and I emphasize that Polygnotus was a native of Thasos), we note that Kleoboia is represented as offering a kibôtos 'box' to Demeter; she is shown crossing the Acheron in a boat, along with Tellis.
§34n6. Cf. N 1979.303; also Ch.12§50n6.
§35n1. This variant is also attested in the Mnesiepes Inscription, Archilochus T 4 II 43-57 Tarditi.
§37n1. Commentary in N 1985.29.
§37n2. Detailed discussion at N, pp. 34-35; p. 35 §17n1, 2 on the future tenses of
Theognis19-23, 237-252.
§39n2. Ibid.
§40n1. Cf. Ch.12§15n3.
§40n2. Cf. Ch.12§61 and following.
§41n1. We may note in this connection the absence of any Pindaric epinician celebrating a Spartan.
§42n1. N 1985.30-36.
§42n2. Cf. Ch.12§61 and following.
§43n1. N 1979.8; also Ch.12§71 and following.
§44n2. Under the entry meta lesbion ôidon in the Suda, it is explained that the proverb refers to the story that the Spartans invited, from among all the kitharôidoi 'lyre singers', those from Lesbos first (tous Lesbious kitharôidous prôtous prosekalounto); that when the polis of Sparta was in disorder, an oracle told them to send for the singer from Lesbos; when Terpander arrived at Sparta, he put an end to the stasis 'social strife' (ibid.). On Terpander as kitharôidos, see Ch. 3§8. We may note another detail under the same entry in the Suda: tradition has it that Terpander came to Sparta while in exile from Lesbos on account of a blood guilt. This theme may imply hero
cult in the making, as in the myth about Oedipus at Colonus, where the hero is exiled from Thebes on account of his blood guilt and is thereafter purified at Athens, in response to which the hero donates to the Athenians his own corpse as the talisman of his represented hero cult at Colonus; cf. Ch.6§59.
§44n5. Ibid.
§44n6. Cf. Ch.12§60. On the role of khorêgos 'chorus leader' as educator of the community, see the discussion of Alcman at Ch.12§17 and following; also of Archilochus at Ch.13§32 and following.
§44n7. Cf. Ch.3§48. Cf. the mythopoeic visualization of Terpander as he sings at the sussitia
'common meals' of the Spartans (Suda s.v. meta lesbion ôidon.
§45n1. For example, Ch.2§7 and following.
§45n2. For example, Ch.12§14 and following (Alcman), Ch.12§46n4 (Stesichorus).
§45n3. For example, Ch.3§48, Ch.3§52, Ch.3§54, Ch.3§55, Ch.3§56 and following.
§46n1. N 1985.33-34.
§47n1. Cf. Ch.6§78 and following.
§48n1. Cf. Ch.1§9 and following.
§48n2. Cf. Ch.3§56 and following.
§48n3. Ibid.
The Best of the Achaeans Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry Revised Edition
Gregory Nagy
Copyright © 1980, 1997 The Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved. First edition 1979. Revised edition 1999. This document may be used, with this notice included, for noncommercial purposes within a subscribed
institution. No copies of this work may be distributed electronically outside of the subscribed institution, in whole or in part, without written permission from the JHU Press.
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§1. The Best of the Achaeans is intended for both non-specialists and specialists in Homer and in other forms of archaic Greek poetry.[1] More generally, it is for non-Classicists as well as Classicists (that is, those who study Greek and Roman antiquity). All quotations from the ancient texts are translated, and all cited words are defined in context.
§2. This book is about how to read Homer--both the Iliad and the Odyssey--and various related forms of Greek poetry in the archaic period, most notably the Hesiodic Theogony and Works and Days and the Homeric Hymns, especially the Apollo, the Demeter, and the Aphrodite. Other related poetic forms include the praise poetry of Pindar and the blame poetry of Archilochus. The readings are infused with references to non-canonical traditions as well, especially women's laments and the earliest attested versions of Aesop's fables.
§3. The object of all the readings is to understand simultaneously the form as well as the content of a wide variety of traditional media conveying various basic concepts of the ancient Greek hero. The most basic of all these concepts is a single all-pervasive historical fact of the archaic period and beyond: the cult of heroes. Heroes were not only the subjects of narrative and dramatic media but also the objects of worship. This book integrates heroic song, poetry, and prose with the ancestral practices of a wide variety of hero-cults (Introduction.§16-19). More generally, it explores the heroic tradition within the cultural context of Panhellenism, to be defined as an early form of Hellenism that eventually became the nucleus of Classicism (Introduction.§13-15).
§4. The Best of the Achaeans was completed in 1978 and first published in 1979. Now, twenty years later, I have a chance to revisit. The present foreword highlights the specifics of what has changed and what remains stable.
§5. I start with the main points of consistency. This 1998 edition is "archaeological," adding to the general argumentation only the essentials for supplementing what I knew twenty years ago. I have preserved the original text and page-numbering of the 1979 edition for the introduction and for all the chapters as well as the appendix. The Bibliography has been updated with additions. Here too, however, I have maintained an "archaeological" stance, concentrating on research that directly follows up on the arguments made in the 1979 edition. The addenda in the text proper of this second edition, which are mostly cross-references to new points raised in this Foreword or to new entries in the Bibliography, have been inserted at the ends of the 1979 footnotes. The corrigenda in the text proper of this second edition, mostly minor, have been entered without further comment.
§6. There is not much in the book, I find, that needs to be corrected for factual mistakes, and there is practically nothing in the contents that I would wish to retract. There are, however, things that needed to be restated, and this Foreword addresses that need. [1] There is also a great deal that could be added. Much of that has been done in a 1990 book providing additional context, Pindar's Homer.[2] The argumentation has been developed further in two 1996 books, Homeric
Questions and Poetry as Performance: Homer and Beyond. [3]
§7. Homeric and Hesiodic poetry are the focus of chapters 1-10 and 20. That set of chapters can be read independently of the rest, yielding a more compressed book of 240 pages. For those who wish to concentrate on Homer alone, the book can be compressed further: chapters 1-8 and 20 are likewise self-contained--a total of 180 pages. I worry that some readers of the first edition may have stopped at chapters 8 or 9 and never made their way to chapter 20, where I offer retrospectives and overviews essential to my argumentation about Homer. My hope, in any case, is that the reader will take on the whole book, which addresses a variety of topics that are essential for understanding archaic Greek poetry.[1]
§8. For my reading of Homer and other forms of archaic Greek poetry, I rely on the traditional methodology of Classicists, combined with other empirical methods drawn from research in anthropology, linguistics, and oral poetics. This combination of approaches occasionally makes my specific readings different, in varying degrees, from those of my immediate predecessors. Such differences help explain some problems of reception, especially in the earlier years that followed initial publication. Over the last two decades, however, the argumentation of Best of the Achaeans has held up. Citations of the book in ongoing research reflect its expanding influence, [1] and much of what seemed controversial then is no longer so now.[2]
§9. Debate persists, however, on various levels. Some of it goes back to negative reactions at the time of initial publication. The sheer animosity of a few of the criticisms directed at my work surprised me at first. After all, I consistently avoid personal polemics in Best of the Achaeans. Why, I asked myself, has this book made some critics so angry? One answer, shaped by years of retrospection, is that it all comes down to assumptions that I challenge in the book. As I look back at the subtitle of my introduction, "assumptions, methods, results," I now see in this wording a clue to a source of provocation.
§10. The methods of Best of the Achaeans not only achieve new results: they also call into question various assumptions essential to the Homeric interpretations of various critics. Ironically, much of the initial criticism leveled against the book was based on the same assumptions that my methods and results have challenged. There is a further irony: a few continue to assert these assumptions as if they were facts. Another reaction is to say, in effect, that no one has made such arguments before, and what right does anyone have to make them now? I resist using up this space with a bibliography of such polemics, since I hope to keep this second edition free, like the first one, of the ephemeral.[1] Rather, I concentrate on the actual assumptions that caused the problem in the first place. These assumptions have taken on many forms, but they all come down to a simple enough notion: that oral poetry is lacking in cohesion and artistry. Therefore, the thinking goes, Homeric poetry must be explained in terms that transcend oral poetry.
§11. Here I revisit the basic questions, starting with the basic fact that drives these questions: a major challenge to our reading of archaic Greek poetry, especially Homer, is its heritage as oral poetry. Oral traditions, including oral poetry, depend on performance. In oral poetry, unlike written poetry, performance is a necessity, not an option. Moreover, the ongoing empirical study of a wide variety of living oral traditions makes it clear that any given performance becomes an occasion for some degree of recomposition-in-performance (the actual degrees of recomposition will of course vary in different contexts or phases).[1] How, then, do we read something that was
meant to be performed, not read from a book? How do we read something that is subject to change in each performance? These are the questions that I seek to answer in Best of the Achaeans, focusing on two key Homeric passages as my starting point: the first song of Demodokos in Odyssey viii and the "embassy scene" in Iliad IX.
§12. Mention of the word "passages" raises an even more basic question, stemming from an obvious fact: Homeric poetry survives because it was written down. The question, then, is as obvious as the fact: how did archaic Greek poetry, especially Homer, get written down in the first place? As of now, no direct answer is available. Nor is there any consensus about why or how or even when Homeric poetry was written down. One thing and one thing only, it seems to me, is certain: no one has ever been able to prove that the technology of writing had been necessary for either the composition or the performance of Homeric poetry.[1]
§13. So much for the negative side. On the positive, I argue that Homeric poetry (by which I mean the Iliad and Odyssey combined) is a system, and that this system can be explained consistently in terms of oral poetics. The application of linguistics is vital for the argument.[1] The Homeric textual tradition is the primary evidence for this system, but it cannot be equated with the system itself.[2] My linguistic approach to the poetic and textual traditions of Homer extends to the other forms of archaic Greek poetry as well. Here is how James Redfield describes my methodology:
His concern is not with particular works per se but with the underlying system of meanings common to the epic tradition and inherited by Greek poets down to Pindar. This is a system, not as geometry is a system, but as a culture is a system; there is a high degree of redundancy, of alternative ways of expressing the same or similar ideas, of making similar distinctions. Terms are not connected by relations of identity but of analogy; themes are displayed through their variations. [3]
§14. My reading of Homer, especially of the passages in Odyssey viii and Iliad IX, has occasionally been disputed on the grounds that it gives the impression of literary rather than oral poetics. Such an impression, however, stems from unjustified negative assumptions about oral poetics. There is no evidence for assuming that oral poetry is by nature unsystematic. The results of my readings, which add up to show that Homeric poetry is indeed a system, cannot be used as ammunition for claiming that Homer is therefore not "oral."
§15. The results of my readings show also that the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey are complementary, and that this complementarity is itself a system in its own right. [1] Here again, I resist the assumptions of critics who try to explain this system in terms that transcend oral poetry. The first song of Demodokos in Odyssey viii and the "embassy scene" of Iliad IX provide striking examples of the system at work. Throughout Best of the Achaeans, I explain the organic complementarity of the Iliad and the Odyssey precisely in terms of oral poetics.[2]
§16. A central theme unites the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey: just as Achilles emerges as the "best of the Achaeans" in the Iliad, so too Odysseus becomes "best of the Achaeans" in the Odyssey (Ch.1§13). Moreover, the kleos or epic glory of Achilles in the Iliad is both complemented and contested by the kleos of Odysseus in the Odyssey (Ch.2§§10-18).[1] A key is the Odyssean
theme of nostos in the sense of 'song about a homecoming', not just 'homecoming' (Ch.6§6n2). Ironically, as I argue, Odysseus achieves the kleos or epic glory of the Odyssey not because he destroyed Troy (a feat heralded at the very start of his epic) but because he achieves a nostos in both senses of the word: he comes home and thereby becomes the premier hero of a song about homecoming (Ch.2§11).[2]
§17. There are further related ironies. Achilles has to choose between kleos and nostos, forfeiting nostos in order to achieve his kleos as the central hero of the Iliad (Ch.2§11), but Odysseus must have both in order to merit his heroic status in the Odyssey (Ch.2§§12-16). The narrative of the kleos that Odysseus earns in the Odyssey cannot be the Iliad, which means "Troy Tale" (Ilion is the other name for Troy). The Iliad establishes Achilles as the central hero of the story of Troy, even though he failed to destroy the city. Because of the Iliad tradition, "the kleos of Odysseus at Troy was preempted by the kleos of Achilles" (Ch.2§17).[1]
§18. There is a final irony, developed in the narrative of the Odyssey (xi 489-491): Achilles in Hades seems tempted to trade epics with Odysseus (Ch.2§11).[1] This he will never do, of course, in his own epic. As Achilles himself predicts in the Iliad (IX 413), the kleos of his own song will be áphthiton 'unwilting' (Ch.2§3).
§19. My arguments about the patterns of complementarity between the Iliad and the Odyssey can be extended much further. There are also patterns of complementarity between Homeric and Hesiodic poetry, adding up to an even more generalized unity.[1] The compressed narrative about epic heroes in the Hesiodic Works and Days, for instance, complements the ultimately expanded narrative of the Homeric Iliad (Ch.9§29).[2] Herodotus, the "father of history," describes the unity of Homer and Hesiod in cultural terms that convey the sum total of Greek civilization (2.53.1-3).[3] In any case, this unity can be described as an overall cultural system, which needs to be "read" as an oral tradition mediated by a script tradition.[4] Here we see the foundations of Panhellenism (Introduction §§14-16). [5]
§20. Even more generally, it is possible to argue that all forms of archaic Greek poetry complement each other. Cases in point are the relationship of epic and praise poetry (Ch.12), of praise and blame poetry (Ch.14). The patterns of complementarity emerge from reading the ipsissima verba, the words of the tradition themselves. That is how Milman Parry and Albert Lord, my teacher, have read Homer. At the very start of my book, I invoke their favorite words for form and content, "diction" and "theme" (Introduction §1), in arguing that the diction of archaic Greek poetry is a most accurate expression of its themes. The Introduction goes on to describe this fundamental stance ironically as "literal minded" (§7). The irony has been lost, I notice, on a few literal minded critics.
§21. What has given my book its staying power is that it strives to achieve a coherent picture of a coherent system of ancient Greek poetics, to the degree that each detail of my analysis is meant to stay true to each constituent detail of that system. The coherence of the book results not from the sequencing of contents page by page but from the coherence of the system that emerges cumulatively from an overall reading.
§22. For my reading of Homer, I do not invoke theories of intertextuality.[1] Instead, I have developed what I call an evolutionary model for the textualization of Homer, without
presupposing that the actual composition of the "text" required the medium of writing .[2] According to this model, there were at least five distinct consecutive periods of Homeric oral | written transmission, "Five Ages of Homer," as it were, with each period showing progressively less fluidity and more rigidity. [3] I argue that our Homeric text results from a "transcript tradition" that recorded the final or near-final stages in an evolving process of oral poetic recomposition-in-performance.[4]
§23. Here I apply a distinction made by Ferdinand de Saussure: linguistic analysis requires both synchronic and diachronic perspectives.[1] For Saussure, synchrony and diachrony designate respectively a current state of a language and a phase in its evolution.[2] I draw attention to Saussure's linking of diachrony and evolution, a link that proves to be crucial for understanding Homeric poetry in particular and archaic Greek poetry in general. This link led to my evolutionary model for the oral traditions that shaped Homeric poetry. According to this model, the "making" of this poetry needs to be seen diachronically as well as synchronically, if we follow Saussure's sense of diachrony. My primary premise is that synchronic approaches to Homer cannot succeed without the integration of diachronic approaches, just as diachronic approaches cannot succeed without the integration of the synchronic. My secondary premise is that the synchronic analysis of Homeric poetry can succeed only when that poetry is viewed as a system rather than a text. To repeat: Irefer to the system in question simply as "Homeric poetry."
§24. Applying these premises, I argue against the assumption that the Homeric text of the Iliad and Odyssey, as reconstituted in various editions both ancient and modern, can be viewed synchronically as a cross-section that represents a single real composition or performance. In other words, the Homeric text (or texts) is not the same thing as Homeric poetry.
§25. In this connection, we need to confront the general phenomenon of meaning in the media of oral poetics. On the basis of my own cumulative work, I have become convinced that meaning by way of reference in oral poetics needs to be seen diachronically as well as synchronically: "each occurrence of a theme (on the level of content) or of a formula (on the level of form) in a given composition-in-performance refers not only to its immediate context but also to all other analogous contexts remembered by the performer or by any member of the audience."[1] The corpus of Homeric poetry cannot be reduced to the single occasion of an utterance that is self- contained at any one time and place--or even of a recording of such an utterance.[2] I must add that I use diachronic and synchronic not as synonyms for historical and current respectively. Diachrony refers to the potential for evolution in a structure. History is not restricted to phenomena that are structurally predictable.[3]
§26. These perspectives are essential for understanding the most visible aspect of linguistic methods in this book: my extensive exploration of tymologies.[1] The etymologies of words, and even of names, can help explain traditional poetic contexts; conversely, these same poetic contexts can help explain the etymologies. "The purpose of connecting the etymology of a Homeric word with its current usage in the Homeric poems is to establish a continuum of meaning within tradition. An etymology may be a 'key' to the diachronic explanation of some reality, as in the case of a cultural continuum, but it cannot be equated with some clever novelty in literary criticism."[2]
§27. In this context, some have misunderstood my view of oral tradition as a regulator of meaning (Introduction §§4-11).[1] My approach to continuities (and discontinuities) of meaning within
tradition is anything but absolutist:
Whereas a given tradition may be perceived in absolute terms within a given society, it can be analyzed in relative terms by the outside observer using empirical criteria: what may seem ancient and immutable to members of a given society can in fact be contemporary and ever-changing from the standpoint of empiricist observation. Moreover, I recognize that tradition is not just an inherited system: as with language itself, tradition comes to life in the here-and-now of real people in real situations.
§28. The phenomenon of meaning by way of reference in oral poetics leads to more specific questions about Homeric "cross-references." Here again, I apply the diachronic perspective of my evolutionary model:
It is from a diachronic perspective that I find it useful to consider the phenomenon of Homeric cross-references, especially long-distance ones that happen to reach for hundreds or even thousands of lines: it is important to keep in mind that any such cross-reference that we admire in our two-dimensional text did not just happen one time in one performance--but presumably countless times in countless reperformances within the three-dimensional continuum of a specialized oral tradition. The resonances of Homeric cross-referencing must be appreciated within the larger context of a long history of repeated performances.
[1] To put it most succinctly: "the referent of a reference in oral poetics is not restricted to the immediate context but extends to analogous contexts heard in previous performances."[2]
§29. The evolutionary model can be applied to justify, in terms of oral poetics, the artistic subtleties of cross-reference in the "embassy scene" of Iliad IX, and it helps further refine my proposed solution to the notorious problem of dual-for-plural usages in that passage (Ch. 3§§9-20). [1] The same model can also account for the poetic subtleties of the first song of Demodokos in Odyssey viii 73-82 (Ch.1§8):
The Muse impelled the singer to sing the glories [kleos plural] of men,
from a story-thread[2] which had at that time a glory [kleos] reaching the vast heavens: the quarrel of Odysseus and Achilles son of Peleus,
how they once upon a time [pote] fought at a sumptuous feast of the gods. ...
... For then [tote] it was that the beginning of pain [pêma] started rolling [kulindeto] upon both Trojans and Danaans, on account of the plans of great Zeus.
§30. In this book, I read the adverb tote 'then' of verse 81 as a cross-reference to the adverb pote 'once upon a time' at verse 76. [1] By virtue of cross-referring to a specific point in epic time, the wording tote gar 'for then it was...' at verse 81 cross-refers also to a specific point in a notionally total and continuous narration extending into the current narrative.[2]
§31. To "return to the time-frame introduced by the earlier temporal adverb" is a matter of performance, not just composition. That is, the cross-reference represented in this story-within-a-
story is performative as well as compositional. The blind singer is here being represented as cross-referring by way of performance.
§32. Contact is being made between the micro-narrative of Odyssey viii 72-83 and the macro- narrative of the Iliad. A key is the word pêma 'pain' in Odyssey viii 82. This "pain" signals an Iliadic theme, which can be summarized as follows: Achilles is a pêma for the Trojans when he is at war and a pêma for the Achaeans both when he withdraws from war and when he dies (Ch. 4§6). In our Iliad, this "pain" is realized in the death of Patroklos, which foretells the death of Achilles himself (Iliad XVII 685-690):
Come, so that you may learn
of the ghastly news, which should never have happened. I think that you already see, and that you realize,
that a god is letting roll [kulindei] a pain [pêma] upon the Danaans,
and that victory belongs to the Trojans; the best of the Achaeans has been killed, Patroklos, that is; and a great loss has been inflicted on the Danaans.
Like some colossal boulder that has just broken loose from the heights above, the pain is now rolling precipitously and inexorably downward, heading straight at the doomed Iliadic warriors down below. This powerful metaphor of epic doom, resonating through the fine-tuned words of Homeric song, evokes the grand images that link the first song of Demodokos with the ultimate song of Achilles, the Iliad.
§33. I can only repeat a conclusion reached twenty years ago (Ch.4§8), but this time with a pronounced shift in emphasis, highlighted by underlines:
An Iliad composed by Demodokos would have been a poem with a structure more simple and more broad, with an Achilles who is even perhaps more crude than the ultimately refined hero that we see emerging at the end of our Iliad. I have little doubt that such an Iliad was indeed in the process of evolving when it was heard in the Odyssey tradition which evolved into our Odyssey. Demodokos had heard the kleos and passed it on in song.
Notes
§1n1. By "archaic" I mean the historical period extending roughly from the second half of the eighth century B.C. through the second half of the fifth. As for "Homer", I invoke the name as a metonym for "Homeric poetry."
§6n1. My present Foreword is a substitute for the original 1979 foreword written by James M. Redfield, which I will treasure forever. I have exchanged here the old gold for new bronze, which I need as armor for restating my own case.
§6n2. Nagy 1990a (hereafter PH), as listed in the updated Bibliography of this second edition. Note too the electronic edition of PH, as also indicated in the Bibliography below. Another book supplements the 1979 edition: Nagy 1990b (hereafter GM), especially Ch.2 ("Formula and Meter: The Oral Poetics of Homer"), Ch.3 ("Hesiod and the Poetics of Pan-Hellenism"), and Ch.5 ("The
Death of Sarpedon and the Question of Homeric Uniqueness").
§6n3. Nagy 1996a and 1996b in the updated Bibliography, hereafter PP and HQ respectively. Although HQ covers the earlier phases of the Homeric tradition and PP the later, HQ is marked 1996b in the bibliography because it was published several months after PP, which is marked 1996. HQ cross-refers extensively to PP, while the first edition of PP has no direct cross- references to HQ as a book version.
§7n1. One such topic, which is vitally important for my overview of archaic Greek poetry, is the genre of "lives of poets," on which see below at Ch.7§9n1, Ch.13§13n, Ch.16§§5-6, Ch.
17§§7-8, and all of Ch.18 (especially §4n4 and §7). My approach to the "vita" traditions of poets is meant as an alternative to the outlook represented by Lefkowitz 1981. See also PH 80,
322-326, 333, 363-365, 392, 395-397, 412, 419-423.
§8n1. The updated Bibliography below tracks some of the progress in reception: see for example Bakker 1997, Burgess 1996, Calame 1995, Detienne 1993, Dumézil 1982, Easterling 1989,
Hainsworth 1991, Janko 1992, Koenen 1994, Loraux 1994, Lord 1991 and 1995, Martin 1983
and 1989, Morris 1986 and 1993, Muellner 1996, Palmer 1980, Pinney 1983, Pucci 1998,
Seaford 1994, Segal 1994, Slatkin 1991, Snodgrass 1987, Svenbro 1993, Vernant 1985.
§8n2. Patterns of avoidance persist in the publications of a few Classicists. At times the avoidance takes the shape of shifting the point of reference from my initial observation to someone else's restatement.
§10n1. Separate bibliographies of various polemics, along with my counterarguments, is offered in PP 1-3 and HQ 129-145 (with pp. 19-27). For a different set of polemics, see also GM
294-301.
§11n1. For comparative perspectives drawn from a variety of non-Greek cultures, see HQ Ch.2.
§12n1. HQ 31.
§13n1. HQ 9-10; also GM 18-35.
§13n2. PP 107-152, with full argumentation.
§13n3. Redfield 1979.vii. The phenomenon of poetic variation is in fact the central topic of one of my books (PP).
§15n1. GM 7-17. Also part of the system are compositions like the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (see
Introduction §13-15). On the cultural construct of Homer as author of this Hymn, see PH
375-377, PP 81-82.
§15n2. I find it absurd that some Homeric bibliographies classify my book as if it concerned only the Iliad, not the Odyssey.
§16n1. On kleos 'glory' as conferred by poetry, see Ch.1§2n3. Some critics undervalue the traditional poetic implications of this word: for further argumentation and select bibliography, see
PH 3n10 and 244-245n126. For a similar semantic pattern, where the overall concept of the medium subsumes individual contexts within it, see PH 218-219 on the usage of apo-deik- numai in the sense of 'perform'.
§16n2. A key to the epic success of Odysseus is his wife, Penelope. At Ch.2§13n, I argue that the ultimate referent of kleos at Odyssey xxiv 196 is the song of Odysseus, the Odyssey, even if the immediate referent is Penelope. The relationship between the kleos of Odysseus and the kleos of Penelope is metonymical and reciprocal. See also Raphals 1992.206.
§17n1. Iliadic themes are a threat to Odysseus in the Odyssey: see Ch.20§4 on the nightmarish Iliadic implications of Odyssey x 198-202. See also Ch.15§7n4 on the Song of the Sirens in Odyssey xii 189-191: when they tempt Odysseus by promising songs about the Tale of Troy, they speak the language of Muses. If Odysseus were to fall permanently under the spell of such Iliadic songs in his own Odyssey, he would forfeit his nóstos and thereby his only remaining access to kléos. For more on the Iliadic implications of the Sirens, see Pucci 1979 and 1998.
§18n1. The ironies of kléos in the Odyssey are developed explicitly in Best of the Achaeans (especially in Ch.2§11). There is a great deal of further elaboration by Segal 1983. See also Ch. 6§9 below on the simile of the lamenting captive woman in Odyssey viii 523-531: this passage is crucial for my overall argumentation about Iliadic resonances in the Odyssey.
§19n1. Slatkin 1987 and Muellner 1996.45 (also all of his Ch.4). I offer a general introduction to Hesiodic poetry in GM Ch.3 ("Hesiod and the Poetics of Panhellenism'; see especially p. 53n54).
§19n2. See GM 126n17 on the interpretation of the pivotal word men in Works and Days 166 as parallel to men at lines 122, 137, 141, 161, not to men at line 162 (pace West 1978.192; more on men in Bakker 1997.80-85, especially p. 81).
§19n3. See PH 215-215. For more on Homeric and Hesiodic complementarity, see also PH
73n106 and GM 15-16 on Hesiod fr. 204 (cf. Finkelberg 1988).
§19n4. PP Ch.5-7.
§19n5. PH Ch.2-3, GM Ch. 1 and 3. On models of Panhellenism extending to modern times, see Leontis 1995.
§22n1. I spell out my reasons in PH 53-54. For a model of intertextual approaches to Homer, see Pucci 1995 and 1998.
§22n2. HQ Ch.2 ("An Evolutionary Model for the Making of Homeric Poetry"); also Ch.3 ("Homer and the Evolution of a Homeric Text"). See below at Ch.1§§6-7 ("evolved"/"evolving"). See also Seaford 1994, especially p. 144. My evolutionary model differs from various specific "dictation-theories," most notably those of Janko (1982.191), Jensen (1980.92), and West (1990.34). It is not at odds, however, with the more general dictation theory of Lord 1953 (reprinted 1991). For further bibliography on dictation theories, see Nagy 1997d.
§22n3. HQ 41-42, with details in HQ Ch.3; also PP 110, with details in PP Ch.5-7. The HQ and
PP discussions emphasize respectively the earlier and later phases of my evolutionary model. See
also Sherratt 1990, especially pp. 817-821.
§22n4. See also PP Ch.5 ("Multiform epic and Aristarchus' quest for the real Homer"); Ch.6 ("Homer as script"); Ch.7 ("Homer as 'scripture'"). On hermeneutic models of "transcript," see PP 110-113 and Bakker 1997.208n3.
§23n1. Saussure 1916.117. See GM 20
§23n2. Saussure, ibid.: "De même synchronie et diachronie désigneront respectivement un état de langage et une phase d'évolution."
§25n1. PP 50.
§25n2. HQ 17, 20.
§25n3. PH 21n18, following Jacopin 1988.35-36, who adds: "Both synchrony and diachrony are abstractions extrapolated from a model of reality."
§26n1. In this book, a model for linguistic research in etymologies is Benveniste 1969. See below at Ch.6§13. See also in general GM 1-2.
§26n2. HQ 9. See especially Ch.5 below, "The Name of Achilles," including the supplement at pp. 83-93, "The Name of the Achaeans." See also the Appendix, concerning the morphological parallelism Akhaio- / krataio-. I argue there that this parallelism, linking the name of the Achaeans with a word conveying the "zero-sum" mentality of heroic victory or defeat, is crucial for understanding the epic themes linking the hero Achilles with the host of warriors who claim him as one of their own. See now also Nagy 1994.5, with further elaboration on combining methods of etymological and formulaic analysis.
§27n1. HQ 15n8, with bibliography.
§27n2. HQ 15. Also PH 57-61, 70-72 (cf. also pp. 349, 411). At HQ 15n8, I add: "there can be different levels of rigidity or flexibility in different traditions, even in different phases of the same given tradition."
§28n1. HQ 82.
§28n2. HQ 82n53.
§29n1. For the inner logic of reference and cross-reference in the "embassy scene," see in general HQ 138-145, especially p. 144n133 (pace Griffin 1995.52). In the French edition of Best of the Achaeans (Nagy 1994b.75), I added the following remarks at the end of §11 in Ch.3, (where I mark the point of addition with an asterisk in the margin): Earlier, before Odysseus had taken the lead, the dual construction could still imply Ajax and Odysseus (IX 182): "And the two were going by the shore of the much-roaring sea." At this point,a dual reference to Ajax and Odysseus would pick up the reference to these two heroes at IX 169, where the leadership of Phoinix is still presupposed (IX 168).
§29n2. On the metaphorical world of oímê, which I translate here as 'story-thread' see PP 63n19, n20.
§30n1. Pelliccia 1985 (185-186) collects evidence to show that tote 'then' in such contexts as viii 81 serves "to return to the time-frame introduced by the earlier temporal adverb." In this case that temporal adverb is pote 'once upon a time' at verse 76.
§30n2. On the essential notion, inherent in oral poetic traditions, of a total and continuous narration, of which any given performance is but a part, see HQ 77-82. For comparative evidence on the notional totality of epic performances, see Flueckiger 1996.133-134. See already Ch.1§6 below: "the traditions of the Iliad and the Odyssey constitute a totality."
The Best of the Achaeans Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry Revised Edition
Gregory Nagy
Copyright © 1980, 1997 The Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved. First edition 1979. Revised edition 1999. This document may be used, with this notice included, for noncommercial purposes within a subscribed
institution. No copies of this work may be distributed electronically outside of the subscribed institution, in whole or in part, without written permission from the JHU Press.
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§1. The Best of the Achaeans is intended for both non-specialists and specialists in Homer and in other forms of archaic Greek poetry.[1] More generally, it is for non-Classicists as well as Classicists (that is, those who study Greek and Roman antiquity). All quotations from the ancient texts are translated, and all cited words are defined in context.
§2. This book is about how to read Homer--both the Iliad and the Odyssey--and various related forms of Greek poetry in the archaic period, most notably the Hesiodic Theogony and Works and Days and the Homeric Hymns, especially the Apollo, the Demeter, and the Aphrodite. Other related poetic forms include the praise poetry of Pindar and the blame poetry of Archilochus. The readings are infused with references to non-canonical traditions as well, especially women's laments and the earliest attested versions of Aesop's fables.
§3. The object of all the readings is to understand simultaneously the form as well as the content of a wide variety of traditional media conveying various basic concepts of the ancient Greek hero.
The most basic of all these concepts is a single all-pervasive historical fact of the archaic period and beyond: the cult of heroes. Heroes were not only the subjects of narrative and dramatic media but also the objects of worship. This book integrates heroic song, poetry, and prose with the ancestral practices of a wide variety of hero-cults (Introduction.§16-19). More generally, it explores the heroic tradition within the cultural context of Panhellenism, to be defined as an early form of Hellenism that eventually became the nucleus of Classicism (Introduction.§13-15).
§4. The Best of the Achaeans was completed in 1978 and first published in 1979. Now, twenty years later, I have a chance to revisit. The present foreword highlights the specifics of what has changed and what remains stable.
§5. I start with the main points of consistency. This 1998 edition is "archaeological," adding to the general argumentation only the essentials for supplementing what I knew twenty years ago. I have preserved the original text and page-numbering of the 1979 edition for the introduction and for all the chapters as well as the appendix. The Bibliography has been updated with additions. Here too, however, I have maintained an "archaeological" stance, concentrating on research that directly follows up on the arguments made in the 1979 edition. The addenda in the text proper of this second edition, which are mostly cross-references to new points raised in this Foreword or to new entries in the Bibliography, have been inserted at the ends of the 1979 footnotes. The corrigenda in the text proper of this second edition, mostly minor, have been entered without further comment.
§6. There is not much in the book, I find, that needs to be corrected for factual mistakes, and there is practically nothing in the contents that I would wish to retract. There are, however, things that needed to be restated, and this Foreword addresses that need. [1] There is also a great deal that could be added. Much of that has been done in a 1990 book providing additional context, Pindar's Homer.[2] The argumentation has been developed further in two 1996 books, Homeric Questions and Poetry as Performance: Homer and Beyond. [3]
§7. Homeric and Hesiodic poetry are the focus of chapters 1-10 and 20. That set of chapters can be read independently of the rest, yielding a more compressed book of 240 pages. For those who wish to concentrate on Homer alone, the book can be compressed further: chapters 1-8 and 20 are likewise self-contained--a total of 180 pages. I worry that some readers of the first edition may have stopped at chapters 8 or 9 and never made their way to chapter 20, where I offer retrospectives and overviews essential to my argumentation about Homer. My hope, in any case, is that the reader will take on the whole book, which addresses a variety of topics that are essential for understanding archaic Greek poetry.[1]
§8. For my reading of Homer and other forms of archaic Greek poetry, I rely on the traditional methodology of Classicists, combined with other empirical methods drawn from research in anthropology, linguistics, and oral poetics. This combination of approaches occasionally makes my specific readings different, in varying degrees, from those of my immediate predecessors. Such differences help explain some problems of reception, especially in the earlier years that followed initial publication. Over the last two decades, however, the argumentation of Best of the Achaeans has held up. Citations of the book in ongoing research reflect its expanding influence, [1] and much of what seemed controversial then is no longer so now.[2]
§9. Debate persists, however, on various levels. Some of it goes back to negative reactions at the time of initial publication. The sheer animosity of a few of the criticisms directed at my work surprised me at first. After all, I consistently avoid personal polemics in Best of the Achaeans. Why, I asked myself, has this book made some critics so angry? One answer, shaped by years of retrospection, is that it all comes down to assumptions that I challenge in the book. As I look back at the subtitle of my introduction, "assumptions, methods, results," I now see in this wording a clue to a source of provocation.
§10. The methods of Best of the Achaeans not only achieve new results: they also call into question various assumptions essential to the Homeric interpretations of various critics. Ironically, much of the initial criticism leveled against the book was based on the same assumptions that my methods and results have challenged. There is a further irony: a few continue to assert these assumptions as if they were facts. Another reaction is to say, in effect, that no one has made such arguments before, and what right does anyone have to make them now? I resist using up this space with a bibliography of such polemics, since I hope to keep this second edition free, like the first one, of the ephemeral.[1] Rather, I concentrate on the actual assumptions that caused the problem in the first place. These assumptions have taken on many forms, but they all come down to a simple enough notion: that oral poetry is lacking in cohesion and artistry. Therefore, the thinking goes, Homeric poetry must be explained in terms that transcend oral poetry.
§11. Here I revisit the basic questions, starting with the basic fact that drives these questions: a major challenge to our reading of archaic Greek poetry, especially Homer, is its heritage as oral poetry. Oral traditions, including oral poetry, depend on performance. In oral poetry, unlike written poetry, performance is a necessity, not an option. Moreover, the ongoing empirical study of a wide variety of living oral traditions makes it clear that any given performance becomes an occasion for some degree of recomposition-in-performance (the actual degrees of recomposition will of course vary in different contexts or phases).[1] How, then, do we read something that was meant to be performed, not read from a book? How do we read something that is subject to change in each performance? These are the questions that I seek to answer in Best of the Achaeans, focusing on two key Homeric passages as my starting point: the first song of Demodokos in Odyssey viii and the "embassy scene" in Iliad IX.
§12. Mention of the word "passages" raises an even more basic question, stemming from an obvious fact: Homeric poetry survives because it was written down. The question, then, is as obvious as the fact: how did archaic Greek poetry, especially Homer, get written down in the first place? As of now, no direct answer is available. Nor is there any consensus about why or how or even when Homeric poetry was written down. One thing and one thing only, it seems to me, is certain: no one has ever been able to prove that the technology of writing had been necessary for either the composition or the performance of Homeric poetry.[1]
§13. So much for the negative side. On the positive, I argue that Homeric poetry (by which I mean the Iliad and Odyssey combined) is a system, and that this system can be explained consistently in terms of oral poetics. The application of linguistics is vital for the argument.[1] The Homeric textual tradition is the primary evidence for this system, but it cannot be equated with the system itself.[2] My linguistic approach to the poetic and textual traditions of Homer extends to the other forms of archaic Greek poetry as well. Here is how James Redfield describes my
methodology:
His concern is not with particular works per se but with the underlying system of meanings common to the epic tradition and inherited by Greek poets down to Pindar. This is a system, not as geometry is a system, but as a culture is a system; there is a high degree of redundancy, of alternative ways of expressing the same or similar ideas, of making similar distinctions. Terms are not connected by relations of identity but of analogy; themes are displayed through their variations. [3]
§14. My reading of Homer, especially of the passages in Odyssey viii and Iliad IX, has occasionally been disputed on the grounds that it gives the impression of literary rather than oral poetics. Such an impression, however, stems from unjustified negative assumptions about oral poetics. There is no evidence for assuming that oral poetry is by nature unsystematic. The results of my readings, which add up to show that Homeric poetry is indeed a system, cannot be used as ammunition for claiming that Homer is therefore not "oral."
§15. The results of my readings show also that the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey are complementary, and that this complementarity is itself a system in its own right. [1] Here again, I resist the assumptions of critics who try to explain this system in terms that transcend oral poetry. The first song of Demodokos in Odyssey viii and the "embassy scene" of Iliad IX provide striking examples of the system at work. Throughout Best of the Achaeans, I explain the organic complementarity of the Iliad and the Odyssey precisely in terms of oral poetics.[2]
§16. A central theme unites the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey: just as Achilles emerges as the "best of the Achaeans" in the Iliad, so too Odysseus becomes "best of the Achaeans" in the Odyssey (Ch.1§13). Moreover, the kleos or epic glory of Achilles in the Iliad is both complemented and contested by the kleos of Odysseus in the Odyssey (Ch.2§§10-18).[1] A key is the Odyssean theme of nostos in the sense of 'song about a homecoming', not just 'homecoming' (Ch.6§6n2). Ironically, as I argue, Odysseus achieves the kleos or epic glory of the Odyssey not because he destroyed Troy (a feat heralded at the very start of his epic) but because he achieves a nostos in both senses of the word: he comes home and thereby becomes the premier hero of a song about homecoming (Ch.2§11).[2]
§17. There are further related ironies. Achilles has to choose between kleos and nostos, forfeiting nostos in order to achieve his kleos as the central hero of the Iliad (Ch.2§11), but Odysseus must have both in order to merit his heroic status in the Odyssey (Ch.2§§12-16). The narrative of the kleos that Odysseus earns in the Odyssey cannot be the Iliad, which means "Troy Tale" (Ilion is the other name for Troy). The Iliad establishes Achilles as the central hero of the story of Troy, even though he failed to destroy the city. Because of the Iliad tradition, "the kleos of Odysseus at Troy was preempted by the kleos of Achilles" (Ch.2§17).[1]
§18. There is a final irony, developed in the narrative of the Odyssey (xi 489-491): Achilles in Hades seems tempted to trade epics with Odysseus (Ch.2§11).[1] This he will never do, of course, in his own epic. As Achilles himself predicts in the Iliad (IX 413), the kleos of his own song will be áphthiton 'unwilting' (Ch.2§3).
§19. My arguments about the patterns of complementarity between the Iliad and the Odyssey can be extended much further. There are also patterns of complementarity between Homeric and Hesiodic poetry, adding up to an even more generalized unity.[1] The compressed narrative about epic heroes in the Hesiodic Works and Days, for instance, complements the ultimately expanded narrative of the Homeric Iliad (Ch.9§29).[2] Herodotus, the "father of history," describes the unity of Homer and Hesiod in cultural terms that convey the sum total of Greek civilization (2.53.1-3).[3] In any case, this unity can be described as an overall cultural system, which needs to be "read" as an oral tradition mediated by a script tradition.[4] Here we see the foundations of Panhellenism (Introduction §§14-16). [5]
§20. Even more generally, it is possible to argue that all forms of archaic Greek poetry complement each other. Cases in point are the relationship of epic and praise poetry (Ch.12), of praise and blame poetry (Ch.14). The patterns of complementarity emerge from reading the ipsissima verba, the words of the tradition themselves. That is how Milman Parry and Albert Lord, my teacher, have read Homer. At the very start of my book, I invoke their favorite words for form and content, "diction" and "theme" (Introduction §1), in arguing that the diction of archaic Greek poetry is a most accurate expression of its themes. The Introduction goes on to describe this fundamental stance ironically as "literal minded" (§7). The irony has been lost, I notice, on a few literal minded critics.
§21. What has given my book its staying power is that it strives to achieve a coherent picture of a coherent system of ancient Greek poetics, to the degree that each detail of my analysis is meant to stay true to each constituent detail of that system. The coherence of the book results not from the sequencing of contents page by page but from the coherence of the system that emerges cumulatively from an overall reading.
§22. For my reading of Homer, I do not invoke theories of intertextuality.[1] Instead, I have developed what I call an evolutionary model for the textualization of Homer, without presupposing that the actual composition of the "text" required the medium of writing .[2] According to this model, there were at least five distinct consecutive periods of Homeric oral | written transmission, "Five Ages of Homer," as it were, with each period showing progressively less fluidity and more rigidity. [3] I argue that our Homeric text results from a "transcript tradition" that recorded the final or near-final stages in an evolving process of oral poetic recomposition-in-performance.[4]
§23. Here I apply a distinction made by Ferdinand de Saussure: linguistic analysis requires both synchronic and diachronic perspectives.[1] For Saussure, synchrony and diachrony designate respectively a current state of a language and a phase in its evolution.[2] I draw attention to Saussure's linking of diachrony and evolution, a link that proves to be crucial for understanding Homeric poetry in particular and archaic Greek poetry in general. This link led to my evolutionary model for the oral traditions that shaped Homeric poetry. According to this model, the "making" of this poetry needs to be seen diachronically as well as synchronically, if we follow Saussure's sense of diachrony. My primary premise is that synchronic approaches to Homer cannot succeed without the integration of diachronic approaches, just as diachronic approaches cannot succeed without the integration of the synchronic. My secondary premise is that the synchronic analysis of Homeric poetry can succeed only when that poetry is viewed as a system rather than a text. To
repeat: Irefer to the system in question simply as "Homeric poetry."
§24. Applying these premises, I argue against the assumption that the Homeric text of the Iliad and Odyssey, as reconstituted in various editions both ancient and modern, can be viewed synchronically as a cross-section that represents a single real composition or performance. In other words, the Homeric text (or texts) is not the same thing as Homeric poetry.
§25. In this connection, we need to confront the general phenomenon of meaning in the media of oral poetics. On the basis of my own cumulative work, I have become convinced that meaning by way of reference in oral poetics needs to be seen diachronically as well as synchronically: "each occurrence of a theme (on the level of content) or of a formula (on the level of form) in a given composition-in-performance refers not only to its immediate context but also to all other analogous contexts remembered by the performer or by any member of the audience."[1] The corpus of Homeric poetry cannot be reduced to the single occasion of an utterance that is self- contained at any one time and place--or even of a recording of such an utterance.[2] I must add that I use diachronic and synchronic not as synonyms for historical and current respectively. Diachrony refers to the potential for evolution in a structure. History is not restricted to phenomena that are structurally predictable.[3]
§26. These perspectives are essential for understanding the most visible aspect of linguistic methods in this book: my extensive exploration of tymologies.[1] The etymologies of words, and even of names, can help explain traditional poetic contexts; conversely, these same poetic contexts can help explain the etymologies. "The purpose of connecting the etymology of a Homeric word with its current usage in the Homeric poems is to establish a continuum of meaning within tradition. An etymology may be a 'key' to the diachronic explanation of some reality, as in the case of a cultural continuum, but it cannot be equated with some clever novelty in literary criticism."[2]
§27. In this context, some have misunderstood my view of oral tradition as a regulator of meaning (Introduction §§4-11).[1] My approach to continuities (and discontinuities) of meaning within tradition is anything but absolutist:
Whereas a given tradition may be perceived in absolute terms within a given society, it can be analyzed in relative terms by the outside observer using empirical criteria: what may seem ancient and immutable to members of a given society can in fact be contemporary and ever-changing from the standpoint of empiricist observation. Moreover, I recognize that tradition is not just an inherited system: as with language itself, tradition comes to life in the here-and-now of real people in real situations.
§28. The phenomenon of meaning by way of reference in oral poetics leads to more specific questions about Homeric "cross-references." Here again, I apply the diachronic perspective of my evolutionary model:
It is from a diachronic perspective that I find it useful to consider the phenomenon of Homeric
cross-references, especially long-distance ones that happen to reach for hundreds or even thousands of lines: it is important to keep in mind that any such cross-reference that we admire in our two-dimensional text did not just happen one time in one performance--but presumably countless times in countless reperformances within the three-dimensional continuum of a specialized oral tradition. The resonances of Homeric cross-referencing must be appreciated within the larger context of a long history of repeated performances.
[1] To put it most succinctly: "the referent of a reference in oral poetics is not restricted to the immediate context but extends to analogous contexts heard in previous performances."[2]
§29. The evolutionary model can be applied to justify, in terms of oral poetics, the artistic subtleties of cross-reference in the "embassy scene" of Iliad IX, and it helps further refine my proposed solution to the notorious problem of dual-for-plural usages in that passage (Ch. 3§§9-20). [1] The same model can also account for the poetic subtleties of the first song of Demodokos in Odyssey viii 73-82 (Ch.1§8):
The Muse impelled the singer to sing the glories [kleos plural] of men,
from a story-thread[2] which had at that time a glory [kleos] reaching the vast heavens: the quarrel of Odysseus and Achilles son of Peleus,
how they once upon a time [pote] fought at a sumptuous feast of the gods. ...
... For then [tote] it was that the beginning of pain [pêma] started rolling [kulindeto] upon both Trojans and Danaans, on account of the plans of great Zeus.
§30. In this book, I read the adverb tote 'then' of verse 81 as a cross-reference to the adverb pote 'once upon a time' at verse 76. [1] By virtue of cross-referring to a specific point in epic time, the wording tote gar 'for then it was...' at verse 81 cross-refers also to a specific point in a notionally total and continuous narration extending into the current narrative.[2]
§31. To "return to the time-frame introduced by the earlier temporal adverb" is a matter of performance, not just composition. That is, the cross-reference represented in this story-within-a- story is performative as well as compositional. The blind singer is here being represented as cross-referring by way of performance.
§32. Contact is being made between the micro-narrative of Odyssey viii 72-83 and the macro- narrative of the Iliad. A key is the word pêma 'pain' in Odyssey viii 82. This "pain" signals an Iliadic theme, which can be summarized as follows: Achilles is a pêma for the Trojans when he is at war and a pêma for the Achaeans both when he withdraws from war and when he dies (Ch. 4§6). In our Iliad, this "pain" is realized in the death of Patroklos, which foretells the death of Achilles himself (Iliad XVII 685-690):
Come, so that you may learn
of the ghastly news, which should never have happened. I think that you already see, and that you realize,
that a god is letting roll [kulindei] a pain [pêma] upon the Danaans,
and that victory belongs to the Trojans; the best of the Achaeans has been killed, Patroklos, that is; and a great loss has been inflicted on the Danaans.
Like some colossal boulder that has just broken loose from the heights above, the pain is now rolling precipitously and inexorably downward, heading straight at the doomed Iliadic warriors down below. This powerful metaphor of epic doom, resonating through the fine-tuned words of Homeric song, evokes the grand images that link the first song of Demodokos with the ultimate song of Achilles, the Iliad.
§33. I can only repeat a conclusion reached twenty years ago (Ch.4§8), but this time with a pronounced shift in emphasis, highlighted by underlines:
An Iliad composed by Demodokos would have been a poem with a structure more simple and more broad, with an Achilles who is even perhaps more crude than the ultimately refined hero that we see emerging at the end of our Iliad. I have little doubt that such an Iliad was indeed in the process of evolving when it was heard in the Odyssey tradition which evolved into our Odyssey. Demodokos had heard the kleos and passed it on in song.
Notes
§1n1. By "archaic" I mean the historical period extending roughly from the second half of the eighth century B.C. through the second half of the fifth. As for "Homer", I invoke the name as a metonym for "Homeric poetry."
§6n1. My present Foreword is a substitute for the original 1979 foreword written by James M. Redfield, which I will treasure forever. I have exchanged here the old gold for new bronze, which I need as armor for restating my own case.
§6n2. Nagy 1990a (hereafter PH), as listed in the updated Bibliography of this second edition. Note too the electronic edition of PH, as also indicated in the Bibliography below. Another book supplements the 1979 edition: Nagy 1990b (hereafter GM), especially Ch.2 ("Formula and Meter: The Oral Poetics of Homer"), Ch.3 ("Hesiod and the Poetics of Pan-Hellenism"), and Ch.5 ("The Death of Sarpedon and the Question of Homeric Uniqueness").
§6n3. Nagy 1996a and 1996b in the updated Bibliography, hereafter PP and HQ respectively. Although HQ covers the earlier phases of the Homeric tradition and PP the later, HQ is marked 1996b in the bibliography because it was published several months after PP, which is marked 1996. HQ cross-refers extensively to PP, while the first edition of PP has no direct cross- references to HQ as a book version.
§7n1. One such topic, which is vitally important for my overview of archaic Greek poetry, is the genre of "lives of poets," on which see below at Ch.7§9n1, Ch.13§13n, Ch.16§§5-6, Ch.
17§§7-8, and all of Ch.18 (especially §4n4 and §7). My approach to the "vita" traditions of poets is meant as an alternative to the outlook represented by Lefkowitz 1981. See also PH 80,
322-326, 333, 363-365, 392, 395-397, 412, 419-423.
§8n1. The updated Bibliography below tracks some of the progress in reception: see for example Bakker 1997, Burgess 1996, Calame 1995, Detienne 1993, Dumézil 1982, Easterling 1989,
Hainsworth 1991, Janko 1992, Koenen 1994, Loraux 1994, Lord 1991 and 1995, Martin 1983
and 1989, Morris 1986 and 1993, Muellner 1996, Palmer 1980, Pinney 1983, Pucci 1998,
Seaford 1994, Segal 1994, Slatkin 1991, Snodgrass 1987, Svenbro 1993, Vernant 1985.
§8n2. Patterns of avoidance persist in the publications of a few Classicists. At times the avoidance takes the shape of shifting the point of reference from my initial observation to someone else's restatement.
§10n1. Separate bibliographies of various polemics, along with my counterarguments, is offered in PP 1-3 and HQ 129-145 (with pp. 19-27). For a different set of polemics, see also GM
294-301.
§11n1. For comparative perspectives drawn from a variety of non-Greek cultures, see HQ Ch.2.
§12n1. HQ 31.
§13n1. HQ 9-10; also GM 18-35.
§13n2. PP 107-152, with full argumentation.
§13n3. Redfield 1979.vii. The phenomenon of poetic variation is in fact the central topic of one of my books (PP).
§15n1. GM 7-17. Also part of the system are compositions like the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (see
Introduction §13-15). On the cultural construct of Homer as author of this Hymn, see PH
375-377, PP 81-82.
§15n2. I find it absurd that some Homeric bibliographies classify my book as if it concerned only the Iliad, not the Odyssey.
§16n1. On kleos 'glory' as conferred by poetry, see Ch.1§2n3. Some critics undervalue the traditional poetic implications of this word: for further argumentation and select bibliography, see PH 3n10 and 244-245n126. For a similar semantic pattern, where the overall concept of the medium subsumes individual contexts within it, see PH 218-219 on the usage of apo-deik- numai in the sense of 'perform'.
§16n2. A key to the epic success of Odysseus is his wife, Penelope. At Ch.2§13n, I argue that the ultimate referent of kleos at Odyssey xxiv 196 is the song of Odysseus, the Odyssey, even if the immediate referent is Penelope. The relationship between the kleos of Odysseus and the kleos of Penelope is metonymical and reciprocal. See also Raphals 1992.206.
§17n1. Iliadic themes are a threat to Odysseus in the Odyssey: see Ch.20§4 on the nightmarish Iliadic implications of Odyssey x 198-202. See also Ch.15§7n4 on the Song of the Sirens in Odyssey xii 189-191: when they tempt Odysseus by promising songs about the Tale of Troy, they speak the language of Muses. If Odysseus were to fall permanently under the spell of such Iliadic songs in his own Odyssey, he would forfeit his nóstos and thereby his only remaining access to kléos. For more on the Iliadic implications of the Sirens, see Pucci 1979 and 1998.
§18n1. The ironies of kléos in the Odyssey are developed explicitly in Best of the Achaeans
(especially in Ch.2§11). There is a great deal of further elaboration by Segal 1983. See also Ch.
6§9 below on the simile of the lamenting captive woman in Odyssey viii 523-531: this passage is crucial for my overall argumentation about Iliadic resonances in the Odyssey.
§19n1. Slatkin 1987 and Muellner 1996.45 (also all of his Ch.4). I offer a general introduction to Hesiodic poetry in GM Ch.3 ("Hesiod and the Poetics of Panhellenism'; see especially p. 53n54).
§19n2. See GM 126n17 on the interpretation of the pivotal word men in Works and Days 166 as parallel to men at lines 122, 137, 141, 161, not to men at line 162 (pace West 1978.192; more on men in Bakker 1997.80-85, especially p. 81).
§19n3. See PH 215-215. For more on Homeric and Hesiodic complementarity, see also PH
73n106 and GM 15-16 on Hesiod fr. 204 (cf. Finkelberg 1988).
§19n4. PP Ch.5-7.
§19n5. PH Ch.2-3, GM Ch. 1 and 3. On models of Panhellenism extending to modern times, see Leontis 1995.
§22n1. I spell out my reasons in PH 53-54. For a model of intertextual approaches to Homer, see Pucci 1995 and 1998.
§22n2. HQ Ch.2 ("An Evolutionary Model for the Making of Homeric Poetry"); also Ch.3 ("Homer and the Evolution of a Homeric Text"). See below at Ch.1§§6-7 ("evolved"/"evolving"). See also Seaford 1994, especially p. 144. My evolutionary model differs from various specific "dictation-theories," most notably those of Janko (1982.191), Jensen (1980.92), and West (1990.34). It is not at odds, however, with the more general dictation theory of Lord 1953 (reprinted 1991). For further bibliography on dictation theories, see Nagy 1997d.
§22n3. HQ 41-42, with details in HQ Ch.3; also PP 110, with details in PP Ch.5-7. The HQ and PP discussions emphasize respectively the earlier and later phases of my evolutionary model. See also Sherratt 1990, especially pp. 817-821.
§22n4. See also PP Ch.5 ("Multiform epic and Aristarchus' quest for the real Homer"); Ch.6 ("Homer as script"); Ch.7 ("Homer as 'scripture'"). On hermeneutic models of "transcript," see PP 110-113 and Bakker 1997.208n3.
§23n1. Saussure 1916.117. See GM 20
§23n2. Saussure, ibid.: "De même synchronie et diachronie désigneront respectivement un état de langage et une phase d'évolution."
§25n1. PP 50.
§25n2. HQ 17, 20.
§25n3. PH 21n18, following Jacopin 1988.35-36, who adds: "Both synchrony and diachrony are abstractions extrapolated from a model of reality."
§26n1. In this book, a model for linguistic research in etymologies is Benveniste 1969. See below at Ch.6§13. See also in general GM 1-2.
§26n2. HQ 9. See especially Ch.5 below, "The Name of Achilles," including the supplement at pp. 83-93, "The Name of the Achaeans." See also the Appendix, concerning the morphological parallelism Akhaio- / krataio-. I argue there that this parallelism, linking the name of the Achaeans with a word conveying the "zero-sum" mentality of heroic victory or defeat, is crucial for understanding the epic themes linking the hero Achilles with the host of warriors who claim him as one of their own. See now also Nagy 1994.5, with further elaboration on combining methods of etymological and formulaic analysis.
§27n1. HQ 15n8, with bibliography.
§27n2. HQ 15. Also PH 57-61, 70-72 (cf. also pp. 349, 411). At HQ 15n8, I add: "there can be different levels of rigidity or flexibility in different traditions, even in different phases of the same given tradition."
§28n1. HQ 82.
§28n2. HQ 82n53.
§29n1. For the inner logic of reference and cross-reference in the "embassy scene," see in general HQ 138-145, especially p. 144n133 (pace Griffin 1995.52). In the French edition of Best of the Achaeans (Nagy 1994b.75), I added the following remarks at the end of §11 in Ch.3, (where I mark the point of addition with an asterisk in the margin): Earlier, before Odysseus had taken the lead, the dual construction could still imply Ajax and Odysseus (IX 182): "And the two were going by the shore of the much-roaring sea." At this point,a dual reference to Ajax and Odysseus would pick up the reference to these two heroes at IX 169, where the leadership of Phoinix is still presupposed (IX 168).
§29n2. On the metaphorical world of oímê, which I translate here as 'story-thread' see PP 63n19, n20.
§30n1. Pelliccia 1985 (185-186) collects evidence to show that tote 'then' in such contexts as viii 81 serves "to return to the time-frame introduced by the earlier temporal adverb." In this case that temporal adverb is pote 'once upon a time' at verse 76.
§30n2. On the essential notion, inherent in oral poetic traditions, of a total and continuous narration, of which any given performance is but a part, see HQ 77-82. For comparative evidence on the notional totality of epic performances, see Flueckiger 1996.133-134. See already Ch.1§6 below: "the traditions of the Iliad and the Odyssey constitute a totality."
The Best of the Achaeans Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry Revised Edition
Gregory Nagy
Copyright © 1980, 1997 The Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved. First edition 1979. Revised edition 1999. This document may be used, with this notice included, for noncommercial purposes within a subscribed
institution. No copies of this work may be distributed electronically outside of the subscribed institution, in whole or in part, without written permission from the JHU Press.
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§1. Homeric Epos has the power not only to define the hero but to articulate this very power. In my search for evidence in support of such a claim--and this search will extend throughout my presentation--I will of course have to struggle with the overwhelming dimensions of the Iliad and the Odyssey. It is especially difficult to find an appropriate place to begin. How to approach two such monumental compositions, representing as they do the culmination of perhaps over a thousand years of performer-audience interaction? Already at this point, I stress these important factors of performer and audience, in light of the discoveries made by Milman Parry and Albert Lord about the traditional nature of Homeric composition.[1] We see at work here an inherited medium where the composition can be simultaneous with performance--or at least, where composition becomes a reality only in performance.[2] In fact, I find this factor of performance an ultimately suitable point of departure. We are about to examine Odyssey viii 72-82, the description of a poet's performance as actually narrated by Homeric Epos. In this description we may discover a vantage point from which we are allowed an instant glimpse into the artistic unity of the Iliad and the Odyssey combined.
§2. Unlike Indic epic, where narrative is enclosed within the overall framework of dialogue or dialogue-within-dialogue, oftentimes in accretions of seemingly never-ending inner circles,[1] Greek epic delivers the narrative directly in the persona of the poet. The invoking of the Muses at the start of a Greek epic is the tag of the poet's own performance. The immediacy of performance, however, is counterbalanced by an attitude of remoteness from composition. The performer feels himself distant enough to intimate that the message of his composition comes not from him but from tradition. As the poet tells the Muses before he launches into the Catalogue of Ships:
humeis gar theai este, pareste te, iste te panta, hêmeis de kleos oion akouomen oude ti idmen
You are goddesses; you are always present, and you know everything; but we [poets] only hear the kleos and know nothing.
Accordingly, the poet invokes the Muses to tell him how it all happened (II 484). He behaves as an instrument, as it were, in the hands of the Muse, whose message is equated with that of creative tradition. He passes on the kleos, let us call it the "glory," of heroes. And yet, the word kleos itself betrays the pride of the Hellenic poet through the ages. Etymologically, kleos should have meant simply "that which is heard" (from kluô 'hear'), and indeed the poet hears kleos recited to him by the Muses (again, II 486). But then it is actually he who recites it to his audience. Here the artist's inherited message about himself is implicit but unmistakable. In a word, the Hellenic poet is the master of kleos. "That which is heard," kleos, comes to mean "glory" because it is the poet himself who uses the word to designate what he hears from the Muses and what he tells the audience. Poetry confers glory.[3] The conceit of Homeric poetry is that even a Trojan warrior will fight and die in pursuit of kleos ... Achaiôn "the kleos of the Achaeans" (XI 227).[4] If you perform heroic deeds, you have a chance of getting into Achaean epic. The Achaean singer of tales is in control of the glory that may be yours.
§3. As Marcel Detienne has shown in detail,[1] the verb mi-mnê-skô, designating the function of the Muses at II 492 (mnêsaiat') and elsewhere, means not so much that the Muses "remind" the poet of what to tell but, rather, that they have the power to put his mind or consciousness in touch with places and times other than his own in order to witness the deeds of heroes (and the doings of gods).[2] He is independent of seeing the here and now; he need only hear the kleos. For him, a thing like blindness cannot help but serve as a proof, a veritable emblem, of his artistic independence.
§4. Enter Demodokos, the blind poet of the Phaeacians in Odyssey viii. This figure Dêmodokos 'received by the dêmos'[1] is an appropriate idealization of an artist by the art form of epic. Through the persona of Demodokos, the epic of the Odyssey can express many things about itself as a composition--far beyond what the medium of performance could let the poet say in his own persona when he invoked his own Muse. As Samuel Bassett has remarked in another connection, "Homer has carefully groomed the Phaeacian bard for his part."[2] After the Phaeacians have had their fill of food and drink, the time for an evening's entertainment is at hand. The Muse, or perhaps we should say "a Muse," impels the poet Demodokos to sing the "kleos [plural] of
men" (klea andrôn: viii 72-73), from a story that had a kleos of great impact "at that time":
oimês tês tot' ara kleos ouranon eurun hikane ...
from a story-thread[3] that had at that time a kleos reaching up to the vast heavens ...
§5. I have not yet reached the point where I can examine what Demodokos then sang. Suffice it
now to observe that he performs not just one but three separate compositions in Odyssey viii, all of them pertinent to the themes of the overall Odyssey. What is more important for now, the performances of the idealized poet seem to be themselves idealized within the narrative. Outside the narrative, on the other hand, the composition of the Odyssey itself is idealized in such a way that it has become unperformable. Not only for the Odysseybut for the Iliad as well, an important aspect of idealization is amplitude and comprehensiveness. In size and in arrangement, they are truly monumental structures. Between the two of them, the Iliad and the Odyssey manage to incorporate and orchestrate something of practically everything that was once thought worth preserving from the Heroic Age. Their monumental scale, however, has far outgrown the earlier and ideal context of performance, namely, an evening's dinner-hour entertainment as described by Odysseus himself before he begins his own narration:
ê toi men tode kalon akouemen estin aoidou toioud' hoios hod' esti, theois enalinkios audên. ou gar egô ge ti phêmi telos chariesteron einai
ê hot' eüphrosunê men echêi kata dêmon hapanta, daitumones d' ana dômat' akouazôntai aoidou hêmenoi hexeiês, para de plêthôsi trapezai
sitou kai kreiôn, methu d' ek krêtêros aphussôn oinochoos phoreêisi kai encheiêi depaessi: touto ti moi kalliston eni phresin eidetai einai.
It is indeed a good thing to listen to a poet
such as this one before us, who is like the gods in speech.
For I think there is no occasion accomplished that is more pleasing[1] than when mirth[2] holds sway among all the dêmos,[3]
and the feasters up and down the house are sitting in order and listening to the singer, and beside them the tables are loaded
with bread and meats, and from the mixing bowl the wine-steward draws the wine and carries it about and fills the cups.
This seems to my own mind to be the best of occasions.
The dinner-hour performer described here is none other than Demodokos himself. By contrast, the Odyssey acknowledges its own monumental scale with the narrative that Odysseus is about to perform, starting at Book ix. As the inner narrative of his own adventures by Odysseus begins to exceed--by way of its actual length--the span of an evening's entertainment, the outer narrative has Alkinoos urge the inner narrator to continue with the following words:
nux d' hêde mala makrê athesphatos: oude pô hôrê heudein en megarôi: su de moi lege theskela erga. kai ken es êô dian anaschoimên, hote moi su
tlaiês en megarôi ta sa kêdea muthêsasthai.
This night is very long--immeasurably so. It is not yet time
to sleep in the palace. But go on telling me about your wondrous deeds. And I myself could hold out until the bright dawn, if only
you could bear to tell me, here in the palace, of your sufferings.[4]
What goes for the adventures of Odysseus in the inner narrative goes also for the entire composition: the Odyssey itself is here in effect justifying the evolution of its own dimensions. The idealized performances of Demodokos, on the other hand, have retained and thus in a sense compensated for this element of dinner-hour entertainment that had been lost in the idealized compositions of the Odyssey and the Iliad. Of course, it cannot be emphasized enough that both the Iliad and the Odyssey must have evolved within the medium of composition during performance, performance during composition. The paradox is that the compositions were developed to the point where they came to defy the traditional format of their performance.[5]
§6. Earlier, I had referred to the "artistic unity of the Iliadand the Odyssey combined." The wording was meant to convey what I consider the ultimate token of self-reflexiveness in Homeric poetry. The Odyssey, in the words of David Monro, "never repeats or refers to any incident related in the Iliad."[1] Denys Page amplifies:[2]
It is as if the Odyssean poet were wholly ignorant of that particular story which is told in the Iliad. Nowhere is there any allusion to the wrath of Achilles or to the death of Hector, or indeed to any other incident, large or small, described in the Iliad. Yet the Odyssey often pauses to narrate some part of the Trojan story and refers freely to a variety of older and contemporary Epic poems--always excluding the Iliad. There is Helen's tale of Odysseus' entry into the city of Troy in disguise (4.235ff.); there is Menelaus' story of the wooden horse (4.266ff.); we hear of Odysseus' valour in battle over Achilles' corpse (5.309ff.), and of the rivalry between Odysseus and Ajax (11.543ff.); Nestor tells at some length of a quarrel between Agamemnon and Menelaus (3.103ff.); Demodocus sings of a quarrel between Odysseus and Achilles (8.74ff.). Are we seriously asked to believe that a poet (or poets) who knew the Iliad might compose a poem of 12,000 lines concerning one of the Iliad's greatest heroes without ever showing the slightest awareness of that poem?
Page argues that the Iliad and the Odyssey are thus unconnected. And yet, it is precisely the size of the Iliad and the Odyssey that forces me to believe the opposite.[3] Both the Iliad and the Odyssey are so ambitiously comprehensive that their sheer size would make it seem inevitable for them to overlap in their treatment of at least some events related to Troy--unless there was a deliberate avoidance of such overlapping. If the avoidance was indeed deliberate, it would mean that the Odyssey displays an awareness of the Iliad by steering clear of it. Or rather, it may be a matter of evolution. Perhaps it was part of the Odyssean tradition to veer away from the Iliadic. Be that as it may, the traditions of the Iliad and the Odyssey constitute a totality with the complementary distribution of their narratives and, to me, there seems to be something traditionally self-conscious about all this. It is as if there were a traditional suppression of anything overtly Iliadic in the Odyssey.
§7. What I have offered so far, of course, is just an intuition. Perhaps I can be more convincing if
I find positive rather than negative evidence. What I need is a specific instance where the Odyssey unmistakably alludes to an Iliadic scene without duplicating it. Monro's Law would be violated only by duplication, not by allusion. For example, the passing reference in Odyssey xxiv 77 to mixing the ashes of Achilles and Patroklos is not a duplication of two other references to the same mixing in Iliad XXIII 91-92 and 243-244. Even if we were to accept the argument that Patroklos had been perhaps an exclusively Iliadic figure,[1] the parallelism of references fails to overturn Monro's Law. Inside our Iliad, the references to the mixing of ashes are themselves allusions to future events that are projected as occurring outside the Iliad. One of the artistic triumphs of our Iliad, as Cedric Whitman has shown, is that it makes the painful death of Achilles ever present by allusion inside the Iliad, even though the actual death scene lies in the future, outside the Iliad.[2] The future for the Iliad is a suitable past for the Odyssey.
§8. There is, however, someone who could bridge the gap between past and future. The poet has such powers, granted by the Muses. The poet of the Theogony, for example, says that they breathed into him a wondrous voice:
... hina kleioimi ta t' essomena pro t' eonta
... so that I may give kleos to the future and the past
It is at this point that I am at last ready to consider the first performance of Demodokos, poet of the Phaeacians. He is singing the klea andrôn 'kleos [plural] of men' (viii 73), and the kleos of his song reached all the way up to the heavens (viii 74). Perhaps this kleos also bridges the gap between Iliad and Odyssey:
autar epei posios kai edêtuos ex eron hento, Mous' ar' aoidon anêken aeidemenai klea andrôn, oimês tês tot' ara kleos ouranon eurun hikane, neikos Odussêos kai Pêleïdeô Achilêos,
hôs pote dêrisanto theôn en daiti thaleiêi ekpaglois epeessin, anax d' andrôn Agamemnôn chaire noôi, ho t' aristoi Achaiôn dêrioônto.
hôs gar hoi chreiôn muthêsato Phoibos Apollôn Puthoi en êgatheêi, hoth' huperbê laïnon oudon chrêsomenos: tote gar rha kulindeto pêmatos archê Trôsi te kai Danaoisi Dios megalou dia boulas.
But when they had their fill of drinking and eating,
the Muse impelled the singer to sing the glories [kleos plural] of men,
from a story-thread which had at that time a glory [kleos] reaching the vast heavens: the quarrel of Odysseus and Achilles son of Peleus,
how they once fought at a sumptuous feast of the gods, with terrible words, and the king of men, Agamemnon,
rejoiced in his mind that the best of the Achaeans were fighting. Thus had oracular Phoebus Apollo prophesied to him,
at holy Delphi, when he had crossed the stone threshold
to ask the oracle. For then it was that the beginning of pain started rolling upon both Trojans and Danaans, on account of the plans of great Zeus.
§9. These verses have been a puzzle for ancient as well as modern exegetes. The passage was already a landmark of literary controversy, a zêtêma, at the time of Aristarchus.[1] Nowhere else in attested Greek epic do we find a tradition reporting an overt neîkos 'quarrel' between Odysseus and Achilles, which is described here in words appropriate to the baneful neîkosbetween Agamemnon and Achilles in Iliad I. The only direct trace of any altercation between Odysseus and Achilles appears in surviving fragments of the Syndeipnoi "Banqueters" by Sophocles (frr. 562-571 Pearson).[2] The playwright, in the opinion of such analysts as Peter Von der Mühll and Wolfgang Kullmann, must have derived the theme of the altercation from a scene in the epic Cycle, somewhere in the middle of the Cypria.[3] The theory goes further; the neîkos in Odyssey viii is supposed to have been based on the same purported scene in the Cypria. In the middle of the Proclus summary of the Cypria (p. 104.23-24 Allen), however, we find only that Achilles had a quarrel with Agamemnon over not being invited to a feast of the Achaeans at Tenedos. Accordingly, Von der Mühll and Kullmann adjust their theory; Odysseus must have been featured in the Cypria as taking the side of Agamemnon and goading a recalcitrant Achilles to rejoin the Achaean expedition (cf. Sophocles fr. 566).
§10. It would require separate argumentation to refute the notion that our Odyssey postdated the Cypria and even derived material from it.[1] What is more important for now, the theory that the neîkos 'quarrel' scene of Odyssey viii was modeled on a neîkos scene in the Cypria fails to account for the precise manner in which the theme is treated by Demodokos. The form and content of Odyssey viii 75-81 are noticeably tailored to suit the beginning of an epic poem.[2] The unitarians Walter Marg and Klaus Rüter go even further, in pointing out that these verses in Odyssey viii are eerily reminiscent of the way in which the Iliad itself begins.[3] There too we find a programmatic correlation of the following themes: Achilles, son of Peleus (I 1 ~ viii 75); Agamemnon, king of men (I 7 ~ viii 77); the beginning of grief for Trojans and Achaeans alike (I 2-5 ~ viii 81-82); the involvement of Apollo (I 8-9 ~ viii 79-82); the Will of Zeus (I 5 ~ viii 82). If indeed verses 75-82 of Odyssey viii are based on a scene in another epic, then an incident which is supposed to occur in the middle of the Cypria does not seem a likely traditional model. At best, we can rescue the relevance of the Cypria here by imagining some lost epic tradition that began with a dispute between Achilles and Odysseus and to which both Cypria and Odyssey had alluded.
§11. Marg and Rüter would argue that the neîkos 'quarrel' between Achilles and Odysseus in Odyssey viii is a pastiche actually based on the opening of our Iliad, where Achilles and Agamemnon have their unforgettable neîkos.[1] To support this interpretation, they adopt George
M. Calhoun's theory of the misunderstood oracle. Agamemnon was happy, the reasoning goes, because Apollo had told him that Troy would be taken only after the "best of the Achaeans" had a
quarrel; at the time, he supposedly did not realize that the oracle had meant Achilles and himself, rather than Achilles and Odysseus.[2] I agree that Agamemnon must have misunderstood Apollo's oracle, but I disagree with Calhoun's theory about the actual misunderstanding. I find this theory hard to reconcile with Rüter's own reconstruction of the traditional cause for such a quarrel. As Rüter argues,[3] the thematic conventions of Epos pitted the aristeiâ 'prestige'[4] of Achilles against that of Odysseus in the form of a quarrel over whether Troy would be captured by might or artifice respectively. The scholia to viii 75 and 77 suggest an epic tradition that has Achilles advocating might and Odysseus, artifice as the means that will prove successful in capturing Troy.[5] We can also infer from the scholia (A) to Iliad IX 347 that Aristarchus apparently considered this Iliadic verse to be an allusion to just such a tradition. The context of IX 347 is this: Achilles is rejecting the pleas of Odysseus that he rescue the hard-pressed Achaeans; Odysseus and the other Achaean leaders, Achilles tells him, should devise a way to keep the enemy's fire from reaching the Achaean ships. Achilles seems to be saying: "you come to me now that you need my might; well, just leave me alone and go see how far your artifice will get you!"[6] If might is more important than artifice, then Achilles is more important than Odysseus. The quarrel between Odysseus and Achilles would have centered on who is the "best of the Achaeans," just like the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles.[7]
§12. The disadvantages to Calhoun's theory of the misunderstood oracle become more apparent:
(1) Agamemnon would be ignoring his own heroic worth if he understood Odysseus and Achilles to be the "best of the Achaeans," and (2) such a misunderstanding would result in slighting the heroic worth of Odysseus within the Odyssey itself.[1] It would then be an absurdity for Odysseus to praise the compositions of Demodokos, as he does at viii 487-488 and 496-498.
§13. My suspicion is that the oracle was not misunderstood in its prophecy of a quarrel between Achilles and Odysseus specifically. The reference to Achilles and Odysseus as the "best of the Achaeans" at viii 78 may have served to reveal that the poetic repertory of Demodokos is in control of two distinct themes that permeate the Iliad and the Odyssey--themes that define the central hero of each epic.
Notes
§1n1. See especially Lord 1960, The Singer of Tales. The papers of Milman Parry have been collected by Adam Parry, 1971.
§1n2. In her far-reaching survey of traditional "oral" poetry as attested among the various peoples of the world, Finnegan 1977.52-87 adduces instances where composition seems to precede performance and where composer and performer are distinct (cf. Old Provençal trobador 'composer' compared to joglar'performer'). I must say that Finnegan's synthesis (1977), much as I admire it for its breadth, cannot replace Lord's synthesis (1960), which remains the definitive study of "oral" poetry in depth.
§2n1. Part I of Dumézil's Mythe et épopée I (1968) can serve as a convenient introduction to the nature of Indic epic.
§2n2. I will consistently refer to the books of the Iliad/Odyssey in upper-/lower-case roman
numerals. My translations are based on those of Lattimore 1951/1965, with adjustments.
§2n3. For an extensive discussion of Greek kleos and its Indic cognate srávas as "glory" conferred by the "hearing" of poetry (Indo-European root *kleu- `hear'), I cite my earlier work on the subject, hidden within a comparative study of Greek and Indic meter (Nagy 1974.231-255). See also Schmitt 1967.61-102. For a parallel semantic development in yet another Indo-European language group besides Greek and Indic, we may adduce the evidence of Slavic, where slava means "glory" while slovo means both "word" and "epic tale." As Puhvel (1976.263) observes, both slava and slovo are independently derived from the same root *kleu- `hear' as in Greek kleos. It does not follow, however, that slava came to mean "glory" without the intermediacy of poetic tradition: compare the discussion of Slavic names with second element -slav in Schmitt, p.
89. Moreover, there is good reason to believe that the Indo-European root *kleu- itself had been a traditional word not only for "hear" in general but also "hear poetry" in particular (cf. Schmitt, pp. 90-93, 202, etc.). See now Foreword §16n16.
§2n4. I find it significant that this mention of kleos comes shortly after an invocation of the Muses (XI 218). The goddesses are being asked a question: who was the first hero on the Trojan side to be killed by Agamemnon at this point in the narrative (XI 219-220)? The answer follows as the narrative resumes: it was Iphidamas (XI 221-231). And the hero's motive for fighting on the Trojan side is indicated with these words: meta kleos hiket' Achaiôn 'he came in pursuit of the kleos of the Achaeans' (XI 227).
§3n1. Detienne 1973.9-16, 20; also Vernant 1959.
§3n2. When Hektor says that there should be a mnêmosunê 'reminder, memory' of his setting fire to the ships of the Achaeans (VIII 181), he is in effect saying that this moment should be recorded by epic. This is precisely what happens at XVI 112-113, where the Muses are specially invoked to tell "how it was that the fire first fell upon the ships of the Achaeans." On Mnêmosunê personified, who is mother of the Muses, see Hesiod Th. 98-103 and the discussion at Ch.6§5. The word Moûsa itself (from *mont-ia) may well stem from the same root *men- that we find in mi-mnê-skô and mnê-mosunê: Nagy 1974.249-250, 253n24.
§4n1. The meaning is made explicit at xiii 27-28, where Demodokos is described as lâoîsi tetîmenos 'honored by the people'. On the function of the dêmos 'district' as the social setting for the poet's activity, see xvii 381-387, as discussed at Ch.12§13. The poet Phêmios also has an expressive name, derived from phêmê 'prophetic utterance' (as at ii 35). The meaning of Phêmios is likewise made explicit, at xxii 376: he is described as poluphêmos 'having many prophetic utterances' (for the semantics, compare the discussion of poluainos at Ch.12§19n1). Note too his expressive patronymic Terpiadês (xxii 330), derived from terpô 'give pleasure'. This verb conventionally designates in poetry the effects of poetry (as at i 347, where Phemios is said to terpein 'give pleasure' to his audience). Compare also the patronymics Polutherseidês (Ch. 14§11) and Harmonidês (Ch.17§11). For more on Demodokos and Phemios, see Rüter 1969.233-234.
§4n2. Bassett 1938.118.
§4n3. The prehistory of the word oimê 'story' reveals that it had conveyed the imagery of
weaving (hence "story thread"): Durante 1976.176-179 (pace Chantraine III 783-784).
§5n1. On the implications of chariesteron 'more pleasing [having more kharis]', see Ch.2§13n2; also Ch.5§39.
§5n2. On the theme of euphrosunê 'mirth' in the community: Ch.5§39.
§5n3. On the dêmos as the community/audience of Dêmodokos: §4n1.
§5n4. For other passages where the audience stays awake far into the night for the sake of listening to tales, see xv 390-401, xvii 513-521, xxiii 308-309. Cf. Maehler 1963.28-29.
§5n5. Kirk (1962.281) compares the size of the Homeric compositions with the "leap from the largeish pot to the perfectly colossal one" in the evolution of monumental amphoras/craters during the Geometric Period. What interests me in this comparison is that the colossal size of a utensil defies its own utility.
§6n1. Monro 1901.325.
§6n2. Page 1955.158.
§6n3. Cf. the arguments of Kirk 1962.299-300.
§7n1. Cf. Dihle 1970.159, with bibliography.
§7n2. Whitman 1958 chapter IX.
§9n1. See Lehrs 1882.174.
§9n2. For an introduction: Pearson 1917 II 198-201 (cf. Radt 1977.425-430).
§9n3. Von der Mühll 1954.1-5, Kullmann 1960.100, 272, etc. Despite my disagreements, I should note my special admiration for Kullmann's important work.
§10n1. See further at Ch.3§1.
§10n2. Cf. Notopoulos 1964.33.
§10n3. Marg 1956.16-29, Rüter 1969.247-254. For a guide to the recent controversies between unitarians and analysts, see Fenik 1964, esp. pp. 8-15, 30-35.
§11n1. Marg ibid., Rüter ibid.
§11n2. Calhoun 1937.11.
§11n3. Rüter 1969.249-251.
§11n4. For an introduction to the complex subject of aristeiâ, the prestige that a hero gets from
his grandest moments in epic narrative, see Schroeter 1950 and Müller 1966.
§11n5. See further at Ch.3§§5-8. Of course, the Iliad itself acknowledges that Troy was to be captured by way of artifice, as inspired by Athena (XV 70-71).
§11n6. See Rüter, p. 250. I postpone a detailed look at the passages concerned until Ch.3§§5, 7.
§11n7. See further at Ch.3§8.
§12n1. I offer my own interpretation of Agamemnon's misunderstanding at Ch.4§7.
The Best of the Achaeans Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry Revised Edition
Gregory Nagy
Copyright © 1980, 1997 The Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved. First edition 1979. Revised edition 1999. This document may be used, with this notice included, for noncommercial purposes within a subscribed
institution. No copies of this work may be distributed electronically outside of the subscribed institution, in whole or in part, without written permission from the JHU Press.
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§1. It is an overall Iliadic theme that Achilles is "best of the Achaeans," as I will now try to show. [1] The title is hotly contested. The central grievance of Achilles in the Iliad is that Agamemnon has dishonored him, and in this context the hero of the Iliad is regularly called aristos Akhaiôn 'best of the Achaeans' (I 244, 412; XVI 271, 274).[2] During his quarrel with Achilles, Agamemnon, too, is specifically described as one who lays claim to the title aristos Akhaiôn:
hos nun pollon aristos Achaiôn euchetai einai
who boasts that he is now by far the best of the Achaeans
hos meg' aristos Achaiôn euchetai einai
who boasts that he is by far the best of the Achaeans
The first of these verses is spoken by Achilles himself, whose very actions in Iliad I had challenged Agamemnon's claim.
§2. When the great Catalogue of Iliad II, recounting the resources of each major Achaean hero, reaches Agamemnon, the men who followed him to Troy are described as polu pleistoi kai aristoi 'by far the most numerous and the best [aristos plural]' (II 577). Later, Agamemnon himself is said to excel:
hounek' aristos eên, polu de pleistous age laous
because he was the best [aristos], and he led the most numerous host
The tradition here grudgingly assigns him the title of "best" by virtue of his being the leader of the "best." But the Catalogue comes to a close with the words:
So now, these were the leaders of the Danaans. The poet then follows up with a question:
tis t' ar tôn och' aristos eên, su moi ennepe Mousa
Who, then, was by far the best [aristos]? Tell me, Muse!
The simple question is then expanded into a compound question: who was the best among the Achaeans and among their horses (II 762)? The Muse's answer is an elaborate exercise in ring composition. First, let us look at the horses: those of Eumelos were best (II 763-767). Then the men: well, Ajax was best [aristos] (II 768)--that is, so long as Achilles persisted in his anger and refrained from fighting:
ophr' Achileus mênien: ho gar polu phertatos êen
so long as Achilles was angry; for he was by far the best [phertatos].[1]
Which brings us back to the horses: those of Achilles were actually the best after all (II 770). But since Achilles was out of sight when the first superlative came around, his horses were out of mind. Achilles, however, is never out of mind in the Iliad when it comes to asking who is best of the Achaeans.[2] The great Ajax, then, is here being demoted from the best to the second best of the Achaeans by what seems to be premeditated afterthought. He also gets the same sort of treatment from the epic tradition in Iliad VII, in a passage that deserves detailed attention.
§3. Hektor is about to challenge Achaiôn hos tis aristos 'whoever is best [aristos] of the Achaeans' to a duel (VII 50).[1] He boasts that this unnamed Achaean will be killed and thus become part of an epic story glorifying the deeds of Hektor. The hapless unknown Achaean, by performing an aristeiâ,[2] would become part of a kleos, but the kleos would belong to the winner, Hektor. Here is how Hektor says it:
kai pote tis eipêisi kai opsigonôn anthrôpôn, nêï poluklêïdi pleôn epi oinopa ponton: "andros men tode sêma palai katatethnêôtos,
hon pot' aristeuonta katektane phaidimos Hektôr." hôs pote tis ereei: to d' emon kleos ou pot' oleitai.
And some day, someone from a future generation will say,
as he is sailing on a many-benched ship over the wine-dark sea: "This is the tomb of a man who died a long time ago,
who was performing his aristeiâ when illustrious Hektor killed him." That is what someone will say, and my kleos will never perish.
The tomb of this unknown Achaean challenger would be at the Hellespont (VII 86), clearly visible to those who sail by. And it so happens that epic tradition assigns such a tomb to Achilles himself:
aktêi epi prouchousêi, epi platei Hellêspontôi, hôs ken têlephanês ek pontophin andrasin eiê tois hoi nun gegaasi kai hoi metopisthen esontai.
on a jutting headland, by the broad Hellespont,
so that it may be bright from afar for men coming from the sea, those who are now and those who will be in the future.[3]
It is Achilles who should have answered Hektor's challenge to the one who is best of the Achaeans. This is the hero whose father had taught him "to be best [aristos] always" (aien aristeuein: XI 784). Achilles will die, yes, and his ashes will indeed be enshrined at the Hellespont. But, ironically, it is Hektor who will be killed by Achilles.[4] It is Hektor who will become part of an epic story glorifying the deeds of Achilles. By performing his fatal aristeiâ, Hektor will become part of a kleos, as he says it at VII 91, but the kleos will belong to the winner, Achilles.[5] The Iliad belongs to Achilles. It is to Achilles that the Iliadic tradition assigns the kleos that will never perish. Achilles himself says it:
ôleto men moi nostos, atar kleos aphthiton estai
I have lost a safe return home [nostos], but I will have unfailing glory [kleos].[6]
We may have lost countless other epic compositions, but the Iliad has survived and endured. The confidence of the Iliad in its eternal survival is the confidence of the master singer. For Achilles, the kleos of the Iliad tradition should be an eternal consolation for losing a safe return home, a nostos. There is also irony here for Achilles. Hektor's insulting boast hits the mark in that Achilles will be killed and will be buried where Hektor's words predict. But the greatest irony is reserved for Ajax, the second best of the Achaeans. Before we can get to him, however, other things have yet to happen in Iliad VII.
§4. After Hektor issues his challenge, no one dares to respond but Menelaos. If no one takes up the challenge, he says in the form of a public reproach,[1] it will be a subject of future public reproach as well for the Achaeans (VII 96-97),[2] and that will be a "thing without
kleos" (aklees: VII 100).[3] The Achaeans had better behave as heroes, for Epos is keeping them under observation. As Menelaos prepares to fight Hektor, the poet of the Iliad turns away from the audience of his performance and addresses directly the persona in his composition:
entha ke toi, Menelae, phanê biotoio teleutê Hektoros en palamêisin, epei polu pherteros êen
At that point, Menelaos, the end of your life would have appeared, in the clutches of Hektor, since he was better by far.
What prevented the death of Menelaos from appearing here in the narrative was the intervention of his fellow Achaeans. In particular, his brother Agamemnon is holding Menelaos back, urging him not to fight "a better man" (ameinoni phôti: VII 111). Menelaos is told that even Achilles
would not fight, "and he is far better than you" (ho per seo pollon ameinôn: VII 114).
§5. At this point, Nestor too reproaches the Achaeans (VII 123-161).[1] His words are in fact so compelling that all nine of the "pan-Achaean champions" (aristêes Panachaiôn: VII 159) volunteer straightway to face Hektor. They are Agamemnon, Diomedes, the Ajaxes, Idomeneus, Meriones, Eurypylos, Thoas, and finally, Odysseus (VII 162-168). Lots are drawn to narrow the list down to one. The Achaeans are meanwhile praying that the winner of the lottery should be Ajax or Diomedes or Agamemnon (VII 177-180). The effect of the prayer on the narrative is that our attention is narrowed down to three out of nine. Of these three, we have already seen Agamemnon claiming the title "best of the Achaeans." Diomedes, too, gets this title, but only in Book V of the Iliad. Book V is his finest hour, his aristeiâ, and this is where he is twice called aristos Akhaiôn 'best of the Achaeans.' Both times, however, the specific moment is sinister. In one passage, the archer Pandaros has just shot Diomedes with an arrow, and he is boasting that he has wounded the "best of the Achaeans" (aristos Achaiôn: V 103).[2] For an audience brought up on the tradition that Achilles himself was killed by the arrow of another archer,[3] the superlative of this boast has an ominous ring in the Iliad. In the other passage, the goddess Dione is consoling her daughter Aphrodite, who has just been wounded by Diomedes (V 406-415). He should beware, she says, lest a man stronger than her daughter should fight him (V 411); then Diomedes would be killed and his wife would have to mourn him, the "best of the
Achaeans" (ariston Achaiôn: V 414). Elsewhere in his aristeiâ, Diomedes is described only one other time as "best" (ariston: V 839), but not specifically as the best of the Achaeans. So much for Diomedes, whose heroic momentum is finally thwarted by Zeus himself at VIII 130-171.[4] As for Agamemnon, he, too, gets the general epithet "best" one other time besides the instances already discussed. This time, the setting is Book XI, the setting for his own aristeiâ. And here, too, the specific moment is sinister. Hektor has just wounded Agamemnon, and he is exulting that his enemy, "the best man," has withdrawn from the fighting ( ristos: XI 288).[5] So much, then, for Agamemnon.
§6. We can finally turn to Ajax, second best to Achilles among all the Achaeans. Here is a man destined by epic tradition to lose the most important contest of his heroic existence, a contest of aristeiâ with Odysseus.[1] But the Iliad allows him to win a lottery this time. His winning changes nothing in the course of oncoming events, since Ajax and Hektor then proceed to fight to a draw. At the end of their inconclusive duel, Hektor even compliments Ajax by calling him "best of the Achaeans" (Achaiôn phertatos: VII 289), on the grounds that he excels in both might and artifice (VII 288-289). Ajax himself had boasted of his excellence in these very qualities (VII
197-198).[2] Since the audience has already been made aware that Ajax is second best, Hektor's words and the outcome of a draw have the effect of presaging the outcome of a fatal defeat for Hektor when he comes to confront Achilles himself. As for Ajax, he will fight on, even as the situation of the Achaeans keeps getting worse and worse in the face of Hektor's onslaught. But finally even Ajax is turned back by Zeus himself (XI 544; XVI 102, 119-121).[3] The stage is now set for Hektor's confrontation with Achilles--or with whoever must stand in for Achilles.[4]
§7. Besides Diomedes, Agamemnon, Ajax, and Achilles, no other Achaean in the Iliad gets the epithet "best of the Achaeans."[1] Others also may be best, but only in categories that are restricted as subdivisions of the Achaeans. Thus Periphas may be "best of the Aetolians" (V 843), Kalkhas may be "best of the bird-watching seers" (I 69), and Teukros may be "best of the Achaeans in archery" (XIII 313-314). Similarly, in the Games of Book XXIII, different
Achaeans turn out to be best in different athletic events. Thus Diomedes is best at driving the chariot (XXIII 357), Epeios is best at boxing (XXIII 669), and Agamemnon is best at spear throwing, as Achilles himself acknowledges (XXIII 891). Such a restricted acknowledgment, however, is all that Agamemnon will ever get from Achilles in the Iliad.
§8. There are two isolated instances that at first seem like exceptions to the proposition that only four Achaean heroes vie for the epithet "best of the Achaeans" in the Iliad. In one passage, Menelaos is telling Antilokhos the ghastly news of Patroklos' death:
êdê men se kai auton oïomai eisoroônta gignôskein hoti pêma theos Danaoisi kulindei, nikê de Trôôn: pephatai d' ôristos Achaiôn, Patroklos, megalê de pothê Danaoisi tetuktai.
I think that you already see, and that you realize, that a god is letting roll a pain upon the Danaans,
and that victory belongs to the Trojans: the best [aristos] of the Achaeans has been killed, Patroklos, that is; and a great loss has been inflicted on the Danaans.
Patroklos, however, had not vied overtly with Achilles for the title "best of the Achaeans." Rather, he became the actual surrogate of Achilles, his alter ego.[1] The death of Patroklos is a function of his being the therapôn of Achilles: this word therapôn is a prehistoric Greek borrowing from the Anatolian languages (most likely sometime in the second millennium B.C.), where it had meant "ritual substitute."[2] In death, the role of Patroklos becomes identified with that of Achilles, as Cedric Whitman has eloquently reasoned.[3] The death of Patroklos inside the Iliad foreshadows the death of Achilles outside the Iliad.[4] At the very beginning of his fatal involvement, the Patroklos figure had immediately attracted an epithet otherwise appropriate to the prime antagonists of the Iliad. It is Achilles and Hektor who are appropriately isos Arêï 'equal to Ares' in the Iliad,[5] except for the one time when Patroklos leaves the tent of Achilles and comes out of seclusion:
ekmolen isos Arêï, kakou d' ara hoi pelen archê
He [Patroklos] came out, equal to Ares, and that was the beginning of his doom.[6]
When Achilles recalls the prophecy that the "best [aristos] of the Myrmidons" will die while he is still alive (XVIII 9-11), he is under the spell of a premonition that Patroklos has just been killed. Within the Iliad, however, the "best of the Achaeans" is surely also the "best of the Myrmidons," in that the Myrmidons of Achilles are a subcategory in relation to the Achaeans. By dying, Patroklos gets the titles "best of the Myrmidons" and "best of the Achaeans" because he has taken upon himself not only the armor but also the heroic identity of Achilles.[7] The death of Achilles
is postponed beyond the Iliad by the death of Patroklos.
§9. The other isolated instance that seems at first to be out of step with the rest of the Iliad occurs in Book X, the Doloneia. The Achaeans are deliberating about who should accompany Diomedes on a special expedition against the Trojans; both Ajaxes volunteer, as well as Meriones, Antilokhos, Menelaos, and, finally, Odysseus (X 228-232). Agamemnon at this point tells Diomedes to choose the "best" hero out of the group (ariston: X 236) and not to pick someone inferior for reasons of etiquette, not even if the inferior one should be "more
kinglike" (basileuteros: X 239). Agamemnon's motive is made clear by the narrative: "he feared for blond Menelaos" (X 240). For the second time now, we see Menelaos being spared from death. Without hesitation, Diomedes then names Odysseus, with whom he is sure to return in safety and who "excels at thinking" (perioide noêsai: X 247).[1] If that were all that there was to it, Odysseus might seem to be eligible for the title "best of the Achaeans." But at this point the words of Odysseus himself break in:
Tudeïdê, mêt' ar me mal' ainee mête ti neikei: eidosi gar toi tauta met' Argeiois agoreueis
Son of Tydeus! Give me neither too much praise nor too much blame;[2] you are saying these things in the presence of Argives who know.
It is as if he were saying: "the Achaeans are aware of the tradition, so please do not
exaggerate."[3] With the words of Odysseus himself, the epic tradition of the Iliadhas pointedly taken Odysseus out of contention.[4] And the contention is here expressed by neikeô (neikei: X 249), a verb derived from the same noun neîkos that was used to designate the quarrel of Achilles and Odysseus in the first song of Demodokos (neikos: viii 75).[5]
§10. In contrast to the Iliad, it is an overall theme of the Odyssey that Odysseus is indeed aristos Akhaiôn 'best of the Achaeans'. In its elaboration of this theme, as I will try to show, the Odyssey deploys subtle references not only to a Doloneia tradition in particular[1] but also to an Iliadic tradition in general.
§11. In the First Nekuia of Odyssey xi, when Odysseus meets the shade of Achilles, he addresses Achilles as "best of the Achaeans" (phertat' Achaiôn: xi 478). But the Odysseythen has Achilles saying that he would rather be alive and the lowliest of serfs than to be dead and the kingliest of shades (xi 489-491). As Klaus Rüter sees it,[1] Achilles seems ready to trade places with Odysseus, whose safe homecoming will be marked by a painful transitional phase at the very lowest levels of the social order. The words of Achilles in the First Nekuia are ironically conjuring up the glorious days of the Iliad when he had said:
ôleto men moi nostos, atar kleos aphthiton estai
I have lost a safe return home [nostos], but I will have unfailing glory [kleos].
The destiny of the Odyssey is that Odysseus shall have a nostos 'safe return home'.[2] From the retrospective vantage point of the Odyssey, Achilles would trade his kleos for a nostos. It is as if he were now ready to trade an Iliad for an Odyssey. By contrast, at a moment when Odysseus is sure that he will perish in the stormy sea, he wishes that he had died at Troy (v 308-311):
... kai meu kleos êgon Achaioi
... and then the Achaeans would have carried on my kleos.
§12. If Achilles has no nostos in the Iliad, does it follow that Odysseus has no kleos in the Odyssey? How can someone have the kleos of the Achaeans if he calls someone else the "best of the Achaeans"? As in the Doloneia, Odysseus again seems to be taking himself out of
contention--this time by giving the title to Achilles, at xi 478. Also at xi 550-551, he calls Ajax the most heroic Achaean "next to Achilles" (met' amumona Pêleiôna: xi 551). But Odysseus can afford to be generous in spirit to the two most heroic Achaeans of the Iliad tradition; the Odyssey will make him the most heroic Achaean in the Odyssey.
§13. In the Second Nekuia of Odyssey xxiv (15-202), the narrative again looks back to an Iliad tradition and beyond. We find here the shades of Achilles, Patroklos, Antilokhos, Ajax, and Agamemnon. Achilles himself concedes that Agamemnon too has left behind a kleos for the future (xxiv 33). Agamemnon in turn says that Achilles will have kleosfor all time (xxiv 93-94); he adds that his own nostos was sinister, that it resulted in an unheroic death (xxiv 95-97). At this point, the retrospective preoccupation switches from Iliad to Odyssey. The shades of Amphimedon and the other suitors arrive in the underworld, and Amphimedon retells the Revenge of Odysseus (xxiv 121-190). The story covers the heroic deeds of Odysseus, what amounts to his kleos, in the second half of the Odyssey. When the retrospective tale is done, the Agamemnon figure speaks again, and his effusive words function as a song of praise not only for Odysseus, to whom they are addressed, but also for Penelope:[1]
olbie Laertao paï, polumêchan' Odusseu, ê ara sun megalêi aretêi ektêsô akoitin:
hôs agathai phrenes êsan amumoni Pênelopeiêi, kourêi Ikariou: hôs eu memnêt' Odusêos, andros kouridiou. tôi hoi kleos ou pot' oleitai hês aretês, teuxousi d' epichthonioisin aoidên athanatoi chariessan echephroni Pênelopeiêi,
ouch hôs Tundareou kourê kaka mêsato erga, kouridion kteinasa posin, stugerê de t' aoidê
esset' ep' anthrôpous, chalepên de te phêmin opassei thêluterêisi gunaixi, kai hê k' euergos eêisin.
O fortunate son of Laertes, Odysseus of many wiles! It is truly with great merit [aretê] that you got a wife.
For the mind of blameless Penelope, daughter of Ikarios, was sound. She kept her lawful husband, Odysseus, well in mind.
Thus the kleos of his aretê shall never perish,
and the immortals shall fashion for humans a song that is pleasing[2] for sensible Penelope,
unlike the daughter of Tyndareos, who devised evil deeds,[3] killing her lawful husband; and among humans,[4]
she will be a hateful song
She will make for women an evil reputation,
females that they are--even for the kind of woman who does noble things.
As my translation shows, I find myself interpreting this passage to mean that Penelope is the key not only to the nostos but also to the kleos of Odysseus. I understand kleos at verse 196 as belonging primarily to Odysseus himself and that it is his aretê 'merit' to have won a Penelope (rather than a Clytemnestra).[6] If this interpretation is correct, then we see in the Second Nekuiaa triadic assignment of kleos to Agamemnon, Achilles, and Odysseus. Odysseus gets the best kleos, through his wife. Through Penelope, he has a genuine nostos, while Agamemnon gets a false one and Achilles, none at all.
§14. Such an interpretation is not ad hoc; rather, it takes into account the overall structure of the Odyssey. The Revenge of Odysseus is treated throughout the Odyssey as a genuinely heroic theme, worthy of kleos. And the prime stimulus for revenge is Penelope herself. Already in the First Nekuia, Odysseus is asking his mother in the underworld whatever happened to Penelope: is she steadfast ...
ê êdê min egêmen Achaiôn hos tis aristos
or has whoever is the best [aristos] of the Achaeans already married her?
The Odyssey can afford to let Odysseus put the question in this form, if indeed the narrative is confident of his heroic destiny in the Odyssey. Since his prime heroic act in the Odyssey is the killing of Achaeans who are pursuing his wife, Penelope is truly the key to his kleos. Penelope defines the heroic identity of Odysseus. Significantly, the expression Achaiôn hos tis aristos 'whoever is best [aristos] of the Achaeans' is restricted in the Odyssey to the single question: "who will marry Penelope?" (xvi 76, xviii 289, xix 528; cf. xx 335). The Homeric audience is
being conditioned for the aristeiâ of Odysseus.
§15. In particular, there are two passages that accentuate the inevitable outcome, the incontrovertible conclusion, that Odysseus is the "best of the Achaeans." At xv 521, Telemachus is telling the seer Theoklymenos that the suitor Eurymakhos, "by far the best man" (pollon aristos anêr), wants to marry Penelope. At this point in the narrative, a hawk appears, with a dove in its talons. The seer is quick to interpret: the omen is good, for it shows that no family in Ithaca is "more kingly," basileuteron, than that of Odysseus (xv 525-534). The omen has corrected the misuse, the misapplication, of the epithet "by far the best man."[1] There is an even more drastic correction in the case of the obnoxious Antinoos, another prominent suitor. The stage is set when Odysseus, in the guise of a beggar, is asking for alms from Antinoos:
dos, philos: ou men moi dokeeis ho kakistos Achaiôn emmenai, all' ôristos, epei basilêï eoikas
Give, friend! For you seem to be not the worst of the Achaeans, but the best [aristos], since you seem like a king.
Noblesse oblige, but Antinoos crudely refuses. Later on in the Odyssey, he is the very first suitor to be shot dead by the arrows of an angry Odysseus (xxii 8-21). At this point, the other suitors are not yet aware that the archer is Odysseus himself; thinking that the shooting was accidental, they rail at Odysseus, exclaiming that he has just killed "the very best" of the Ithacan fighting men (hos meg' aristos / kourôn ein Ithakêi: xxii 29-30). In view of the previous action, the characterization "best" seems ironically misapplied. Antinoos may have looked like a king, but he did not behave like one.[2]
§16. To sum up: unlike Achilles, who won kleos but lost nostos (IX 413), Odysseus is a double winner. He has won both kleos and nostos. Accordingly, in his quest for his own heroic identity, Telemachus is confronted with a double frame of reference in the figure of his father:
noston peusomenos patros philou, ên pou akousô
I am going to find out about the nostos of my father, if I should hear.
patros emou kleos euru meterchomai, ên pou akousô
I am going after the widespread kleos of my father, if I should hear.
§17. Curiously, in all these instances where Odysseus is the "best of the Achaeans," he earns the title not for doing what he did at Troy but for doing what he did within the Odyssey itself. This restriction is all the more remarkable in view of the tradition, displayed prominently within the Odyssey itself, that Odysseus, not Achilles, can take credit for the destruction of Troy; Demodokos himself tells how it all happened in his third performance, a composition about the Trojan Horse (viii 499-520).[1] We too have already heard of it in verse 2 of Book i. Moreover, in the first song of Demodokos, "the kleos of which at that time reached the vast heavens" (viii 74), Odysseus was characterized along with Achilles as "best of the Achaeans" because one of these two heroes was destined to be the destroyer of Troy. In the epic composition of Demodokos, Odysseus is implicitly "best of the Achaeans" because tradition upholds his claim to have destroyed Troy. The poet Demodokos lives up to the challenge of Odysseus that he recite the story of the Trojan Horse kata moiran 'according to destiny' (viii 496). Within the conventions of epic composition, an incident that is untraditional would be huper moiran 'beyond destiny'. For example, it would violate tradition to let Achilles kill Aeneas in Iliad XX, although the immediate situation in the narrative seems to make it inevitable; accordingly, Poseidon intervenes and saves Aeneas, telling him that his death at this point would be "beyond destiny" (huper moiran: XX 336).[2] Demodokos, then, is hewing to tradition in giving Odysseus the credit that is his due for having destroyed Troy. The triumph of the Iliad, however, is that Achilles becomes explicitly the "best of the Achaeans" without having destroyed Troy. Because of the Iliad tradition, it seems that the kleos of Odysseus at Troy was preempted by the kleos of Achilles. Such a triumph, however, could have been achieved only through sustained artistic reaction to the predilections of audiences who listened generation after generation to the kleos of the Achaeans.
§18. In this connection, it seems appropriate to reaffirm my general opinion about the Iliad and the Odyssey: the structural unity of such epics results, I think, not so much from the creative genius of whoever achieved a fixed composition but from the lengthy evolution of myriad previous compositions, era to era, into a final composition.[1] In other words, I think that the kleos of Achilles and the kleos of Odysseus, through generations of both shifting and abiding preferences in performer-audience interaction, have culminated in our Iliad and Odyssey. These epics are Panhellenic in the dimension of time as well as space. If, then, our Iliad and Odyssey are parallel products of parallel evolution, it becomes easier to imagine how the extraordinarily renowned kleos of Achilles could preempt the kleos of Odysseus at Troy. The audience will have to hear about the destruction of Troy by Odysseus not in the Iliad but in the Odyssey. This feat of Odysseus at Troy, which entitles him to be ranked with Achilles as "best of the Achaeans" in the first song of Demodokos, has been sidetracked in the Iliad--but not entirely.
Notes
§1n1. In my discussion of the epithets designating the "best," the reader will notice that I proceed without assuming that the placement of epithets is conditioned simply by metrical factors. Such an assumption would have failed to account for the fact that Homeric diction is traditional not only in form but also in content. For the theoretical underpinnings of my procedure, I cite Nagy
1974.140-149 and 229-261. See also Intro.§7.
§1n2. Cf. also IX 110, where Agamemnon is said to have dishonored andra pheriston 'the best [pheristos] man'.
§2n1. The word for "best" here is phertatos, synonymous with aristos at lines 761 and 768. Although the first form has a separate heritage of social connotations (cf. Palmer 1955.11-12), it is clearly a synonym of the second form in the diction of Homeric poetry. Achilles (and he only) is twice in the Iliad addressed as phertat' Achaiôn 'best [phertatos] of the Achaeans' (XVI 21, XIX 216).
§2n2. My general thinking on the aristeiâ of Achilles has been much stimulated by the perceptive observations of Segal 1971b.
§3n1. Hektor's challenge was formulated for him by the seer Helenos (VII 47-53), who himself thinks that Diomedes is kartiston Achaiôn 'best [kartistos] of the Achaeans' (VI 98).
§3n2. At Ch.1§11n4, I approximated this complex word with the notion of "grand heroic moments."
§3n3. For further discussion of this passage: Ch.20§22.
§3n4. For other instances of Homeric irony where a hero's speech is partially validated but also partially invalidated by the events of the traditional narrative, see XVI 241-248 as discussed at Ch.17§4 (the valid and nonvalid aspects are made explicit at XVI 249-252). See also XX
179-183, as discussed at Ch.15§3.
§3n5. When the moment of his death at the hands of Achilles approaches, Hektor expresses his wish to die eükleiôs 'with good kleos' (XXII 110) and not akleiôs 'with no kleos' (XXII 304). Cf. Ch.10§13n2.
§3n6. On the semantics of aphthito- 'unfailing' as a mark of immortality, see Ch.10§§3,5-19.
§4n1. As Menelaos begins to speak, he neikei oneidizôn 'made neîkos, making oneidos' (VII 95). Both neîkos and oneidos mean `blame, reproach' and indicate the language of blame poetry; the whole subject will be discussed at length in Ch.12.
§4n2. The potential reproach that is in store for the Achaeans is called lôbê by Menelaos (VII 97). Again, lôbê means `blame, reproach' and indicates the language of blame poetry: Ch.14§§5 (n1),6.
§4n3. On the antithesis between the kleos of epic poetry and the shame of blame poetry: Ch. 14§10.
§5n1. VII 161: hôs neikess' 'thus he made neîkos [reproach]'.
§5n2. It is precisely this kind of boasting that a hero seeks to avoid hearing from his opponent, in order to protect his epic prestige. Thus when Glaukos is wounded by the arrow of Teukros, an archer on the Achaean side (XII 387-389), the Trojan ally tries to hide "lest one of the Achaeans
see him wounded and boast [verb eukhetaomai] with words [epos plural]" (XII 390-391). The use of epos [plural] is of special interest here: this word can refer not only to the words of a figure in epic but also to the poetic form of the given words (see Ch.15§7 and n1).
§5n3. On the killing of Achilles by Paris: Ch.4§4.
§5n4. Diomedes himself admits defeat at XI 317-319 (on which see Ch.5§25). See also Whitman 1958.134.
§5n5. Even the diction of Homeric poetry affirms that the wounding of a hero thwarts his aristeiâ. For example, when Paris wounded Makhaon, he pausen aristeuonta 'stopped him from performing his aristeiâ' (XI 506).
§6n1. Cf. Little Iliad/Proclus p. 106.20-23 Allen. For a review of the details, see Kullmann 1960.79-85.
§6n2. The excellence of Ajax in both might and artifice is thus implicitly bested by the excellence of Achilles in might. It will also be bested by the excellence of Odysseus in artifice (n1).
§6n3. The words of Ajax himself set the significance of his eventual withdrawal. Those who flee, he says, get no kleos (XV 564). All the same, the heroic status of Ajax as second best after Achilles is reaffirmed at XVII 279-280.
§6n4. It is said more than once in Book XI that by now all the heroes who are aristoi 'best' have been incapacitated: lines 658-659, 825-826 (cf. also XVI 23-24). Achilles himself observes in particular that Diomedes and Agamemnon have been put out of commission (XVI 74-77). His words contrast the inability of Diomedes with the ability of Patroklos "to ward off the devastation" at the Battle of the Ships (loigon amunai/amunôn at XVI 75/80). See Ch.5§12 and n1.
§7n1. I do not count the sporadic instances of aristos in the plural, as at V 541 (Krethon and Orsilokhos are called Danaôn andras aristous 'men who are best [aristoi] among the Danaans').
§8n2. See Van Brock 1959; cf. Householder/Nagy 1972.774-776 and Lowenstam 1975.
§8n3. Whitman 1958.136-137, 200-202. Note that Achilles is acknowledged as aristos 'best' by Glaukos at XVII 164-165 on the basis of the feats performed by Patroklos, who is called the therapôn of Achilles in this very context.
§8n4. See Pestalozzi 1945.
§8n5. For a listing of attestations: Ch.17§5.
§8n6. Cf. Nagy 1974.230-231; further discussion at Ch.17§5. Other than Hektor and Achilles/ Patroklos, the only other Iliadic figure who is called îsos Arêi 'equal to Ares' is the hero Leonteus (XII 130). The evidence of Homeric diction indicates that the epic traditions about Leonteus were
parallel to those about Patroklos, in that both figures are connected with the theme that the hero in death is a therapôn of Ares: Ch.17§5n8.
§8n7. For more on the wearing of Achilles' armor by Patroklos: Ch.9§33n2.
§9n1. On the semantics of noun noos 'thinking' and verb noeô 'think' in Homeric poetry: Frame 1978. On the use of noeô to express the notion of taking the initiative: Ch.3§13n.
§9n2. The verbs aineô 'praise' and neikeô 'blame' indicate the poetry of praise and blame: Ch. 12§3.
§9n3. It is an established theme of praise and blame poetry that the audience is well aware of the traditions with which it is presented: Ch.12§§18-19.
§9n4. The figure of Diomedes himself is here directly pertinent to the epic reputation of Odysseus, since there are numerous epic traditions featuring these two heroes on joint expeditions (for a list: Fenik 1964.12-13). Significantly, different epic traditions give more or less credit to one or the other figure. In the Little Iliad, for example, it is Diomedes and not Odysseus who brings back Philoktetes (Proclus p.106.24-25 Allen); see Fenik, p. 13n2 and Severyns
1938.365-369.
§9n5. Besides meaning `quarrel, fight, contention', the word neîkos also designates the poetry of blame: Ch.12§3.
§10n1. Cf. Muellner 1976.96n43.
§11n1. Rüter 1969.252-253.
§11n2. On the semantics of nostos in Homeric poetry: Frame 1978. On nostos as not only
`homecoming' but also `song about a homecoming': Ch.6§6n2.
§13n1. In Ch.14§5n1 and n3, I propose that this passage reflects a formal tradition of praise poetry centering on the theme of Penelope, as distinguished by the contrasting blame poetry about Clytemnestra.
§13n2. The adjective chariessan that describes aoidê 'song' here at line 198 is derived from kharis, a noun that conveys simultaneously the social aspect of reciprocity as well as the personal aspect of pleasure. Cf chariessan amoibên 'compensation that has kharis' at iii 58; on the reciprocity between poet and patron, see Ch.12§21n3. In the Homeric Hymn to Hestia (Hymn 24), the poet prays that his aoidê 'song' have kharis (line 5); by implication, the pleasure that it gives is linked with the reward he will receive. See further at Ch.5§39.
§13n3. These themes correspond to the actual name Klutaimêstrê, a form indicating that the wife of Agamemnon is "famed" (Klutai-, from the same root *kleu- as in kleos) on account of what she "devised" (-mêstrê, from verb mêdomai). The element -mêstrê, from mêdomai 'devise', corresponds to the theme of kaka mêsato erga 'she devised [mêdomai] evil deeds' at line 199. As for the element Klutai- `famed', it corresponds to the theme of stugerê ... aoidê 'hateful song' at line 200. This hateful song will be not simply about the wife of Agamemnon. Rather, the song is
being presented as the very essence of Klutaimêstrê. (On the formal variant Klutai-mnêstrêas in the latinized Clytemnestra, see Nagy 1974.260; for more on the semantics of mêdomai, see Nagy, pp. 258-261.)
§13n4. To my knowledge, instances of epi + accusative in the sense of "among" are restricted in Homeric diction to anthrôpous 'humans' as the object of the preposition. This syntactical idiosyncrasy can be correlated with an interesting thematic association: the expression ep' anthrôpous 'among humans' is conventionally linked with kleos (X 213, i 299, xix 334, xxiv 94) and its derivatives (XXIV 202, xiv 403). It is also linked with aoidê 'song' at xxiv 201. Because of this parallelism between kleos and aoidê, and because kleos designates the glory conferred by poetry (Ch.1§2), I infer that ep' anthrôpous 'among humans' in these contexts indicates an audience in general listening to poetry in general. Calvert Watkins suggests to me that the original force of epi in this collocation may indeed be directional.
§13n5. To continue with the inference that the collocation of aoidê 'song' at line 200 with ep' anthrôpous 'among humans' at line 201 implies a sort of universal audience listening to the song about Clytemnestra: what men will hearabout Klutai-mêstrê is of course not the positive kleos of praise poetry (on which see Ch.12§3). Rather, it is blame poetry (see Ch.14§5n1). Ironically, when he had set out for Troy, Agamemnon had left behind an aoidos 'singer, poet' to guard Clytemnestra (iii 267-268). When Aigisthos persuaded her to betray Agamemnon by way of adultery, he took the aoidos to a deserted island (iii 270-271). In this way, the aoidos could not have seen the adultery, but the shameful behavior is nevertheless heard by the audience, which listens to the hateful aoidê 'song' about Clytemnestra. We see here a striking Homeric attestation of two traditional themes concerning the generic poet. One, he does not need to be an eyewitness and thus actually to see deeds in order to tell about them, since he can hear about them from the Muses (Ch.1§3). Two, he can regulate social behavior with his power to blame evil deeds (cf. Ch. 14§12n4, Ch.15§8n8, Ch.16§10n6). On iii 267-268, see also Svenbro 1976.31 and n88.
§13n6. Compare the maxim told by Penelope to the disguised Odysseus at xix 329-334 (on which see further at Ch.14§6), where the good host gets the kleos of praise while the bad host gets the ridicule of blame. In being hospitable to the would-be beggar, Penelope is striving to match the former hospitality of Odysseus himself, who is described as the ultimate good host (xix 309-316). By implication, the kleos of being a good host belongs primarily to Odysseus. But Penelope herself is part of this kleos: at xix 325-328, she says that her own excellence will be recognized only if she is a good host to the would-be beggar. So also at xxiv 197-198: the aoidê 'song' about her is part of the overall kleos of Odysseus. A similar interpretation is possible at xix 107-114. See now Foreword §16n17.
§15n1. Cf. Whitman 1958.341n13 on the traditional device of misstating for the purpose of soliciting an omen to correct the misstatement.
§15n2. There is more irony when the psûkhai of the suitors reach Hades. Agamemnon wonders whether they had all been "chosen" as the aristoi 'best men' in a community (xxiv 107-108).
§17n1. More on this composition at Ch.6§9.
§17n2. For a stimulating discussion, see Pestalozzi 1945.40. On destiny and epic plot, see
Kullmann 1956; cf. also Fränkel 1962.62-64. For a recent synthesis, I cite Mathews 1976. My translation of moîra as `destiny' in the contexts of XX 336 and viii 496 does not reveal the full semantic range of the word, which will be discussed further at Ch.7§21. The context of viii 496 is pertinent to that discussion, in that Odysseus rewards Demodokos for his songs by giving him a choice cut of meat (viii 474-483). The poet receives this award at a feast, where the portions of food are actually designated as moîrai (viii 470). To repeat, Odysseus challenges Demodokos to recite the story of the Trojan Horse kata moiran 'according to moîra' (viii 496).
§18n1. Cf. Intro.§9.
The Best of the Achaeans Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry Revised Edition
Gregory Nagy
Copyright © 1980, 1997 The Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved. First edition 1979. Revised edition 1999. This document may be used, with this notice included, for noncommercial purposes within a subscribed
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§1. As we have already seen, some experts argue that the quarrel of Achilles and Odysseus in Odyssey viii is a pastiche actually based on the opening of our Iliad, where Achilles and Agamemnon have their memorable quarrel.[1] But in this line of reasoning there is a flaw that we have yet to single out: it presupposes that one text (the Odyssey) is here referring to another text (the Iliad). The same sort of flaw afflicts the argument of other experts who seek to show that the Odyssean passage in question refers to some lost passage in the Homeric Cycle (specifically, the Cypria).[2] Even if we were to accept for the moment the dubious notion that parts of the Homeric Cycle are drawn from some text that predates our Iliad and Odyssey, the fundamental objection remains the same: when we are dealing with the traditional poetry of the Homeric (and Hesiodic) compositions, it is not justifiable to claim that a passage in any text can refer to another passage in another text. Such a restriction of approaches in Homeric (and Hesiodic) criticism is one of the most important lessons to be learned from the findings of Milman Parry and Albert Lord on the nature of traditional "oral" poetry.[3]
§2. I will confine myself, then, to examining whether a poem that is composed in a given tradition
may refer to other traditions of composition. Thus, for example, our Odyssey may theoretically
refer to traditional themes that are central to the stories of the Cypria--or even to the stories of the Iliad, for that matter. But even in that case, such traditional themes would have varied from composition to composition. There may theoretically be as many variations on a theme as there are compositions. Any theme is but a multiform, and not one of the multiforms may be considered a functional "Ur-form." Only by hindsight can we consider the themes of our Iliad to be the best of possible themes.
§3. In the specific case of Odyssey viii 72-82, we do indeed see what amounts to an Iliadic overture in the thematic combination of Achilles, Agamemnon, grief for Trojans and Achaeans, involvement of Apollo, and the Will of Zeus. Nevertheless, we may not infer that these themes were based specifically on the opening of our Iliad.[1] There are traditional elements in the epic opening reported by Odyssey viii 72-82 that go beyond the scope of the opening in Iliad I. These elements may still be considered "Iliadic" only in the sense that clear traces of them are indeed to be found in our Iliad. But they are not within the actual opening of Iliad I; instead, they surface here and there in the rest of the composition.
§4. For a striking illustration, I begin with the reference in Odyssey viii 78 to the quarreling Achilles and Odysseus as "the best of the Achaeans" (aristoi Akhaiôn), where the context of their quarrel is a dais 'feast' (viii 76). Let us compare a scene in Iliad VIII, where Agamemnon seeks to revive the fighting spirit of the demoralized Achaeans. He stands on the ship of Odysseus (VIII 222), which is exactly halfway between the ships of Ajax on one extreme and Achilles on the other (VIII 223-226),[1] and begins his speech with these words:
aidôs, Argeioi, kak' elenchea, eidos agêtoi:
pêi eban euchôlai, hote dê phamen einai aristoi, has hopot' en Lêmnôi keneauchees êgoraasthe, esthontes krea polla boôn orthokrairaôn, pinontes krêtêras epistepheas oinoio,
Trôôn anth' hekaton te diêkosiôn te hekastos stêsesth' en polemôi: nun d' oud' henos axioi eimen Hektoros, hos tacha nêas eniprêsei puri kêleôi.
Shame, Argives! Though splendid in appearance, you are base objects of blame.[2]
Where have the boasts gone, when we said that we are the best [aristoi]?[3] These boasts you uttered, saying empty words, at Lemnos,
when you were eating the abundant meat of straight-horned oxen and drinking from great bowls filled to the brim with wine,
how any one of you could each stand up against a hundred or even two hundred Trojans in battle. But now we cannot even match one of them,
Hektor, who is about to set fire to our ships with burning fire.
In verses 231-232, we note that the setting for this scene of boasting is equivalent to a dais, which in viii 76 had served as the setting for the scene of quarreling between Odysseus and
Achilles. In the present passage, the key words for understanding its affinity with viii 72-82 are at VIII 229: aristoi 'best', in collocation with the plural noun eukhôlai 'boasts', derived from the verb eukhomai 'boast'. Agamemnon's own claim to be "best of the Achaeans" is in fact formulated with this same verb:
hos nun pollon aristos Achaiôn euchetai einai
who now boasts to be by far the best of the Achaeans
hos meg' aristos Achaiôn euchetai einai
who boasts to be by far the best of the Achaeans
From the intensive studies of Leonard Muellner on the behavior of eukhomai 'boast' and its
substitute phêmi 'say' in Homeric diction, we know that these words are used by or of a hero to express his superiority in a given area of heroic endeavor.[4] Take, for example, V 171-173, where we hear that no one in Lycia can boast (eukhetai: 173) to be better than Pandaros in archery (171), and that the hero thus gets kleos in this area of endeavor (172).[5] We may compare kleos at Odyssey viii 74, correlated with neîkos 'quarrel' between the aristoi Akhaiôn 'best of the Achaeans', Odysseus and Achilles himself (viii 78). Granted, the scene of eukhôlai 'boasts' at Lemnos is presented at VIII 228-235 not as a quarrel among various Achaeans with various areas of heroic superiority but rather as a collective affirmation of the Achaeans' superiority over the Trojans. Such a perspective of collectivity stays in effect, however, only so long as the narrative remains general by not quoting any individual hero. Once the Homeric narrative quotes a hero as he actually eukhetai 'boasts', the factor of comparison and even rivalry with other heroes becomes overt.[6] Ironically, the boasts of all the other Achaeans during their onetime feast at Lemnos now sound empty because the hero who is "best" when all heroic endeavors are taken into account is not at hand to stop the overwhelming might of Hektor.
§5. Among the areas of heroic endeavor that serve as conventional points of comparison when a hero boasts, we actually find biê 'might' (e.g., XV 165) and the equivalent of mêtis 'artifice, stratagem' (e.g., XVII 171).[1] In this connection, we may note again that the reference in Odyssey viii 78 to the quarreling Achilles and Odysseus as the "best of the Achaeans" seems to be based on an epic tradition that contrasted the heroic worth of Odysseus with that of Achilles in terms of a contrast between mêtis and biê. The contrast apparently took the form of a quarrel between the two heroes over whether Troy would be taken by might or by artifice. The scholia to Odyssey viii 75 and 77 point to such an epic tradition, where Achilles is advocating might and Odysseus, artifice, as the means that will prove successful in destroying Troy.[2] We have also considered the testimony of the scholia (A) to Iliad IX 347, from which we learn that Aristarchus
apparently thought this particular Iliadic passage (IX 346-352) to be an allusion to precisely the same tradition that we are now considering, namely, the rivalry of Achilles and Odysseus as indicated in Odysseyviii 72-82.[3] In Iliad IX 346-352, we find Achilles in the act of rejecting the request of Odysseus that he rescue the hard-pressed Achaeans:
all', Oduseu, sun soi te kai alloisin basileusi phrazesthô nêessin alexemenai dêïon pur.
ê men dê mala polla ponêsato nosphin emeio, kai dê teichos edeime, kai êlase taphron ep' autôi eureian megalên, en de skolopas katepêxen:
all' oud' hôs dunatai sthenos Hektoros androphonoio ischein
Let him [Agamemnon], Odysseus, along with you and the other kings
devise a way[4] to ward off the destructive fire from the ships. He has indeed labored greatly in my absence,
and he has even built a wall and driven a ditch around it
--wide and big it is--and he has fastened stakes inside.
Even so he cannot hold back the strength of Hektor the man-killer.
In effect, the words of Achilles defiantly and ironically challenge Odysseus, Agamemnon, "and the other kings" (IX 346) to rely on artifice at the very moment when they are desperately in need of his might.
§6. There are still further allusions to the theme of a dispute over might against artifice. Our Iliad preserves, in evocative contexts, the very words which must have signaled the rival means to a common end. The word biê 'might', on the one hand, is a conventional Iliadic measure of Achilles' superiority, as in the following juxtaposition:
presbuteros de su essi: biêi d' ho ge pollon ameinôn
You [Patroklos] are older; but he [Achilles] is much better in biê
The word mêtis 'artifice, stratagem', on the other hand, characterizes Odysseus in particular: in the Iliad and the Odyssey, only he is described with the epithets polumêtis 'of many artifices' and poikilo-mêtis 'of manifold artifices'. He is frequently called Dii mêtin atalantos 'equal to Zeus in artifice'. The polarity of biê 'might' and mêtis 'artifice' is clearly visible in old Nestor's advice to his son about the art of chariot racing:
all' age dê su, philos, mêtin emballeo thumôi pantoiên, hina mê se parekprophugêisin aethla. mêti toi drutomos meg' ameinôn êe biêphi: mêti d' aute kubernêtês eni oinopi pontôi
nêa thoên ithunei erechthomenên anemoisi: mêti d' hêniochos perigignetai hêniochoio.
Come, my philos, put in your thûmos every sort of mêtis, so that prizes may not elude you.
It is with mêtis rather than biê that a woodcutter is better. It is with mêtis that a helmsman over the wine-dark sea steers his swift ship buffeted by winds.
It is with mêtis that charioteer is better than charioteer.
In such a traditional celebration of mêtis 'artifice' at the expense of biê 'might', we see that superiority is actually being determined in terms of an opposition between these qualities.
§7. With these passages serving as background, we now move back to the evidence of IX
346-352,[1] where Achilles is defiantly challenging Odysseus and the other Achaean chieftains to survive the Trojan onslaught without the benefit of his own might. As his speech draws to a close, the final words of Achilles to Odysseus can be understood as conveying an underlying awareness and even bitterness. Let the Achaeans, Achilles tells Odysseus, devise "a better mêtis" to ward off the fire of the Trojans and thus save the Greek ships:
ophr' allên phrazôntai eni phresi mêtin ameinô, hê ke sphin nêas te saôi kai laon Achaiôn
nêusin epi glaphurêis, epei ou sphisin hêde g' hetoimê, hên nun ephrassanto emeu apomênisantos.
that they should devise[2] in their thoughts another mêtis that is better and that will rescue their ships and the host of the Achaeans
who are at the hollow ships. For this one [this mêtis],
which they now devised[3] during the time of my anger, does not suffice.
The reference is to Nestor's original stratagem to build the Achaean Wall, and this stratagem actually is designated in that context as mêtis (VII 324). Ironically, Nestor's later stratagem, to send the Embassy to Achilles, is also designated in the narrative as mêtis (IX 93). Ironically too, Odysseus is the one who is pleading for what the Achaeans most sorely need at this point, the might of Achilles. For the moment, the mêtis 'artifice' of Odysseus (and Nestor) is at a loss, and the biê 'might' of Achilles is implicitly vindicated.
§8. Of course, the primary and central grievance of Achilles in our Iliad is against Agamemnon; any grievance of his against Odysseus that may have surfaced in Book IX must be secondary and marginal, as we can see clearly in IX 346-352.[1] Furthermore, even when we accept as traditional the theme of a quarrel between Achilles and Odysseus, we must keep in mind that the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon in Iliad I is in all likelihood an equally traditional theme.[2] It would be useless to argue that one theme or the other was older. All we can say is that the quarrel of Achilles and Odysseus is an alternative traditional theme that would have been suitable for testing the heroic worth of Achilles in a different dimension. Whereas the conflict of Achilles and Agamemnon contrasts martial with social superiority,[3] the conflict between Achilles and Odysseus is on a different axis of opposition: biê 'might' against mêtis 'artifice'. I submit that the epic theme of such a conflict is maintained as an undertone in Iliad IX, by means of including Odysseus in the Embassy to Achilles.
§9. In fact, this theme may help account for a notorious problem involving the Embassy Scene of Iliad IX. The problem is, simply put, that this passage features some dual constructions in places where we might have expected the plural.[1] Instead of plunging into the vast bibliography on the subject,[2] I propose simply to examine the passage anew, attempting to correlate how the dual constructions are deployed in the story with how the story itself applies to the tradition of a conflict between Odysseus and Achilles. I should note at the outset, however, that the evidence for this conflict has already been established in the preceding discussion and stands by itself. It does not depend on the discussion that follows. As for what I am about to argue, there is considerable room for disagreement. But I hope to show, at the very least, that the Embassy Scene as we have it is not a clumsy patchwork of mutually irreconcilable texts but rather an artistic orchestration of variant narrative traditions.
§10. We take up the story at a point where King Agamemnon and the Achaeans finally despair of resisting the onslaught of Hektor and the Trojans without the aid of Achilles, who has withdrawn from the fighting. At a meeting of the elders, Nestor suggests that an embassy be sent to Achilles, bringing to him an offer of settlement from Agamemnon (IX 93-113). Agamemnon agrees and makes a lavish offer (IX 114-161), whereupon Nestor suggests that there be three emissaries: Phoinix, Ajax, and Odysseus (IX 162-172). Nestor's original plan calls for Phoinix to go first, followed by Ajax and Odysseus, followed by the heralds Odios and Eurybates:
ei d' age, tous an egô epiopsomai, hoi de pithesthôn. Phoinix men prôtista Diï philos hêgêsasthô,
autar epeit' Aias te megas kai dios Odusseus: kêrukôn d' Odios te kai Eurubatês ham' hepesthôn.
But come, let those upon whom I am looking take on the task. First of all, let Phoinix, dear to Zeus, take the lead;
and after him the great Ajax and brilliant Odysseus,
and of the heralds let Odios and Eurybates accompany them.
The crucial expression is Phoinix ... hêgêsasthô at verse 168: "let Phoinix ... take the lead." As the
emissaries proceed on their way to Achilles, the one who actually takes the lead is not Phoinix but Odysseus:
tô de batên proterô, hêgeito de dios Odusseus.
And the two were moving along, and brilliant Odysseus led the way.
The word hêgeito here at IX 192 is in direct contrast with the corresponding hêgêsasthô of IX 168 ("he led the way" compared to "let him lead the way" respectively). In contradiction of the original plan, Odysseus is now leading the way instead of Phoinix.
§11. As we consider the dual construction tô de batên proterô 'and the two were moving along' here in the second passage (IX 192), let us not immediately assume that we are dealing with the emergence of an earlier version involving two emissaries as opposed to the first passage (IX
167-170), which is supposed to present a later version involving three emissaries. Instead, at least for the moment, let us take the thematic progression from the first passage to the second passage as a given of the narrative at hand. In that case, the dual in the second passage must refer to Ajax and Phoinix, not to Ajax and Odysseus. The plan of the first passage had called for Ajax and Odysseus to be led by Phoinix. Instead, we now see Ajax and Phoinix being led by Odysseus. See now Foreword §29n40.
§12. Rather than assume that Phoinix, in Denys Page's words, "mislaid himself"[1] in the forgetful mind of the composer, let us suppose that Odysseus simply asserted himself in the actual narrative of the composition. Old Nestor, as the originator of the plan to send an embassy, had after all made a point of stressing the role of Odysseus when the emissaries were sent off:
toisi de poll' epetelle Gerênios hippota Nestôr, dendillôn es hekaston, Odussêï de malista, peiran hôs pepithoien amumona Pêleiôna.
And the Gerenian horseman Nestor gave them many instructions, making signs with his eyes at each, especially at Odysseus,
that they try to persuade the blameless son of Peleus.
§13. The self-assertion of Odysseus goes beyond taking the lead in the procession to the tent of Achilles. When the emissaries are about to deliver their message to Achilles, Ajax gives Phoinix the signal to begin, but it is Odysseus who takes the initiative:
neus' Aias Phoiniki: noêse de dios Odusseus
Ajax nodded to Phoinix; and brilliant Odysseus took note ... [1]
Instead of Phoinix, it is Odysseus who now gives the first speech (IX 225-306); only then does Phoinix speak (IX 434-605), then Ajax (IX 624-642). In the end, Phoinix stays behind with Achilles, and it is Odysseus who leads the Embassy back to the tent of Agamemnon:
... hoi de hekastos helôn depas amphikupellon speisantes para nêas isan palin: êrche d' Odusseus.
... and they each took a double-handled cup
and made a libation; then they went back to the ships, and Odysseus led the way.
As the leader of the Embassy, it is he who reports to Agamemnon the reply of Achilles (IX 673 ff.).
§14. This pattern of self-assertion on the part of Odysseus reflects in particular on one of his many traditional roles, that of the trickster. By taking the lead among the emissaries, he puts himself in the position of being the one who actually delivers the terms of compensation proposed by Agamemnon for settlement with Achilles (IX 260-299, reporting IX 120-158). In doing so, Odysseus makes a significant adjustment to Agamemnon's original message by failing to repeat Agamemnon's reaffirmation of social superiority over Achilles (IX 160-161). As Cedric Whitman argues, the acceptance of such compromised terms by Achilles would thus have aborted his heroic stature in the Iliad.[1] The success of Odysseus in the Embassy would have entailed the failure of Achilles in his own epic. Accordingly, the suspicion of Achilles upon hearing the speech of Odysseus seems justified:
echthros gar moi keinos homôs Aïdao pulêisin
hos ch' heteron men keuthêi eni phresin, allo de eipêi
For he is as hateful [ekhthros] to me as the gates of Hades, whoever hides one thing in his thoughts and says another.
§15. These strong words are framed by Achilles' outright rejection of the speech by Odysseus (IX 308-311, 314-429). Moreover, even before he heard the offer that he rejects so forcefully, Achilles may have already considered Odysseus to be the sort of ekhthros 'hateful one, enemy' that is described in IX 312-313. We come back to the moment when Achilles sees the Embassy
approaching:
stan de prosth' autoio: taphôn d' anorousen Achilleus autêi sun phormingi, lipôn hedos entha thaassen.
hôs d' autôs Patroklos, epei ide phôtas, anestê.
tô kai deiknumenos prosephê podas ôkus Achilleus: "chaireton: ê philoi andres ikaneton: ê ti mala chreô. hoi moi skuzomenôi per Achaiôn philtatoi eston."
And they stood in front of him, and Achilles jumped up, amazed, still holding the lyre, leaving the place where he was sitting. Likewise Patroklos, when he saw the men, stood up.
Greeting the two of them, swift-footed Achilles said:
"Hail to the two of you: you have come as friends. I need you very much--
you two who are the dearest to me among the Achaeans, even now when I am angry."
The last three verses of this passage all contain dual constructions, as if there were only two emissaries rather than three. Furthermore, the two are addressed by Achilles as "most dear [philos]" to him among all the Achaeans, Achaiôn philtatoi (IX 198).[1] If indeed Achilles later implies that Odysseus may be an "enemy" (ekhthros) to him, is Odysseus being excluded from his greeting? Certainly the definition that we find for ekhthros 'enemy' in IX 312-313[2] --a definition framed by the words of Achilles himself--applies to the epic behavior of Odysseus. As we see most clearly in his own epic, the Odyssey, he continually says one thing and means another.[3]
§16. Let us pursue the hypothesis that the duals in IX 196-198[1] refer to Ajax and Phoinix, and that Odysseus is being excluded by Achilles in his reference to the Achaeans who are "most dear [philos]" to him (philtatoi: IX 198). On the level of form, we can say that the dual pronoun tô of IX 196 recapitulates the tô of IX 192,[2] which immediately precedes in the narrative. In IX 192, the dual tô sets off Ajax and Phoinix from Odysseus; as I have already argued, it is here that Odysseus first seizes the initiative and takes the lead in the Embassy, with his fellow emissaries being relegated to the dual tô.[3] Now the dual tô in IX 196 takes up where the last dual left off in IX 192, and we may continue with the understanding that it refers to Ajax and Phoinix.
§17. On the level on content, this interpretation is viable if an "Embassy of Ajax and Phoinix to Achilles" had been a stock theme of Greek epic tradition and if the story of an enmity between Odysseus and Achilles had likewise been traditional. If we find evidence to support these two propositions, then we could also claim that the Embassy episode of Iliad IX has, from the standpoint of, say, an audience in the eighth century B.C., much higher artistic merit than what we can see in a text without attested precedents. Then we could confidently reject any superficial impression of ours that the Embassy is an imperfect story, marred by a clumsy deployment of misplaced duals.
§18. If the stock theme of an "Embassy of Ajax and Odysseus to Achilles" had been original to
the Iliadic tradition for this particular period in the course of the Trojan War narrative--as Page and other analysts infer--then the final Iliadic treatment that we see attested in Book IX, with the "Embassy of Ajax, Odysseus, and Phoinix to Achilles," should have required the conversion of all duals into plurals, especially at the moment when Achilles greets the emissaries (IX 193-198). Instead, Achilles greets them in the dual! The purported grafting of Phoinix into this scene is thus only partially successful, in that the role of Phoinix fails to get its proper due. As Page exclaims, "Unhappy Phoenix, Achilles' oldest friend, not a single word of you!"[1] We are left with the impression that the story has faults beyond remedy.
§19. If, on the other hand, the stock theme of an "Embassy of Ajax and Phoinix to Achilles" had been traditional, then we see in Iliad IX the insertion of Odysseus on the level of form and the self-assertion of Odysseus on the level of content. Of course, we may in the meantime reject the assumption of some analysts that any such insertion is a textual phenomenon: all we need say is that the composition integrates another traditional element. If, in turn, the insertion of Odysseus into the Embassy story carries with it the traditional theme of an enmity between him and Achilles, then the narrative of Iliad IX may allow the retention of duals referring to the pair of Ajax and Phoinix when the time comes for Achilles to greet the Embassy. For an audience familiar with another version of the story where Achilles had only two emissaries to greet, the retention of the dual greeting when Odysseus is included in the Embassy surely amounts to an artistic masterstroke in the narrative. The exclusion of Odysseus in the dual greeting would serve to remind the audience of the enmity between him and Achilles.
§20. We should consider whether there are any formal traces of material for a traditional story where only Ajax and Phoinix are emissaries to Achilles. For this purpose, let us contrast the way in which the narrative in Book IX handles the pair of Ajax and Phoinix with the way in which it handles the pair of Ajax and Odysseus. When Odysseus is set off from Ajax and Phoinix, the latter pair is designated in the dual. This is what I propose to be the case in IX 192[1] and
.[2] Conversely, when the narrative overtly sets off Phoinix from Ajax and Odysseus, it designates this pair consistently in the plural. Besides IX 656-657,[3] I can also cite the following:
all' humeis men iontes aristêessin Achaiôn angeliên apophasthe--to
gar geras esti gerontôn--
But you must go back to the chieftains of the Achaeans
and give them this message--for that is the privilege of the Elders--[4]
The humeis men ... here is immediately contrasted with Phoinix d(e) ... , which follows at IX 427. Achilles is asking Phoinix to stay with him, while the other emissaries are to go back carrying the message of his refusal. Elsewhere too, Achilles distinguishes Phoinix from the others, to whom he refers not in the dual but in the plural:
houtoi d' angeleousi, su d' autothi lexeo mimnôn eunêi eni malakêi
These men will take the message; but you must stay here and lie down on the soft bed.
In sum, dual constructions fail to appear in every triadic situation where Ajax and Odysseus are explicitly set off from Phoinix. This evidence, then, goes against the possible counterclaim that the dual constructions of IX 192 and 196-198[5] might refer implicitly to Ajax and Odysseus. It therefore remains tenable to claim that they refer instead to Ajax and Phoinix. Furthermore, these references may be explicit in the narrative of Book IX, if indeed there existed a traditional epic story that told of Achilles being angry at Odysseus. Then the dual constructions of IX 196-198 express a pointed exclusion of Odysseus from those who are "most dear [philos]" to Achilles (philtatoi: IX 198).[6]
§21. This much said, I leave the problem of the dual constructions in Iliad IX and return to the broader problem of establishing the relationship between the expanded passage of the Embassy Scene and the compressed passage of Odyssey viii 72-82. So far we have been dealing with only one specific theme that seems to be shared by these two passages, namely, a conflict between Achilles and Odysseus. Besides this theme, however, there are a number of accessory themes that also seem to be shared by these two passages. Let us examine these comparable themes by using as our frame of reference the compressed narrative of Odyssey viii 72-82.
The dispute of Achilles and Odysseus took place at a sacrificial feast or dais (theôn en daiti thaleiêi: viii 76). Compare this setting of a dais 'feast, portion' with the first words of Odysseus to Achilles in the Embassy Scene:
êmen eni klisiêi Agamemnonos Atreïdao
êde kai enthade nun: para gar menoeikea polla
deidimen
7.
Hail, Achilles! You will not be without a fair dais
either in the tent of Agamemnon son of Atreus
or here and now. There is at hand much that would suit you,
for you to have as dais. But the concern is not about a pleasant dais.
Rather, we are facing a great pêma [pain], O diotrephês,
and we are in doubt. 13.
The sacrificial nature of the dais 'feast' in the tent of Achilles is implicit (IX 219-220),[1] and the triple reference to the procedure of a dais within the first four verses of the speech
by Odysseus to Achilles may suggest an echo of a well-established theme.[2]
The dispute of Achilles and Odysseus was an omen that Troy would be destroyed--but not before enormous grief, pêma, afflicted not only the Trojans but also the Achaeans (pêmatos archê: viii 81). Compare the pêma that afflicts the Achaeans at IX 229.[3]
The omen that Troy would be destroyed was predicted for Agamemnon by Phoebus Apollo "at holy Delphi, when he [Agamemnon] had crossed the stone threshold to ask the oracle" (viii 79-81). Compare the incidental reference of Achilles to Delphi in his answer to Odysseus:
oud' hosa laïnos oudos aphêtoros entos eergei,
Phoibou Apollônos, Puthoi eni petrêessêi
17.
18.
nor all the things contained within the stone threshold of the Archer, Phoebus Apollo, in rocky Delphi.
This passage contains the only reference to Delphi in our Iliad (except for the purely geographical reference in the Great Catalogue, II 519).
19. The quarreling Achilles and Odysseus are called "best of the Achaeans" (aristoi Achaiôn: viii 78). Compare the speech of Phoinix, where he calls the emissaries the "best" (aristous: IX 520) as well as the "most dear [philos]" to Achilles among all the Argives (philtatoi Argeiôn: IX 522). These two superlatives, however, both seem to be only partially applicable to the three emissaries. The title "best" may suit Ajax and Odysseus but not necessarily Phoinix.[4] The title "most dear," on the other hand, may well apply to Ajax and Phoinix only, with the exclusion of Odysseus. On this basis alone, the ethical stance of the Embassy may well be undermined--from the heroic perspective of Achilles.
§22. Taken separately, any one of these four convergences in detail between the compressed narrative of Odyssey viii 72-82 and the expanded narrative of the Embassy Scene in Iliad IX is not enough to make a case for the existence of a common epic heritage. Taken together, however, all four of them serve to corroborate the argument that both the compressed and the expanded narratives draw from a stock epic theme--details and all--about an enmity between Achilles and Odysseus. Even without these four convergences, we have strong evidence for this theme in a fifth convergence. As we have already observed in the Embassy Scene, Achilles replies to Odysseus with an ad hoc definition of ekhthros 'enemy' that actually fits the epic role of Odysseus, the consummate dissembler (IX 312-313).[1] The words of Achilles and the corresponding epic actions of Odysseus combine to make the message of Iliad IX explicit. As in Odyssey viii 72-82, the first song of Demodokos, a traditional enmity exists between these two preeminent heroes of Greek epic.
Notes
§1n3. The lesson has not yet been learned, I fear, by what still seems to be a majority of
Homerists. To list some prominent examples would be unproductive. Instead, I send the reader to the collection of Parry's writings (1971) and to Lord's synthesis (1960), which remain indispensable. For a useful formulation rejecting the methodology of positing exemplum and imitatio on a textual level, see Edwards 1971.189: "Given two poems A and B, now in a written text, however well a word or phrase fits its context in A, it is impossible to prove that it was invented for that place at the moment when the text of A became fixed. We can never rule out the existence of an older place X, which provided a common source for both A and B at the lines in question, so making their chronological relationship impossible to determine. This remains true even if X was only an older version of A." Instead of the wording "older place," however, I would prefer to substitute a phrase that does not connote the existence of an older text. See now Foreword §§22-24.
§3n1. Marg 1956 takes the position that the neîkos 'quarrel' of viii 72-82 must be an "invention" based on the opening of the Iliad, since such a neîkos between Achilles and Odysseus is not directly attested anywhere else. This position is challenged by Maehler 1963.27n1, who points out that this argument from silence fails to take into account the traditional nature of such quarrel scenes between prominent Achaeans. On the topic of traditional quarrel scenes in epic, I find the discussion by Girard 1902.249 particularly suggestive. I would add that narratives about quarrels allow the genre of epic to accommodate the diction of other genres that are otherwise unsuitable to it, such as the diction of blame poetry--a genre that functions as the converse of praise poetry. Discussion at Ch.12§6.
§4n1. I feel tempted to compare this arrangement with the relative ranking of Achaean heroes in the Iliad and the Odyssey traditions: Achilles and Ajax are best and second-best in the former, while Odysseus is best in the latter. See again Ch.2, esp. §6n2.
§4n3. On the use here of phêmi 'say' (phamen) as a substitute for eukhomai 'boast': Muellner 1976.83.
§4n4. Muellner, pp. 81-83.
§4n5. Discussion by Muellner, p. 82.
§4n6. See again Muellner, pp. 79-83.
§5n1. See Muellner, p. 83; for phrenes 'thinking' as an attribute of mêtis, consider the epithet
epiphrôn 'having phrenes' as applied to mêtis at xix 326.
§5n2. See Ch.1§11. Cf. Rüter 1969.249-251, Marg 1956.22, Girard 1902.253. These discussions do not raise the possibility, as I do here, that there was indeed an epic tradition-- independent of our Iliad and Odyssey--about a quarrel between Achilles and Odysseus. Marg in fact explicitly rejects the possibility (p. 20). As I am about to argue, however, the internal evidence of Iliad IX contains clear traces of such an independent epic tradition. The information of the scholia, on the other hand, is admittedly garbled except for the clear delineation of "might" compared to "artifice": andreia/sunesis, biazesthai/dolôi metelthein (scholia ad viii 75), sômatika/
psuchika, andreia/mêchanê kai phronêsis (scholia ad viii 77).
§5n3. See Ch.1§11. Cf. Lehrs 1882.174.
Scholia (A) ad IX 347:
pros to en Odusseiai zêtoumenon "neikos Odussêos kai Pêleideô Achilêos," hoti emphainei kai nun anairôn tên epicheirêsin tôn peri Odussea, legontôn boulêi kai logôi hairethêsesthai tên polin:
nun gar hoion episarkazôn legei.
§5n4. On phrazomai as a verb that denotes the activity of mêtis: Detienne/Vernant 1974.25n32 (in connection with Hesiod W&D 85-86). Cf. §7n2 below.
§7n2. Compare the use of phrazomai 'devise' here at IX 423 and 426 with its use at IX 347. At
§5n4, we have noted that this word functions as a verb of mêtis.
§7n3.
§8n2. For a discussion of epic precedents: Davidson 1975.26-28 on the role of atê in Iliad XIX 95-133, parallel to I 410-412.
§8n3. On the traditional nature of this contrast, see again Davidson, pp. 26-28 on the Indo- European epic theme of an opposition between dux and rêx; cf. also Muellner 1976.83n27.
§9n1. Besides the various interpretations of Book IX based on the premise that the dual constructions designate an actual pair, we also come upon the argument that these dual forms may have a plural function. There is, however, no grammatical justification for such a claim, and the sporadic instances in Homeric poetry where duals may seem to function as plurals cannot be cited as parallels to the situation in Book IX. In each instance, there is an ad hoc explanation available, so that the theory of dual-for-plural remains unproved. See Page 1959.324-325 for discussion and bibliography.
§9n2. For a conscientious survey, I cite Lesky 1967.103-105. Segal's (1968) comparison of the compressed Embassy Scene of Iliad I (320-348) with the expanded scene of Iliad IX helps us understand better the traditional narrative themes that are deployed (see especially his p. 104), but his discussion leaves room for disagreement on the question of the dual constructions in IX.
§12n1. Page 1959.298.
§13n1. For the use of noeô 'take note, think' in contexts of "taking the initiative," see especially X 224-226, 247; V 669 (with reference to Odysseus); also IX 104-108 (with reference to Nestor). For the traditional combination of neuô 'nod' and noeô'take note' in situations where signals are
sent and received respectively, see Odyssey xvi 164-165 (Athena nods to Odysseus, who gets the message and then takes the initiative); also xvi 283. Cf. Köhnken 1975.32. For an important study of Homeric noos and related words, I cite again Frame 1978.
§14n1. Whitman 1958.191-192; cf. Rosner 1976.320.
§15n1. For the function of the untranslatable word philos 'dear, friend' and its derivatives in Homeric narrative, see Ch.6§13; see also Sinos 1975.65-81 on the ethical principle of philotês that informs our Iliad.
§15n3. See again §14; this trait of Odysseus corresponds to his epithet poluainos (Ch.12§19n1).
§16n3. Granted, the subject + verb construction of Odusseus + hêgeito 'Odysseus led the way' at IX 192 does not by itself rule out the possibility that Odysseus is included in rather than excluded from the dual construction that immediately precedes. Köhnken (1975.35) argues for inclusion, citing XXIV 95-96: there Iris is the leader (hêgeito) of two, Thetis and herself. But I must point out that this situation is not directly analogous, since the actions of the other member of the pair, Thetis, are designated in the singular, not the dual. Thus I am still bound to understand the dual constructions of IX 192 as referring to Ajax and Phoinix. On the other hand, Köhnken's citing of hêgeit(o) `led the way' at XXIV 96 is useful for our understanding of IX 657, where Odysseus leads (êrche) the Embassy back to the tent of Agamemnon. Besides himself and the heralds, only Ajax is left.
§18n1. Page 1959.300.
§20n4. We may note with interest the collocation of gerôn 'elder' with geras 'privilege, honorific portion' at IX 422.
§20n5. §§10 and 15 respectively. see now Foreword §29n40.
§20n6. There is an ad hoc explanation for the duals in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (verses 456, 487, 501) that may be pertinent to the problem of the duals in Iliad IX. These dual constructions in the Hymn to Apollo occur in the quoted words spoken by the god to the Cretans. The narrative is presenting a dialogue between Apollo and the "leader of the Cretans" (Krêtôn agos: 463), who is speaking on behalf of the other Cretans. Accordingly, Apollo's random dual references to them may be elliptic: the leader (A) plus the others (B). Elliptic duals (A+B instead of A+A) and
elliptic plurals (A+B+C ... instead of A+A+A ... ) are an Indo-European heritage in the Greek language; see Schwyzer/Debrunner 1950.50-52. Conceivably, Achilles may be "grammatically correct" when he gives a dual greeting to the leader of the Embassy (A) plus the others (B) at IX 196-198. Cf. Thornton 1978. But the ambiguities remain: maybe someone is still being excluded. Cf. also Köhnken 1978, replying to Thornton's article.
§21n1. See further at Ch.7§19.
§21n3. Quoted at item (1) above.
§21n4. One of the main points made by Köhnken (1975) is that the reference by Phoinix to the "best" (aristous: IX 520) applies more to Ajax and Odysseus than to himself. But we also have to reckon with the reference, again made by Phoinix, to the "most dear" (philtatoi: IX 522), which in turn seems to apply more to Ajax and himself than to Odysseus. Thus the problem of the dual greeting by Achilles remains (IX 197-198), since the emissaries are called "most dear of the Achaeans" here (Achaiôn philtatoi: IX 198). Even if the greeting by Achilles were casual, it would be hard to justify the exclusion of his beloved mentor. Besides, Köhnken's own catalogue of other Iliadic passages where Phoinix is mentioned (p. 28) shortens the gap between the heroic stature of Ajax and Odysseus on the one hand and that of Phoinix on the other.
The Best of the Achaeans Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry Revised Edition
Gregory Nagy
Copyright © 1980, 1997 The Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved. First edition 1979. Revised edition 1999. This document may be used, with this notice included, for noncommercial purposes within a subscribed
institution. No copies of this work may be distributed electronically outside of the subscribed institution, in whole or in part, without written permission from the JHU Press.
Go to Previous chapter; Next chapter; Table of Contents; Information
§1. The quarrel between Achilles and Odysseus in the first song of Demodokos, viii 72-82, dramatizes the antithesis of two inherited central themes built into the Iliad and the Odyssey, namely, the qualifications of Achilles and Odysseus respectively for the title "best of the Achaeans." Their epic actions are striving to attain what is perhaps the most distinctive heroic
epithet that the kleos of the Achaeans can confer upon a mortal. In the first song of Demodokos, the poet--or let us say Demodokos--comments not only on the Odyssey but also on the Iliad itself. Or better, I should say, "an Iliadic tradition" instead of "the Iliad." Moreover, Monro's Law is not overturned, in that this quarrel between Odysseus and Achilles in Odyssey viii is no playback of the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles in Iliad I. There are basic differences in roles as well as in characters.
§2. As we have seen, there are elements of diction and theme in the first song of Demodokos that must stem from an independent and idiosyncratic tradition and simply cannot be based on the opening of Iliad I. One of the most divergent and interesting aspects of the quarrel between Achilles and Odysseus is that it took place "at a sumptuous feast of the gods" (theôn en daiti thaleiêi: viii 76). Besides the intrinsic meaning here, the other Homeric contexts where feasts of the gods are mentioned make it clear that this expression denotes a sacrifice.[1]
§3. By good fortune, we have indirect evidence about the nature of such a sacrifice, especially from Pindar's Paean 6. This piece was composed for performance at a Delphic festival called the theoxenia. Within the framework of this ancient festival, the gods were treated as actual participants at the sacral banquet of their worshippers.[1] The institution of theoxenia 'having a host-and-guest relationship with the gods' survives elsewhere too in the Hellenic world of the classical period,[2] and there is reason to suppose that its ritual traditions--if not the ritual itself in its attested form--were already attested at the time that our Odyssey took on its present shape.[3] Since the first song of Demodokos in Odyssey viii makes a thematic connection between Apollo's Delphi and a 'feast of the gods' attended by Achaean heroes, the preeminence of Apollo at the Delphic theoxenia[4] leads me to suspect that we are witnessing a Homeric reflex of the ritual traditions surrounding this festival.[5] Furthermore, there are ominous implications for Achilles in the lore connected with the theoxenia. It seems as if the death of Achilles were a traditional theme that is appropriate for a paean performed at the theoxenia.
§4. Pindar's fragmentary Paean 6 was evidently composed for an agôn 'contest' at the Panhellenic festival of the Delphic theoxenia; the poet describes himself as:
agôna Loxia katabant' eurun en theôn xeniai
entering the broad contest place of Loxias [Apollo] at the theoxenia
Pindar Paean 6.60-61SM
By the very fact that it is a paean, the poem is a glorification of Apollo.[1] In particular, it commemorates a tradition concerning a quarrel of the gods:
kai pothen athan[atôn eris a]r?xato.[2] tauta theoisi [m]en pithein sophou?[s] dunaton,
brotoisin d' amachano[n heu]remen:
and from what causes the quarrel of the immortals began, these things the skilled can ascertain from the gods,
but otherwise it is impossible for mortals to discover
Pindar Paean 6.50-53
Then the Muses are invoked to inspire a retelling (54-58). Mention of a sacrifice (62-64) is followed by a considerable lacuna, and when the text resumes we hear that Apollo in the guise of Paris has killed Achilles on the battlefield (78-80).[3] An elaboration follows concerning the consequences of Apollo's action:
Iliou de thêken aphar
opsiteran halôsin
and he straightway caused
the capture of Troy to happen later
Pindar Paean 6.81-82
There is further elaboration at 87-89, where we learn specifically that Apollo "had a
quarrel" (erixe: 87) with Hera and Athena.[4] Since this elaboration is bracketed, before and after, by a description of how and why Achilles died, the inference is that the death of Achilles had something to do with the quarrel between Apollo on one side, Hera and Athena on the other. Since the gods' quarrel involves the capture of Troy, is it parallel with the quarrel of Achilles and Odysseus over whether Troy would be captured by biê 'might' or by mêtis 'artifice'? Since the battles of heroes are matched by the battles of their divine patrons in the Homeric theme of theomakhiâ, we may expect a thematic match between heroic and divine quarrels as well. There is also a formal match that may be cited in this regard: the Muses are asked to explain the cause of the eris 'quarrel' between Achilles and Agamemnon at Iliad I 8 in much the same way that they are asked to explain the eris among the gods at Paean 6.50-61.
§5. The evidence may seem meager at this point, but there must have been something about Achilles that was particularly offensive to Apollo. Conversely, we know that Paris, the antagonist and future killer of Achilles, offended the same gods whom we now see quarreling with Apollo in Paean 6, namely, Hera and Athena. The offense of Paris was the outgrowth of a quarrel that took place at a banquet given by the gods to celebrate the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, the parents of Achilles himself. This quarrel of the gods served as the epic theme for the opening of the Cypria(Proclus summary p. 102.14-16 Allen), and there are clear references to the same epic tradition in Iliad XXIV 25-30. Moreover, the Cypria presents this quarrel as a fitting epic theme for the opening of the entire Trojan War! The grievance of Hera and Athena against Paris was that he made a choice favoring Aphrodite instead of them (Cypria/Proclus p. 102.16-19). The Iliadic allusion to this tradition, however, also alludes to a grievance of Apollo against Achilles. It seems as if the polarization of Hera and Athena on one side and Apollo on the other corresponds not only to the hostility of the first two divinities against Paris but also to the hostility of the third against Achilles.[1] The three divinities are continuing their quarrel in IliadXXIV 25-63. In the
course of their quarrel, Apollo describes Achilles as a brute who is like a ravenous lion, without any control over his biê 'might' (XXIV 42).[2] In Pindar's Paean 6, at the very moment that Apollo destroys Achilles, the hero is described as biatan 'endowed with biâ [epic biê]' (line 84). One of the reasons, then, for Apollo's enmity may well have been the championing of biê by Achilles. A more general reason, however, is yet to emerge from our ongoing scrutiny of the characteristics common to the god and the hero. It is too early at this point to attempt a precise formulation, and I offer here only the essentials: the hostility of Apollo and Achilles has a religious dimension, in which god and hero function as ritual antagonists.[3]
§6. Even though the actual concept of ritual antagonism between Apollo and Achilles remains to be articulated, we can already see the stark consequences of this antagonism in the dimension of myth. In Pindar's words:
pro ponôn
de ke megalôn Dardanian
eprathen, ei mê phulassen Apo[l]l[ô]n:
before the great suffering,
he [Achilles] would have destroyed Troy, if Apollo had not been protecting it
Pindar Paean 6.89-91SM
By killing Achilles, the god Apollo postponed the destruction of Troy and thus brought about a great deal of suffering that otherwise would not have happened. In the Iliad too, there is allusion to the tradition that great suffering was caused by the death of Achilles. The death of Patroklos in the Iliad, which duplicates the death of Achilles beyond the Iliad, is announced with the following words:
ophra puthêai
lugrês angeliês, hê mê ôphelle genesthai. êdê men se kai auton oïomai eisoroônta
gignôskein hoti pêma theos Danaoisi kulindei, nikê de Trôôn: pephatai d ôristos Achaiôn, Patroklos, megalê de pothê Danaoisi tetuktai.
that you may learn
of the ghastly news, which should never have happened. I think that you already see, and that you realize,
that a god is letting roll a pain [pêma] upon the Danaans,
and that victory belongs to the Trojans; the best of the Achaeans has been killed, Patroklos, that is; and a great loss has been inflicted on the Danaans.
Only here in the Iliad does Patroklos get the epithet that elsewhere distinguishes Achilles, "best of the Achaeans"; the death of Patroklos is being presented as a prefiguration of the death of Achilles.[1] By dying, the "best of the Achaeans" is the source of great pêma 'pain' for the Achaeans. For the Trojans too, Achilles is the greatest pêma--in the words of Hektor and Priam themselves (XXII 288 and 421 respectively). That is, Achilles is a pêma for the Trojans so long as he is fighting against them. When he withdraws from the fighting, however, there is pêma for the Achaeans and kûdos 'glory of victory' for the Trojans (VIII 176),[2] a situation that is recognized as the Will of Zeus by Hektor (VIII 175, XII 235-236) and by the narrative itself (XII 255, XV 592-599).[3] In short, Achilles is a pêma for the Trojans when he is at war and a pêma for the Achaeans both when he withdraws from war and when he dies.
§7. With the background of these patterns in traditional diction, the words of Demodokos assume an ominous tone:
tote gar rha kulindeto pêmatos archê
Trôsi te kai Danaoisi Dios megalou dia boulas
for then it was that the beginning of pain [pêma] started rolling
upon both Trojans and Danaans, on account of the plans of great Zeus[1]
When Agamemnon rejoiced at the quarrel between Achilles and Odysseus, who were "the best of the Achaeans" (viii 78), he rejoiced at a sign that presaged the destruction of Troy. In his joy he was unaware of the intervening pain yet to be inflicted on the Achaeans by the withdrawal and then by the death of Achilles. His joy was justified in the distant future but unjustified in the events at hand. In Pindar's words, the destruction was not to happen pro ponôn 'before
suffering' (Paean 6.89). Our Iliad presents a highly sophisticated variation on this theme, in the episode of Agamemnon's False Dream. As in the first song of Demodokos, the impetus is the boulê 'plan, will' of Zeus (II 5). As in the song of Demodokos, the promise is that Troy will be destroyed (II 12-15, 29-32). As in the song of Demodokos, Agamemnon arrives at a premature conclusion:[2]
ta phroneont' ana thumon ha rh' ou teleesthai emellon: phê gar ho g' hairêsein Priamou polin êmati keinôi, nêpios, oude ta êidê ha rha Zeus mêdeto erga:
thêsein gar et' emellen ep' algea te stonachas te Trôsi te kai Danaoisi dia krateras husminas
thinking in his thûmos about things that were not to be:
for he thought that he would capture Priam's city on that very day, the fool; he did not know what things Zeus was planning to do. For he [Zeus] was yet to inflict pains [algea] and groaning
on both Trojans and Danaans in battles of kratos.[3]
From the standpoint of our Iliad, the story to be told concerns some of those "pains" [algea] that are yet to intervene before the capture of Troy. In fact, the same word algea is deployed at the very beginning of our Iliad to designate the countless "pains" of the Achaeans (I 2), caused by the mênis 'anger' of Achilles (I 1) and motivated by the Will of Zeus (Dios d' eteleieto boulê: I 5).
§8. Demodokos, then, is alluding to an Iliad, but not to our Iliad. Like our Iliad, the Iliad that Demodokos could have sung would feature the mênis 'anger' of Achilles and Apollo. Unlike our Iliad, however, this Iliadic tradition would feature Odysseus, not Agamemnon, as the prime offender of Achilles. Unlike our Iliad, this Iliad would have the chief resentment of Achilles center on the slighting of his biê 'might'. An Iliad composed by Demodokos would have been a poem with a structure more simple and more broad, with an Achilles who is even perhaps more crude than the ultimately refined hero that we see emerging at the end of our Iliad. I have little doubt that such an Iliad was indeed in the process of evolving when it was heard in the Odyssey tradition which evolved into our Odyssey. Demodokos had heard the kleos and passed it on in song.
Notes
§2n1. See especially iii 336 and 420; also xiv 251. Cf. Ch.3§21.
§3n1. For a suggestive discussion, adducing the comparative evidence of other festivals parallel to the theoxenia: Gernet 1968 [=1928] 32-33.
§3n2. For a survey: Nilsson 1906.160-162.
§3n3. This supposition is developed further at Ch.7§§8-13, 17-20, 25-30.
§3n4. Apollo is preeminent at the Delphic theoxenia not necessarily because of any special affinity with the practice of theoxenia but rather simply because of his preeminence at Delphi itself.
§3n5. The citations at n3 apply here as well.
§4n1. On this function of the paean, cf. also Ch.5§9. On the Panhellenic nature of the Delphic theoxenia, consider the lines that immediately follow those just quoted, at Paean 6.62-63: thuetai gar aglaas huper Panel|lados 'sacrifice is being made on behalf of splendid All-Hellas' (cf. Radt 1958.131-134). The poem goes on to say that the festival had been instituted as a result of a promise contained in a prayer offered by the community at a time long ago when it had been afflicted by a famine (lines 63 ff.); the food of the theoxenia, then, is a factor of compensation.
§4n2. For the editors' restoration of eris here at line 50, cf. erixe at line 87, referring to the same quarrel.
§4n3. The Iliad itself refers to the interaction of Apollo and Paris in the killing of Achilles: see
§4n4. Cf. n2.
§5n1. For more on god-hero antagonism as a factor in determining the alignments of various gods in the Trojan War, see Ch.8§12.
§5n2. Further discussion at Ch.7§22.
§5n3. See Ch.7 (esp. §4) and Ch.8 (esp. §§1-5).
§6n1. See Ch.2§8. In this connection, the wording pêma theos Danaoisi kulindei 'a god is letting roll a pêma upon the Danaans' here at XVII 688 is directly comparable to tacha hoi mega pêmakulisthê 'surely a great pêma rolls down upon him' at XVII 99--words applied by Menelaos to any mortal who dares to fight Hektor and thus undertake a confrontation with Apollo himself (XVII 98-99). Patroklos had done so, but Menelaos dares not do likewise (XVII 100-101). The stance of Patroklos in his confrontation with Apollo is described as pros daimona 'facing the daimôn [divinity]' (XVII 98), which conveys the theme of ritual antagonism between god and hero (see Ch.8§§3-4 and Ch.17§5). On the collocation of pêma 'pain' and kulindô 'roll' [as a rock], note also the parallel at viii 81-82 as quoted in §7 below.
§6n2. On the function of kûdos 'glory of victory' in Homeric narrative: Benveniste 1969 II 57-69.
§6n3. Further discussion of pêma/kûdos and the Will of Zeus at Ch.20§§15-17.
§7n1. The double-edged pêmatos archê 'the beginning of the pêma [pain]' is a thematic germ of the Achilles figure: even his name may be explained as taking its form from the concept "grief for the people": *Akhí-lâuos. See Ch.5. Cf. also the expression neikeos archê 'the beginning of the strife' (XXII 116), as discussed at Ch. 11§12 and n.
§7n3. On the word kratos: Ch.5§25.
The Best of the Achaeans Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry Revised Edition
Gregory Nagy
Copyright © 1980, 1997 The Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved. First edition 1979. Revised edition 1999. This document may be used, with this notice included, for noncommercial purposes within a subscribed
institution. No copies of this work may be distributed electronically outside of the subscribed institution, in whole or in part, without written permission from the JHU Press.
Go to Previous chapter; Next chapter; Table of Contents; Information
§1. The theme of pêma 'pain, grief' as we find it in the first song of Demodokos (viii 81) seems to be recapitulated in the very name of Achilles. As we consult Pierre Chantraine's etymological dictionary of Greek under the entry Akhilleus, we find listed a number of different explanations that have been offered over the years to account for the name of Greek epic's preeminent hero.[1] My discussion will center on one of these, namely, Leonard Palmer's suggestion that Akhil(l)eus is a shortened form of *Akhí-lâuos,[2] meaning "whose lâos [host of fighting men] has akhos [grief]."[3] By examining this reconstruction in detail, I hope to add further evidence to my thesis that the thematic germ of the Achilles figure entails pêma for the Trojans when the hero is at war and a pêma for the Achaeans both when he withdraws from war and when he dies. I should emphasize, of course, that this thesis is already supported by the textual evidence presented in the last chapter--and that it does not depend on the etymology of the name Akhil(l)eus. Whether or not we are to accept Palmer's proposed etymology, however, we stand to gain additional perspectives on Achilles in the course of examining the constituent themes associated with his name. Two key words will be involved: akhos and penthos, both meaning "grief."
§2. We begin by taking note of the numerous morphological details in support of the proposition that Akhil(l)eus is derived from *Akhí-lâuos 'whose lâos has akhos'.[1] Plausible as it is, however, this reconstruction will not carry conviction unless we can be satisfied that the posited meaning 'whose lâos has akhos' is intrinsic to the function of Achilles in myth and epic.[2] We will have to examine how the notion of an Achilles figure relates to the notions of akhos 'grief' and lâos 'host of fighting men'.
§3. Such an examination can be valid, of course, only if the Achilles figure itself is intrinsic to the traditions of Greek myth and epic.[1] Further, we must be ready to assume that the mythopoeic theme of Akhil(l)eus inspired the naming of historical figures called Akhil(l)eus--if there be
any--rather than the other way around.[2] Lastly, we must be sure that the traditions of Greek myth and epic are old enough to be dated back, at the very least, to a time when a formation like
*Akhí-lâuos could have existed.
§4. For the moment, let us consider only the traditions of epic. In both form and content, the heritage of Homeric diction can be traced back all the way to Indo-European prototypes.[1] Even the internal evidence points to centuries of development. From Milman Parry's detailed studies on the formulaic nature of Homeric diction,[2] we can absorb a sense for appreciating the immense stretches of time that must have been required for an evolving poetic medium to refine its diction
to such degrees of economy and artistic effectiveness.[3] What applies to the Homeric compositions must apply commensurately to the Hesiodic, as we learn from the studies of Edwards and others.[4]
§5. Not only for Homeric tradition in particular but also for myth in general, we have the warranty of deep archaism wherever we find mythical themes encased in such preservative media as the poetic traditions inherited by Pindar.[1] Combining internal analysis with the comparative method, we can establish not only that the traditional poetic forms of Pindar and other masters of lyric sometimes predate even Homeric counterparts,[2] but also that their traditional poetic themes can sometimes be traced back all the way to Indo-European prototypes.[3]
§6. In short, the testimony of the early Greek poetic traditions about Akhil(l)eus, by virtue of their formal and thematic archaism, can justifiably be applied as a test for Palmer's reconstruction
*Akhí-lâuos. We must therefore examine whether the notion framed by *Akhí-lâuos (and
*Penthí-lâuos, for that matter) corresponds to the functions of akhos (penthos) and lâos in the poetic traditions. In addition, we must examine whether such a correspondence extends to the Achilles figure itself. Since the primary poetic tradition about Achilles is the Iliad, a brief examination of its central themes, and of the diction expressing these themes, will have to be the first task.
§7. The artistic unity of our Iliad, and the controlling function of the Achilles figure therein, can perhaps best be seen in the deployment of its central themes. Complex as it is in its ramifications, the plot is simple in its essence. The tîmê 'honor' of Achilles has been slighted (I 505-510, 559, etc.). He becomes angry and withdraws from the war, leaving our narrative with an opportunity to test the worth of the other prominent Achaean warriors of epic against the onslaught of Hektor and his Trojans. The Achaeans fall short and are forced to make appeals for the help of Achilles. Although Achilles refuses to come to the rescue, his comrade Patroklos becomes his surrogate.[1] Patroklos rescues the Achaeans but is killed by Hektor through the intervention of the god Apollo.[2] Achilles now enters the war to kill Hektor, thereby finally establishing his own place in epic by the positive action of fighting in battle. His negative action of withdrawing from battle had set the stage for showing that only he could have rescued the Achaeans. By functioning as his surrogate, however, Patroklos anticipates the epic destiny of Achilles, which is to rescue the Achaeans and to be killed in the process through the intervention of Apollo. It is Patroklos who rescues the Achaeans in our Iliad; for the moment, at least, the Trojans have been repelled by the time Achilles enters the battle and establishes his own place in the epic, by killing Hektor.
§8. The Iliad does more than simply orchestrate these central themes into an artistic unity: it also names them. Either the narrative or the characters within the narrative can actually refer to the central themes inside the Iliad, with special designations. For example, the invocation at the beginning of the Iliad announces the content of the narrative simply by naming the mênis 'anger' of Achilles:[1]
mênin aeide thea Pêlêïadeô Achilêos
Sing, goddess, the mênis of Achilles son of Peleus.
Through the preeminent placement of the word mênis, the theme of Achilles' anger is singled out by the composition as the most central and hence most pervasive in the Iliadic tradition. Furthermore, the subsequent application of mênis is restricted by the composition specifically to the anger that Achilles felt over the slighting of his tîmê at the very beginning of the action. The anger that Achilles felt later over the killing of Patroklos is nowhere denoted by mênis. In fact, the only instance where mênis applies to heroes rather than gods in the Iliad is the mutual anger between Achilles and Agamemnon.[2] We see in these restrictions on the application of mênis a distinctive Iliadic association of this word with all the epic events that resulted from Achilles' anger against Agamemnon, the most central of which is the devastation suffered by the Achaeans. Again, the wording at the very beginning of the Iliad announces the theme of devastation by referring to the countless algea 'pains' of the Achaeans caused by the mênis of Achilles:
hê muri' Achaiois alge' ethêken
which [the mênis] made countless algea for the Achaeans.
§9. Like the word mênis, algea 'pains' too serves as a key to the plot of the Iliad.[1] Just as Apollo chronologically has mênis over the abduction of Chryseis (I 75) before Achilles has mênis over the abduction of Briseis, so also the Achaeans have algea from Apollo before they get algea from Achilles:
tounek' ar' alge' edôken hekêbolos êd' eti dôsei oud' ho ge prin Danaoisin aeikea loigon apôsei prin ...
For that reason the far-shooter gave--and will give--algea,
and he will not remove the disgraceful devastation [loigos] from the Danaans until ...
I 96-98 (cf. also 110) And the remedial action, as we see from I 97 here, is denoted by loigon apôsei 'will remove the devastation [loigos]'. When this loigos 'devastation' is removed with the appeasement of Apollo's anger, the Achaeans sing a paiêôn 'paean' to him (I 473), where the name of the song is also the epithet denoting the healing powers of the god.[2] Since the algea that Apollo had visited upon the Achaeans was a loimos 'plague' (I 61, 97), the use of paiêôn at I 473 is all the more apt.[3]
§10. To repeat, algea in the diction of the Iliad may denote two kinds of grief for the Achaeans:
(1) the plague resulting from the mênis of Apollo and (2) the dire military situation resulting from the mênis of Achilles. In the case of the plague, the remedial action was denoted by loigon apôsei
'will remove the devastation [loigos]' (I 97); in fact, the narrative quotes directly the actual prayer to Apollo by Apollo's priest:[1]
êdê nun Danaoisin aeikea loigon amunon
Ward off now from the Danaans the disgraceful devastation [loigos]!
Elsewhere in the Iliad, as we examine the word loigos beyond I 97 and 456, we find that its
accusative loigon occurs exclusively in combination with the same verb amun- 'ward off' that we find here in I 456. And from the contexts of these combinations, the fact emerges that the dire military situation resulting from the mênis of Achilles calls for the same remedial action, from the standpoint of the diction, as did the plague resulting from the mênis of Apollo:
... loigon amunêis XVI 32
... loigon amunai I 341, XVI 75, XVIII 450
... loigon amunôn XVI 80
§11. In fact, the diction of the Iliad can designate the plight of the Achaeans during the Battle of the Ships as simply loigon Achaiôn 'the devastation [loigos] of the Achaeans' at XXI 134, where the Achaeans are then immediately described, in Achilles' own words, with the following narrative gloss:
hous epi nêusi thoêisin epephnete nosphin emeio
whom you killed at the swift ships in my absence.
The loigos of the Achaeans during the Battle of the Ships happened because they were "apart from Achilles," who had mênis. Already in Book I, the words of Achilles had alluded to their future predicament:
hoppôs hoi para nêusi sooi macheointo Achaioi
that the Achaeans be safe as they fight at the ships
It was in this future context, in what amounts to the title of a future episode in the narrative ("Battle of the Ships"), that the words of Achilles first raised the possibility that he would be
needed then for the role of warding off the loigos of the Achaeans:
chreiô emeio genêtai aeikea loigon amunai
... if ever there will be
a need for me to ward off the disgraceful devastation [loigos]
§12. As the narrative approaches this epic destiny of Achilles with the ever-worsening plight of the Achaeans during the Battle of the Ships, the hypothetical subject of loigon amunein 'ward off the devastation' remains Achilles only up to a certain point:
ai ke mê Argeioisin aeikea loigon amunêis
if you do not ward off the disgraceful devastation [loigos] from the Argives
Already here the speaker is Patroklos, who becomes soon hereafter the actual subject of the expression on the level of form and the surrogate of the action on the level of content. And it is Achilles who sends him off to battle with these words:
alla kai hôs Patrokle neôn apo loigon amunôn empes' epikrateôs
Even so, Patroklos, ward off the devastation [loigos][1] from the ships and attack with kratos.[2]
The outcome will bring more grief.
§13. As we hear from the retrospective narrative of XVIII 444-456, where Thetis retells briefly the entire Iliad up to the moment at hand, Achilles "had refused to ward off the devastation [loigos]" (ênaineto loigon amunai: XVIII 450) and Patroklos had taken his place--only to be killed by Hektor through the intervention of Apollo (XVIII 451-456). The god had thus given the emblem of victory, the kûdos, to Hektor (XVIII 456).[1] When Achilles finally wins back the
kûdos by killing Hektor, he calls on the Achaeans to sing a paiêôn (XXII 391), and the song is to begin as follows:
êrametha mega kudos: epephnomen Hektora dion
We won a big kûdos; we killed brilliant Hektor!
The paiêôn here is to be contrasted with the only other one in the Iliad, at I 473, where it had celebrated the remedy for the algea 'pains' of the Achaeans. True, the killing of Hektor has reversed the situation for the opposing sides: now it is the Achaeans who have the kûdos (XXII
393) and the Trojans who have algea (XXII 422) because of Achilles, who is a pêma 'pain' for the Trojans (XXII 421-422). In fact, he is for them the pêma megiston 'greatest pain' (XXII 288), in Hektor's own words. Previously, it had been Hektor who was called a pêma by the Achaeans (XI 347, cf. VIII 176), and in fact their plight during the onslaught of Hektor was also a pêma (IX 229).[2]
§14. It remains to ask whether the Achaeans will be rid of grief after Hektor is killed. Clearly they will not, since the death of Achilles will itself be an ultimate pêma for them--as is presaged by the words announcing the death of Patroklos (XVII 688-689).[1]
§15. Moreover, the death of Patroklos is visualized as a pêma not only for the Achaeans but for himself as well. Contemplating how the hero died, Agamemnon offers this generalization: any mortal who dares to fight Hektor and thereby undertake a confrontation with Apollo will get a pêma (XVII 98-99).[1] This generalization surely applies also to Achilles: the death of the hero will be a pêma both for the Achaeans and for himself.[2]
§16. In short, the figure of Achilles is pervasively associated with the theme of grief. The program of the Iliad, which is equated with the Will of Zeus (I 5/II 38), decrees countless algea 'pains' for Trojans and Achaeans alike (I 2/II 39)--all because Achilles became angry in a quarrel. [1] Beyond the Iliad, in the first song of Demodokos, we find Achilles again in a quarrel, and grief is again decreed (pêma 'pain': viii 81) by the Will of Zeus (viii 82).[2] Moreover, the Iliadic identification of a depersonalized force called pêma megiston 'greatest pain' with the epic persona of Achilles, as at XXII 288, makes the hero seem like the very essence of grief.
§17. So far, we have been examining the relationship of the Achilles figure with the central theme of grief in the Iliad without actually considering the word akhos and its deployment within the composition. The evidence that we have already seen, however, leads us to expect that any Iliadic diction involving akhos should also directly involve the Achilles figure, if indeed the name Akhil (l)eus had once designated the epic function of the hero in its being derived from *Akhí-lâuos 'whose lâos has akhos' = 'he who has the host of fighting men grieving'.[1]
§18. Before we proceed, however, a few precautions may be taken about the nature of our evidence. We may by now have satisfied ourselves, on the basis of the Iliadic diction, that there is a thematic association between the Achilles figure and the notion of grief. The diction seems orchestrated to fit the main themes, or better, to express these themes by way of the placement of certain key words. For example, the deployment of the expression loigon amun- 'ward off devastation [loigos]' had indirectly told its own story about how Achilles' mênis caused grief for
the Achaeans. The associations of key words keep retelling the main themes of the Iliad on a formal level, beyond the more fundamental level of the actual narrative. But it is essential to keep in mind that such orchestration of the forms in such a way as to fit the main themes is a result, not a cause. In Greek epic, as also elsewhere in traditional poetry, inherited themes are expressed by inherited forms which are highly regulated by the formulaic system of the genre.
§19. To put it another way: from the intensive studies of Parry and Lord on the nature of formulaic language, we expect to see in Homeric poetry the automatic distribution of set phraseology appropriate to set themes. Conversely, our knowledge of formulaic behavior tells us that we cannot expect any given composition within the tradition to require any alterations or modifications in the inherited phraseology of its hexameters for the purpose of accommodating the composition's sense of its own unity. If we do indeed discern the reality of an artistically unified Iliad, then we must also be ready to say that the unity of our Iliad is itself traditional. This is not to detract from a work of genius. Nor is it the same thing as claiming that the Iliad is the work of some committee of composers. Rather, I would say simply that the genius behind our Iliad's artistic unity is in large part the Greek epic tradition itself. In order to accept this proposition, we may have to force ourselves to imagine the immensely creative process of this tradition, with all the many centuries of what must have been the most refined sort of elite performer/ audience interaction that went into the evolution of the Iliad and Odyssey as we know them.[1]
§20. With these thoughts in mind, I return to the evidence of Iliadic diction, on akhos and Akhil (l)eus. If we are now about to discover a pervasive nexus between these two elements in the Iliad, I would then infer that such a nexus is integrated in the inherited formulaic system and hence deeply rooted in the epic tradition. Accordingly, the internal evidence of epic may well corroborate the proposed derivation of Akhil(l)eus from akhos.
§21. As we turn now to the deployment of akhos in the Iliad, we immediately come upon an overt equation of this word with the expression pathon algea 'suffered pains', involving the same word algea that we have already seen in the context of designating the grief that the Achaeans suffered from the mênis of Achilles (algea: I 2) and from the mênis of Apollo (algea: I 96, 110). This equation of akhos with pathon algea is to be found in the words of Achilles himself:
ainon achos to moi estin, epei pathon algea thumôi
the terrible akhos that I have, since I suffered pains [algea] in my thûmos
In the present case, however, algea designates the grief of Achilles over his loss of tîmê
'honor' (XVI 59), not the grief of the Achaeans. For Achilles to suffer his own algea qualifies here as akhos (XVI 55), yet we find only thirty-three hexameters earlier that the grief of the Achaeans during the Battle of the Ships also qualifies as akhos:
mê nemesa: toion gar achos bebiêken Achaious
Do not be angry: for such an akhos has beset the Achaeans.
The word akhos signals le transfert du mal: the akhos of Achilles leads to the mênis of Achilles leads to the akhos of the Achaeans.
§22. Such a transfer has a religious dimension, as we can see from the traditions of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. The akhos of Demeter is instantaneous with the abduction of the Kore (H.Dem. 40, 90-91). Her resulting mênis (H.Dem. 350) causes devastation in the form of cosmic infertility (351 ff.). The tîmai 'honors' of the Olympians are thus threatened (353-354), and it is only with the restoration of Kore that Demeter's mênis ceases (410), as her akhos abates (acheôn: 436). Demeter thereupon gets her appropriate tîmai (461), and her anger (468) is replaced with fertility (469, 471 ff.).
§23. Besides all the obvious convergences here, we must also note an important divergence from the pattern of Achilles: once Demeter's mênis ceases, so too does her akhos. This theme is also found directly in the cult traditions, as we see, for example, in the report about the Demeter of Arcadian Phigalia: the Moîrai 'Fates' persuaded her both "to lay aside her anger and to cease in her grief" (apothesthai men tên orgên, hupheinai de kai tês lupês: Pausanias 8.42.3).[1] The pattern is different with the grief of Achilles. The abduction of Briseis brings instantaneous akhos for Achilles (I 188), but this grief is not removed by the restoration of the girl, the vindication of his tîmê, and the cessation of his terrible mênis. Before these three events take place, the akhos of Achilles is made permanent by the death of his surrogate Patroklos. When Achilles hears the news that Patroklos has been killed, his akhos is instantaneous in the narrative (XVIII 22), and for this akhos there is to be no remedy, as the earlier words of Odysseus had already predicted for Achilles:
autôi toi metopisth' achos essetai, oude ti mêchos rhechthentos kakou est' akos heurein
You yourself will have an akhos in the future,
and there will be no way to find a remedy for the bad thing once it is done.
As Thetis predicts, Achilles will have grief for the rest of his life (achnutai: XVIII 442-443). Earlier, he was grieving for Briseis (acheôn: XVIII 446); now he can grieve for Patroklos (acheuôn: XVIII 461), and after this akhos there can be no other:
... epei ou m' eti deuteron hôde
hixet' achos kradiên, ophra zôoisi meteiô
... for never again will an akhos like this enter my heart while I am among the living
§24. Whereas Achilles is the man of constant sorrow, the Achaeans have akhos intermittently. And each time that they get a remission of akhos in the Iliad, Achilles figures as the key factor. Initially, Apollo's mênis had given them grief because of the abduction of Chryseis; their grief was relieved when Chryseis was restored, whereas the consequent abduction of Briseis gave grief to Achilles. Later, Achilles' own mênis gave the Achaeans grief, which was then relieved when Patroklos beat back the onslaught of the Trojans at the Battle of the Ships. The consequent death of Patroklos then left Achilles without respite from grief.
§25. During the intermittent period of akhos for the Achaeans, the Trojans are described as having kratos 'superior power', and the complementary distribution of these two Homeric themes of akhos/ kratos is controlled by the Will of Zeus, the self-proclaimed "plot" of our Iliad. The key passage is I 509-510, where we find an overt correlation of the grief that is about to beset the Achaeans with the temporary awarding of kratos to the Trojans, and the correlation is under the control of Zeus. It is up to Zeus both to give kratos, as here (I 509), as well as to take it away, and the Achaeans in their plight fully realize the absence of kratos.[1] Diomedes speaks for them all when he says:
... epei nephelêgereta Zeus
Trôsin dê boletai dounai kratos êe per hêmin
... since Zeus the cloud-gatherer
wills to give the kratos to the Trojans instead of us.[2]
That is, Diomedes speaks for all except for Achilles, who stands outside the common good of the Achaean host. For Achilles, the transfer of kratos from the Achaeans to the Trojans leads to his own tîmê (I 505-510), and the restoration of his tîmê is equivalent to the Will of Zeus (cf. also II 3-5), which in turn comes to pass with the grief of the Achaeans at the Battle of the Ships (I 2-5, 559; IX 608-609). When he is praying to Zeus, Achilles says it himself:
timêsas men eme, mega d' ipsao laon Achaiôn
You have given tîmê to me and great harm to the lâos of the Achaeans
With exactly these same words, the priest Chryses had prayed to Apollo (I 454); there too the
lâos of the Achaeans was having grief, but that time it was still the mênis of Apollo that was
causing it, not the mênis of Achilles.
§26. Who, then, is this warrior, whose tîmê is instrumental in taking kratos from the lâos of the Achaeans and bringing them akhos instead? Surely it is *Akhí-lâuos, the one who has grief for and of the lâos. The individual akhos of the Achilles figure leads to the collective akhos of the Achaean host during the Battle of the Ships, but it was their own earlier akhos during the plague that had led to Achilles' akhos. If there had been no abduction of Chryseis, leading to the akhos of the Achaeans, there would have been no abduction of Briseis, leading to the akhos of Achilles. Achilles was as instrumental in ridding the Achaeans of their first akhos as he was in bringing upon them the second; in fact, he had even prayed to Zeus for the grief that would come upon them (XVIII 74-77; cf. I 408-412).
§27. The Homeric theme of akhos reflects not only on the individual nature of the Achilles figure but also on the collective nature of the Achaean lâos. As for the word lâos, its traditional use in Homeric diction also reinforces the proposed reconstruction *Akhí-lâuos, inasmuch as lâos serves to designate the Achaeans specifically in a social sense: the Homeric lâos is a warrior society, a Männerbund.[1] As such, the function of the lâos corresponds ideologically to the Indo-European "second function," in terms of Georges Dumézil's formulation.[2] This warrior society of the lâos, as my former student Dale Sinos has shown in detail, sets the ethical standards of our Iliad in terms of the bonds that unite the philoi 'friends', who are the members of the lâos.[3] The epic stance of the individual Achilles toward the collective lâos thus presents an ethical problem that we will have to examine presently; for the moment, however, the pertinence of akhos is the major issue. Here too, we will see that the theme of akhos is central. When Achilles has his first akhos, over Briseis, it separates him from the lâos. When he has his second akhos, over Patroklos, it reintegrates him with the lâos.
§28. Supplement: The Name of the AchaeansWhen the first akhos of Achilles separated him from the lâos, the lâos then got akhos too. This theme of transference from the individual to the collective introduces yet another factor relevant to the etymology of Akhil(l)eus, namely the etymology of the word "Achaeans," Akhaioi. In Homeric diction, this name Akhaioi functions as the synonym of Danaoi and Argeîoi, but its association with other words is idiosyncratic. In particular, I draw attention to the extremely common Homeric collocation of lâos/lâon with Akhaiôn (and Akhaikon). Since lâos is a social designation, we are encouraged to see here a parallel semantic function in the name that serves as its defining genitive, Akhaiôn (construction of the type urbs Romae).[1] Accordingly, we have an answer to the possible objection that Akhaioi cannot be derived from akhos--on the grounds that the name may refer to a genuine people as well as an epic collective. The answer is this: the process of ethnic naming may itself be a social function, and the designation of a people may involve a mythopoeic or even ritualistic level. Surely such levels are present in the Homeric synonyms of Akhaioi, namely, Danaoi and Argeîoi.[2]
§29. In fact, such mythopoeic and ritualistic levels are also present in the cult designation of Demeter as Akhaiâ precisely in the context of her akhos over the abduction of Kore. In Plutarch's De Iside 378d, we read reports of mourning rites (penthimois thusiais) practiced by various peoples during the period of sowing (October/November) to lament the abduction of the Kore. After citing the Thesmophoria of the Athenians, where he describes the second day of the festival (12 Pyanopsion) as a period of lamentation, Plutarch's survey turns to a corresponding
ritual period in Boeotia:
kai Boiôtoi ta tês Achaias megara kinousin, epachthê tên heortên ekeinên onomazontes hôs dia tên tês Korês kathodon en achei tês Dêmêtros ousês.
And the Boeotians activate the chambers [megara] of the Akhaiâ, giving their festival a name of grief because of Demeter's akhos over the Descent [kathodos] of the Kore.
Plutarch De Iside 378e There is an overt correlation here between Demeter's cult title Akhaiâ and her akhos 'grief' over the Descent of the Kore;[1] furthermore, her individual grief is correlated with the collective grief of the community that worships her. These correlations of the name Akhaiâ are presented as a fact of cult; they are independent of the surface resemblance of the forms akhos and Akhaiâ. I propose that we are dealing here with something more than a mere lexicographical association, as we might have thought if we had access only to such information as the following gloss:
Achaia [six]: epitheton Dêmêtros. apo tou peri tên Korên achous, hoper epoieito anazêtousa autên
Akhaia: epithet of Demeter. From the akhos that she had over the Kore when she was looking for her.
Hesychius s.v. As we have already seen, the word akhos is the traditional designation of Demeter's grief over the abduction of the Kore (H.Dem. 40, 90, 436), just as Akhaiâ serves as a traditionalepithet of the grieving Demeter during a ritual period of lamentation. Even if we were to assume that the association of akhos with Akhaiâ results from a contrived etymology, we would still have to concede on the basis of Plutarch's report that the contrivance itself must be traditional and deeply archaic, not some random figment of a lexicographer's imagination.[2]
§30. Besides the traditional association of akhos with Akhaiâ in cult, we have also seen the association of akhos with Akhaioi in the central themes of the Iliad. This convergence of evidence leads us to suspect a lexical relationship between akhos and Akhaio/â-, and there are interesting morphological parallels that may serve as corroboration. Let us first compare the es- stem akhos and adjectival Akhaio- with the es-stem kratos (/kartos) and adjectival krataio-.[1] This match is interesting from the thematic as well as formal point of view, since we have already seen that the word kratos (/kartos) is used in Homeric diction to designate the converse of akhos, where the back-and-forth struggle of the Achaeans and Trojans is being described.[2] When the Achaeans are hard pressed with akhos 'grief', it is the Trojans who have the kratos 'superior power' (I 509-510, etc.); conversely, when the Trojans are hard pressed, it is the Achaeans who have the kratos (VI 386-387, etc.).[3] It also seems pertinent to the back-and- forth theme of the Achaean/Trojan struggle that a noun for which the adjective krataio- serves as fixed epithet is the word for "fate": verse-final Moîra krataiê, as at V 83, XVI 334, etc.[4]
§31. The adjective krataio- seems to be formed from the element kratai-/kartai-, as attested in compound adjectives like kratai-pedon 'whose ground is firm [has kratos]' (xxiii 46: applying to oûdas 'floor').[1] In parallel onomastic formations, we find krati- as well as kratai-: thus Krati-dêmos 'whose dêmos has kratos' as well as Kratai-menês 'whose menos [might] has kratos'.[2] On the basis, then, of its compounding patterns as well as its variant krati-, we may consider the element kratai- as part of a so-called Caland System.[3] Such a system would include the abstract noun with stem in -es- (kratos/kartos; Aeolic kretos even shows the expected e-grade of the root) and the adjectives with stems in -u- (kratu-) and -ro- (kratero-) compared to -i- in the first part of compounds (kratai-).[4] The vowels immediately before -ro- and -i- in kratero- and kratai- respectively are problematical,[5] but the overall system of kratos is clear enough to allow comparison with what seems to be the system of akhos:
kratos kratu- krati- kratai- krataio- akhos akhu- *akhi- *akhai- Akhaio-
§32. The u-stem akhu- is visible in the n-infix verb akh-n-u-tai (achnutai, as at XVIII 443) corresponding to the noun akhos, and also in akheuôn (acheuôn, as at XVIII 461), verse-final variant of verse-medial akheôn (acheôn, as at XVIII 446); we have in fact already examined all three of these forms in the specific context of Achilles' grief.[1] The type akheôn must in turn be compared with krateôn (krateôn, as at XVI 172).
§33. An i-stem *akhi- has already been posited as the first member in the reconstructed compound *Akhí-lâuos 'whose lâos has akhos'. As for the hypothetical variant *akhai- (cf. kratai- and krati-), it may well be visible in the name Akhai-menês, the Greek formal reinterpretation of Old Persian Haxâ-maniß. The morphological integrity of Akhai-menês (compared to akhos) as a Greek formation is validated by such parallel formations as attested in the names Kratai-menês (compared to kratos) and Althai-menês (compared to althos).[1] Note also the form akhai-menis, the name of a plant (pseudo-Dioscorides 3.110).
§34. The es-stem noun corresponding to the name Althai-menês 'whose menos [might] has althos' requires special attention.[1] In Hesychius, the entry althos is glossed as pharmakon 'cure, drug'; the derivative an-althês 'incurable' is actually attested in the epic tradition (Iliou Persis fr. 5.6 Allen). This noun althos corresponds to althaiâ, the name of a plant that cures wounds (Theophrastus Historia Plantarum 9.15.5), and to Althaiê, the name of Meleager's mother (IX 555);[2] we must also compare krataiâ, likewise the name of a plant (pseudo- Dioscorides 2.180).[3] The semantics of these forms suggest the possibility, however remote, that althos (/Althaiê) may have been a thematic converse of akhos (/Akhaiâ). Compare the function of akos 'cure' as the converse of akhos 'grief':
autôi toi metopisth' achos essetai, oude ti mêchos rhechthentos kakou est' akos heurein
You yourself [Achilles] will have an akhos in the future, and there will be no way
to find an akos for the bad thing once it is done.[4]
§35. In view of such formal correspondences as
kratos Kratai-menês krataio- althos Althai-menês althaiâ- it would be tempting to consider
akhos Akhai-menês Akhaio-
as a set of related forms. One formal problem that stands in the way is the Latin borrowing Achîuî, on the basis of which Akhaio- is conventionally reconstructed as *Akhaiuó-.[1] Also, the form a-ka-wi-ja-de in the Linear B texts (KN C 914) has been tentatively interpreted as
*Akhaiuiân-de 'to Achaea'.[2] Yet I can find no morphological precedent for reconstructing a suffix *-uó- as in *kratai-uó- or *Akhai-uó-. On the other hand, it may be possible to reconstruct krataio- and Akhaio- as original compounds containing the root *ui- 'force' as second element. The key is the verse-final form krataiis/Krataiin in the Odyssey (xi 597/xii 124).
§36. At xi 597, krataiis (nominative) designates the supernatural force that sends the rock of Sisyphus rolling back again and again to its starting point. At xii 124, Krataiin (accusative) designates the mother of the man-eating immortal monster Scylla; according to the instructions of Circe, Odysseus and his men must call on Krataiis to restrain Scylla from attacking them again (xii 124-126). Among other interpretations of the name Krataiis, the scholia (ad xii 597) offer krataiâ îs 'force that has kratos', with the immediate context cited as justification. In the appendix, I argue on morphological grounds that krataiis is in fact the personification of an adjective originally shaped *kratai-ui- 'whose îs [force] has kratos'.[1] For a semantic parallel, I adduce the compound Kratai-menês, which can be translated "whose menos [might] has kratos." Also, I adduce the expression kraterê ... [[currency]]s Odusêos (XXIII 720), which amounts to a periphrasis of an epithet + name combination such as *kratai-ménês Oduseús.[2] In arguing for the parallelism of menos and îs in Kratai-menês and *kratai-uis, I can cite such epic combinations as hieron menos + genitive (vii 167, viii 2, etc.) and hierê îs + genitive (ii 409, xviii 405, etc.).[3]
§37. In the appendix, I also present arguments in favor of interpreting the adjectives krataio-/ Akhaio- as derived from compounds shaped *kratai-ui-/*akhai-ui- 'whose îs has kratos/akhos'. [1] In the case of *kratai-ui-, we have just considered the semantic parallel of Kratai-menês 'whose menos [might] has kratos', where the element menos has the inherited function of being a synonym of îs. There is also another semantic parallel, one that is even closer to the posited compound krataio- on a formal level. Since the word biê 'might' also functions as a synonym of îs (e.g., îs at XI 668 is equated with biê at XI 670), we may now in addition cite the adjective/ name kratai-bios/Kratai-bios'whose biê has kratos'.[2] So much for the reconstruction *kratai- ui-. As for *akhai-ui-, I should note simply that its posited meaning "whose îs had akhos" corresponds to the primary martial function of the Akhaioi 'Achaeans' in epic action: their prowess entails akhos for the enemy and, simultaneously, kratos for themselves.[3] Moreover, the Iliadic tradition features an interesting variation on this theme: because Achilles withdraws
from battle, the Achaeans temporarily lose kratos to the Trojans and they themselves are overwhelmed by akhos. Epic diction actually conveys this reversed position of the Achaeans in terms of akhos and biê, synonym of îs:
toion gar achos bebiêken Achaious
For such an akhos has brought biê upon the Achaeans.[4]
These words are spoken by Patroklos to Achilles, and they introduce a concrete description of the Achaeans' plight now that all the major heroes save Achilles have been knocked out of action by Hektor's onslaught (XVI 23-29). The perfect formation bebiêken 'has brought biê upon' at XVI 22 reverses the martial function of the Achaeans from active to passive: they "whose îs has akhos" are no longer inflicting îs but are themselves afflicted by it, so that they, rather than the enemy, get the resulting akhos.[5] To sum up, the warrior needs biê to win in battle, but biê is not enough. One can have biê and still lose without the kratos that only Zeus can grant.[6] Even the cosmic régime of the Olympians is actually maintained by the combination of Kratos and Biê personified (Hesiod Th. 385-401). Thus he who is kratai-bios 'whose biê has kratos' is one who not only has biê but also wins because he has been granted kratos by the gods. The same goes for the kraterê ... îs of Odysseus at XXIII 720. But winning is an ambiguous prospect for the Akhaioi: their îs may fail to have kratos from the gods, and so the akhos may be destined for them rather than the enemy.
§38. So much, then, for the argument that Akhaiâ/Akhaioi is treated by epic diction as a derivative of akhos 'grief'. When we add the evidence of the strong thematic links between these words, we gain an important perspective on the socialfunction of akhos. On the level of cult, the title Akhaiâ shows that the community becomes involved in the akhos of Demeter by performing rites of lamentation. On the level of epic, the title Akhaioi shows that akhos can afflict an entire aggregate of warriors. We had started our discussion of Akhaiâ/Akhaioi by stressing the social implications in the component lâos of the reconstructed *Akhí-lâuos.[1] Now we see that the social implications extend to the component akhos as well.
§39. In this light, we may compare *Akhí-lâuos 'whose lâos has grief' with the name Kharilâos (from *Kharí-lâuos) 'whose lâos has mirth', as used in Archilochus fr. 168W. The poem addresses Kharilaos and then promises to give him pleasure by making him laugh:
Erasmonidê Charilae,
ereô, polu philtath' hetairôn, terpseai d' akouôn
Kharilâos, son of Erasmôn!
I will tell you something to be laughed at,
you most philos [dear] of hetaîroi [companions]! and you will get pleasure hearing it.
Archilochus fr. 168W
There are implications not only in the name Kharilâos but also in the patronymic Erasmonidês 'son of Erasmôn', which is related to erasmios 'lovely'; this adjective elsewhere describes the bloom of youth that inspires poetry (Anacreon fr. 375P).[1] Moreover, the verb terpô/terpomai 'give/get pleasure' conventionally designates the effect of poetry (e.g., i 347).[2] We may also note the combination of erasmios 'lovely' and terpnos 'pleasurable' in Semonides 7.52W and compare the collocation of Erasmonidês (Erasmonidê) and terpomai 'get pleasure' (terpseai) in this poem of Archilochus. My point is that the pleasure and laughter promised by the poem are actually embodied in the element khari- of Khari-lâos.[3] This element, as found in the noun kharis,[4] conveys the notion of "pleasure, mirth" in conventional descriptions of poetry and its effects;[5] moreover, the context of such pleasure is social.[6] As the narrating Odysseus says in ix 3-11, there is no accomplishment "having more kharis" (chariesteron: line 5) than the euphrosunê 'mirth' that everyone in the dêmos 'district' experiences from the dinner hour performance of a poet.[7] So too with Khari-lâos: he will get pleasure and laugh as "the most philos [dear] of the hetaîroi [companions]" (philtath' hetairôn: line 3). In other words, the audience of the poem is a community (comprised of philoi 'friends').[8] And the notion of community is also embodied in the element lâos of Khari-lâos.[9]
§40. If indeed the semantics of Khari-lâ(u)os and *Akhí-lâuos are comparable, we may note with interest the reaction of the lâos when Achilles suspends his mênis 'anger':
hôs ephath', hoi d' echarêsan eüknêmides Achaioi mênin apeipontos megathumou Pêleïônos
Thus he [Achilles] spoke. And the fair-greaved Achaeans were happy that the great-hearted son of Peleus unsaid his mênis.
Since the mênis 'anger' of Achilles had caused akhos 'grief' for the Achaeans during the Battle of the Ships,[1] it is significant that the suspension of this same mênis now causes them "mirth"--as conveyed by the root khar- in echarêsan 'were happy' at XIX 74. This same root constitutes the first element of the compound Khari-lâos 'whose lâos has mirth.'
§41. As we have seen, another traditional word for the dire military situation of the Achaeans during the Battle of the Ships is loigos 'devastation'.[1] Since the grief caused by the mênis of Achilles is thus a devastation as well, we may suppose that a name like Kharilâos could convey the notion that the lâos has mirth because some devastation is suspended. In view of this possibility, let us consider the social function of the name Kharila in Delphic myth and ritual. From the report of Plutarch Quaestiones Graecae 293e, we learn that Kharila designates not only a Delphic festival but also the figure commemorated in that festival. The corresponding myth tells that Kharila was a starving girl who begged for a share of food that was being distributed in the community by the king; when the king knocked her away with his shoe, she hanged herself.
During the enneateric festival of Kharila, a ritual dummy that is also called Kharila is knocked away by the king of the festival, whereupon it is hanged by its neck and then buried. As is generally agreed, the theme of the festival is fertility by way of banishing hunger.[2] Both the myth and the ritual of Kharila reveal an archaic social foundation in general and an archaic judicial system in particular.[3] On the basis of the social function inherited by the name Kharila, I suggest that the form may be a truncated variant of *Kharílâuos. We have in fact already seen other such variants: Kharillos and Kharillês.[4]
Notes
§1n1. Chantraine I 150.
§1n2. Palmer 1963.79. Here in Ch.5 and in Ch.6, I am offering a revised version of an article that I wrote for Palmer's Festschrift (Nagy 1974c). See now Palmer 1979 and Nagy 1994.
§1n3. Technically, this posited bahuvrîhi compound should be translated "he who has the lâos grieving" or "he whose lâos has akhos." (The Sanskrit grammatical term bahuvrîhi literally means "he who has much rice.") For the interpretation of lâos as "host of fighting men" in the context of epic, see Jeanmaire 1939.11-111 and Vian 1968.59. For the connection of Greek lâos with Hittite la[[dotaccent]][[dotaccent]]a- 'military campaign' and la[[dotaccent]][[dotaccent]] iyala- 'warrior', see Heubeck 1969 and Watkins 1976b.122.
§2n1. Palmer (1963.79) compares what appears to be another shortened form, Penthi-los, to be derived from *Penthí-lâuos 'whose lâos has penthos [grief]', where the first component penthi- follows the inherited Caland pattern: penthi- compared to penthos 'grief', parallel to akhi- compared to akhos 'grief'. (On such patterns see the original formulation by Caland 1893.592; see also Nussbaum 1976.) Palmer (ibid.) adduces such other examples as Kûdi-aneira 'whose men have glory [kûdos]', and Oidi-podês 'whose feet have swelling [oîdos]', etc. As a parallel to the hypothetical truncation of *-lâuos in Akhil(l)eus (from *Akhí-lâuos), we may cite the coexistence of the forms Sthenelos (V 111, etc.) and Sthenelâos (XVI 586). To explain the optional doubling of the -l- in the epic forms of Akhil(l)eus, Palmer (ibid.) points out that expressive gemination seems to be a characteristic of shortened forms, adducing Kharillos/ Kharillês compared to Khari-lâos (from *-lâuos); for the forms, see Bechtel 1917.285. (On Kharila, see further at §39 below; also compare the formal pair Kharila and Khari-lâos with Iolê and Io-lâos respectively.) We may add Perillos, apparently a by-form of Peri-lâos (see Jeffery 1976.139); cf. also Philleus and Phileus, as discussed by Perpillou 1973.172 and 241n8. There remains the problem of the suffix -eus in Akhi-l(l)eus: here too Palmer can point to formal parallelisms, showing from the evidence of both Linear B and later Greek that this suffix is especially characteristic of shortened names (Palmer, p. 78; cf. also Perpillou, pp. 167-299). As another possible instance where compounded *-lâuos is ultimately truncated to -leus, Palmer (p.
80) adduces epic Nêleus and Attic Neileôs (from *Neelêos from *Nehé-lâuos, apparently attested as the name ne-e-ra-wo in a Linear B tablet from Pylos, Fn 79.5); see Ruijgh 1967.369-370. In addition, I cite the by-form of Iolê, namely Ioleia (Hesiod fr. 26.31MW), and the masculine Io- lâos; the feminine type Ioleia implies a corresponding *Ioleús. Finally, we may compare the formal types Iolâos and Ioleia with Prôtesilâos and Penthesileia.
§2n2. As precedent, I cite Frame 1978.82-83, 86, 96-99, 112 on the mythology underlying the form *Nehé-lâuos (n1), which means something like "bringing the lâos back home to safety"; Frame connects the root *nes- of *Nehé-lâuos not only with Nêleus and Neileôs but also with Nes-tôr, the name of the son of Neleus. Compare the root *ag- in Ageleôs (xxii 131, 247), from
*Agé-lâuos 'bringing/leading the lâos', and also in Ak-tôr (II 513, etc.). The contraction of
*Nehe- to Nê- in Nêleus implies that the replacement of *Nehé-lâuos by *Nehe-leús had already taken place during a pre-Ionic phase in the development of Homeric diction (see Wackernagel 1953 [= 1914] 1156-1157 and n2).
§3n1. The single most convincing piece of writing on the subject of Achilles' inherited central role in the Iliadic tradition remains that of Whitman 1958 (Ch.IX). His book and Lord's (1960, esp. Ch.IX on the Iliad) have been invaluable for my present efforts.
§3n2. I raise this issue to allow for the possibility that the name spelled a-ki-re-u in Linear B (Knossos tablet Vc 106; cf. Pylos tablet Fn 79) stands for *Akhil(l)eús. For an articulate comparison of the historical Pylos and a possibly historical Nestor with the mythopoeic Pylos and the mythopoeic Nestor, I cite Frame 1978. For a useful general discussion of the relationship between the mythopoeic requirements of epic and the realia of history: Lord 1970.29-30.
§4n1. I cite primarily my own monograph on the subject (Nagy 1974), certainly not because I think of it as authoritative but because it reflects a stage of work that has led to my present interests. Instead of listing here the parallel work of my associates in Indo-European poetics (such as Muellner 1976, Watkins 1977, Frame 1978), I prefer to pay them tribute with citations wherever they are in order. For a general introduction to the language of Indo-European poetry: Schmitt 1967 and Durante 1971/1976.
§4n2. I cite again his collected papers, Parry 1971; cf. also Lord 1960/1968.
§4n3. Cf. Nagy 1974.49-102; also Fenik 1968.229 and Lord 1974.193-199.
§4n4. Edwards 1971, with further bibliography.
§5n1. This observation about Pindar (which applies also to Bacchylides) will be developed as my argument proceeds, especially in Chs.7, 12, 14, 20. We have already had occasion to observe the archaism of Pindaric traditions in the case of Paean 6, as discussed at Ch.4.
§5n2. Cf. Gentili 1972, esp. p. 73; also Pavese 1967, 1972.
§5n3. For a particularly striking example from Pindaric poetry, see Benveniste 1945 on Pythian
3.45-53.
§8n1. It is traditional for an archaic poem to begin with a word that names the main subject of the narrative in the manner of a title (in this case, mênis at I 1), followed by an epithet and a relative clause setting forth the relationship of the title word to the main subject (in this case, how the
mênis of Achilles was baneful and caused devastation for the Achaeans, at I 2-5). Consider also the openings of the Odyssey, Theogony, Works and Days, Little Iliad, and nearly all the Homeric Hymns.
§8n2. The only exception is the mênis of Aeneas against King Priam (epemênie: XIII 460), which must have been the central theme of another epic tradition--this one featuring Aeneas as its prime hero. See Ch.15§2. On the restriction of mênis to Achilles among the heroes of the Iliad, compare also the use of memonen 'he is in a rage' at XXI 315 (Ch.20§5n4). For the significance of this restriction from the religious standpoint of god-hero antagonism, see Ch.8§3. On the semantics of mênis: Considine 1966 and Watkins 1977. Adducing the evidence of Homeric diction, Watkins argues that mênis must have resulted from a deformation of *mnâ-nis, containing the root *mnâ- (*mne[schwa ]2-) as in me-mnê-mai 'to have in mind'. This enlarged root *mnâ- is built from *men- as in Greek menos, an abstract noun indicating a "state of mind" as manifested in such phenomena as "power" (on the semantics: Nagy 1974.266-269) or, as it turns out, "anger." Watkins has found three Iliadic passages (I 207, 282; XXI 340) where menos is used not only in the sense of "anger" but also as a functional equivalent of mênis. I would add the evidence of meneainô 'be angry, furious, in a rage', a verb formally derived from this noun menos (cf. Chantraine III 685). In view of Watkins' convincing argument that mênis is a reciprocal notion, I cite Iliad XIX 58, where Agamemnon tells Achilles: eridi meneênamen 'we were angry [at each other] in eris'. The word eris 'strife' here refers to their quarrel at the beginning of the Iliad (see further at Ch.7§17 and Ch.12§6). Note that Achilles himself predicts at XIX 63-64 that the Achaeans "will long remember," mnêsesthai, the mutual eris between him and Agamemnon (see Ch.19§3). Accordingly, I see no reason to dismiss as adventitious the designation of Agamemnon's anger against Achilles as mênis at I 247: Atreïdês d' heterôthen emênie 'the son of Atreus, on the other side, had mênis'. The expression heterôthen 'on the other side' even underscores the reciprocity of the mênis between the heroes. Achilles, however, as the prime hero of the Iliad and as the determinant of its action, is also the determinant of this anger that serves as the epic's central theme. See now Muellner 1996; also Palmer 1979 and Nagy 1994.
§9n1. Since the word algea 'pains' is announced by the relative clause that expands on the "title"
mênis (§8n1), it is a formal as well as functional key.
§9n2. Cf. Nagy 1974.135-137; also Burkert 1977.228.
§9n3. On the relationship of the paiêôn/paiân 'paean' to the death of Achilles himself, see Intro.§16; also Ch.4 (esp. §§4-6), and Ch.7 (esp. §§4, 24-30).
§10n1. On the strictly regulated subgenre of prayers as quoted within Homeric narrative: Muellner 1976.17-67.
§12n1. By contrast, even Diomedes cannot "ward off the devastation [loigos]" from the ships (loigon amunai), as Achilles observes with satisfaction at XVI 74-75.
§13n1. On kûdos, see the reference at Ch.4§6n2.
§16n2. Ibid.
§19n1. Cf. Intro.§9.
§23n1. For the function of the Moîrai here, compare the etymology of Modern Greek moirologi/ mirolòyi 'lamentation', as discussed by Alexiou 1974.110-128. For her argument that the word is derived from moîra, we may add the evidence from the latter-day Greek dialects in Southern Italy, where the form ta morolòya 'funeral lamentations' seems to be derived from the equivalent of classical moros, synonym of moîra. See Rohlfs 1964.334.
§25n1. See Benveniste 1969 II 76-77.
§25n2. Ajax too comes to realize this: XVI 119-121. Moreover, Homeric diction itself confirms that the presence or absence of kratos on the one or the other military side depends on the Will of Zeus. When the Achaeans briefly and unexpectedly regain the upper hand and almost capture Troy at XVII 319-322, they almost do so karteï kai stheneï spheterôi 'with their own kratos and strength' (XVII 322). But this would-be event is designated as huper Dios aisan 'beyond the aîsa [allotment, fate] of Zeus' (XVII 321). In other words, it is untraditional, since whatever runs counter to the traditional plot of the narrative is conventionally designated as "beyond destiny": Ch.2§17, Ch.7§21n2, Ch.15§3n9. On the Dios boulê 'Will of Zeus' as the traditional plot, see also Ch.7§17 and the comments on viii 577-580 at Ch.6§8; cf. Ch.6§24n3 and Ch.10§17. In the present episode, the would-be event of Troy's capture is not only untraditional; it is also almostaccomplished by an untraditional application of kratos, in that the word is here described as being at the disposal of the Achaeans rather than Zeus. For more on the correlation of destiny and kratos, see the discussion of the expression Moîra krataiê at §30.
§27n1. For a detailed exposition: Jeanmaire 1939.11-111; see also Vian 1968.59 and Palmer 1955. These references are also important for appreciating the function the ra-wa-ke-ta=
*lâuâgétâs in the Linear B tablets. For detailed studies on Indo-European Männerbund: Wikander 1938 (after Höfler 1934) and Przyluski 1940. On Pindaric lâgetâs, see Suárez de la Torre 1977 (and cf. Ch.6§26n1 below).
§27n2. See Yoshida 1964.6 and Vian 1968 passim; cf. Lejeune 1960.139 and 1968.31-32; also Palmer 1955 passim. From the prodigious work of Georges Dumézil on the Indo-European three functions, I cite the one bibliographical entry that is by far the most important collection of comparative source material for students of Greek epic: Dumézil's Mythe et épopée I (1968). It
bears stressing, however, that the value of the evidence presented in this work is strictly comparative in nature. Almost all the evidence is taken from non-Greek epic traditions, and the significance of this comparative material for the study of Greek epic is always implicit and hardly ever made explicit.
§27n3. Sinos 1975.65-81. On the function of the word philos and its derivatives in Homeric narrative: Benveniste 1969 I 338-353.
§28n1. See Jeanmaire 1939.26-43, esp. p. 27.
§28n2. On Danaos/Danaai, see especially Hesiod fr. 128MW, in conjunction with my discussion (Nagy 1973.161) of the element dan- in Êri-danos. On Argeîoi/Argeiê, see Clader 1976 Ch.III sec.3, following Frame 1971.
§29n1. See Festugière 1959 for a discussion of the expression megara kinousin and of the calendar dating of the kathodos. Cf. also Quinn 1971.146.
§29n2. See again Festugière 1959.
§30n1. I postpone until appendix §8 the problem of the Latin Achîuî borrowing Achîuî, on the basis of which Akhaio- is conventionally reconstructed as *Akhaiuó-.
§30n3. Cf. §§25-26 above. Note too the frequent application of the adjective kratero- to nouns designating "battle," notably husmînê and phûlopis. Conversely, polemos 'war' is conventionally designated in Homeric diction as dusêkhês 'having bad akhos' (on which see Chantraine I 302). At XVIII 242, phûlopis is designated as kraterê and its synonym polemos as homoiios. Whatever the etymology of homoiios (see Chantraine III 799), it seems to convey the theme that the evil of war afflicts all (cf. XVIII 309).
§30n4. On the correlation of fate and kratos: §25n2.
§31n1. Cf. kratai-gualoi 'whose plates are firm = have kratos' (XIX 361), applying to thôrêkes 'breastplates', and kartai-poda 'whose feet are firm = have kratos' (Gortynian Code IV 36), applying to larger cattle rather than probata = sheep and goats; cf. Pindar O.13.81, where kartai- pod' designates a bull. The translation "firm" for kratai- in kratai-pod- and kratai-pedo- is perhaps overly specific. More simply, the notion of kratos mediates between the foot and its footing. In the case of kratai-pedo- even a floor has kratos by way of giving a firm footing. As for kratai-pod-, compare khalko-pod- 'whose hooves are of bronze' (VIII 41), applying to horses. Here too, the emphasis seems to be on firmness as a mark of superiority; cf. krater-
ônukh- 'whose hooves/ claws have kratos', applying to horses (V 329, etc.), asses (vi 253), and wolves (x 218).
§31n2. See Bechtel 1917.256.
§31n3. For the term, see Nussbaum 1976.
§31n4. On the basis of the Greek evidence, I see no need to posit, as does Benveniste (1969 II 77-83), the conflation of two separate roots in this system. The notion of "firm, hard" (cf. n1) is not necessarily at odds with kratos in the sense of "superiority in a trial of
strength" (Benveniste's working definition: 1969 II 77 = 1973.362). Even kratunô, which Benveniste translates as "harden," can be interpreted further as "prepare for superiority = kratos"; hence such direct objects as phalangas 'phalanxes' in the Iliad (XI 215).
§31n5. Schmitt (1967.112n685) has noticed an interesting detail: as an epithet, kratero- is a variant of hiero- in combinations with the noun îs + genitive of the hero's name (as periphrasis for the plain name). Thus we find kraterê ... [[currency]]s Odusêos at XXIII 720 besides hierê [[currency]]s Têlemakhoio at ii 409, xviii 405, etc. Note also krateron menos + genitive of the hero's name at XVI 189 and XXIII 837 besides hieron menos + genitive of the hero's name at vii 167, viii 2, etc. (At H.Apollo 371 hieron menos combines with the genitive of Êelios 'Sun'.) In the case of hiero-, we may confidently reconstruct *is-ro-, so that the vowel e seems to be a reflex of * (see Schmitt, pp. 111-114). The construction of hiero- + noun meaning "power" + genitive of name is not only a periphrasis of the simple name but also an obviation of a Caland System compound formation with *is-i- as the first member; see Schmitt, p.111n678. Schmitt accordingly posits (ibid.) a bahuvrîhi epithet *isi-ménes- as the basis for the periphrasis hieron menos (+ genitive of the name described by this epithet). In view of the parallelism hieron/krateron + menos in Homeric diction, we may perhaps also posit *k[[perthousand]]ti-ménes-. The attested name Kratai-menês would be only an indirect reflex, however; *k[[perthousand]]ti- should yield krati-. The compound element kratai-/kartai- seems to be a conflation of *k[[perthousand]]ti- (from *k[[perthousand]]ti-) and *k[[perthousand]]ta- (from *k[[perthousand]]t-, without -i-), and the latter seems to be attested as the adverb karta 'very'. As Alan Nussbaum points out to me, it is possible for elements of the Caland System, when they appear as the first member of compounds, to bear the suffix *-- in place of the more usual *-i-: consider alka- as in Alkâ-thoos (Homeric: XII 93, etc.) and Alka-menês (Bechtel 1917.35) besides alki- as in alkî-phrôn, Alki-menês, etc. For an example of a compound without either connecting vowels *-i- or *--, consider Homeric aîth-ops as compared to Aithi-ops.
§33n1. The name Akhai-menês may be attested in Linear B as a-ka-me-ne (Knossos tablet X 82
+ 8136), although other readings of this spelling are also possible. See Chadwick/Baumbach
1963.178. Compare also krataios and kratai- with araios and arai-. The latter is attested in the Homeric place name Arai-thureê (II 571), the meaning of which is something like "whose entrance is narrow"; cf. araiê ... eisodos 'narrow entrance' at x 90. For thurai in the sense of "entrance," see ix 243, etc.
§34n1. On the cult of the hero Althai-menês at Rhodes: Rohde I 116 and n1.
§34n2. For a discussion of these forms: Chantraine 1968.60.
§34n3. Cf. Strömberg 1940.82.
§34n4. The kakon 'bad thing' here at IX 250 turns out to be the death of Patroklos, which is
again predicted as a kakon at XI 604.
§35n1. For more on Achîuî, see appendix §8. As for the Hittite form A[[dotaccent]] [[dotaccent]]iiaua-, there is no convincing evidence to prove any connection with the Greek word for "Achaean": Steiner 1964.
§35n2. Chadwick/Baumbach 1963.178.
§36n1. Appendix §§1-2.
§36n3. Ibid.
§37n1. Appendix §§3-7.
§37n2. For the adjective, see Anecdota Graeca (ed. J. A. Cramer) 318.5 and Eustathius 1938.1; for the name, see Bechtel 1917.256.
§37n4. See also X 145, likewise referring to the plight of the Achaeans (cf. X 172).
§37n5. For the notion that a victim can be afflicted by the biê of the enemy, cf. XI 467: Menelaos fears that the Trojans are overcoming Odysseus with biê (biôiato), since he is alone. Consider also expressions like ê thanatôi biêtheis ê nousôi 'overcome by the biê of either death or disease' (Herodotus 7.83).
§37n6. So also with athletics: in order to win, the athlete needs both biê and kratos (Hesiod Th. 437); cf. Pindar I. 8.5.
§39n1. The poem itself is a response to hêbê 'bloom of youth'. Its words say that whoever turns his thoughts to hêbê, which is erasmiê 'lovely', will dance to the sound of the flute. For a parallel correlation of song and dance, cf. Odyssey i 421-423.
§39n2. Ch.1§4n1. Again, cf. also Odyssey i 421-423.
§39n3. There are also other instances in Archilochean poetry where the function of a character seems to be conveyed by his name: see especially Ch.12§21 on Lukambês. Cf. also the poetic function of the patronymic Terpiadês: Ch.1§4n1.
§39n4. For an introduction to the relationship of noun kharis and verb khairô 'be well, be glad, be happy', see Latacz 1966.125-127.
§39n5. Ch.1§5(n1), Ch.2§13(n2).
§39n6. Ibid. On the notion of reciprocity conveyed by kharis, see Benveniste 1969 I 199-202.
§39n7. For the text, see Ch.1§5. On the theme of euphrosunê 'mirth' in the community, see also
Ch.12§15n5. On the dêmos as the community/audience of Dêmodokos, see Ch.1§4n1.
§39n8. See further at Ch.13§2.
§41n2. Nilsson 1906.466-467, with further references; also Usener 1912/1913 [= 1875] 116-119 on the parallel Italic ritual of saecula condere.
§41n3. Glotz 1904.ix,64; Gernet 1968 [= 1928] 58, [1948-1949] 231-232.
§41n4. §2n1. I leave the accent of Kharila unmarked because I cannot verify the quantity of the last syllable. We are impeded here by the fact that this name is attested only in the text of Plutarch.
The Best of the Achaeans Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry Revised Edition
Gregory Nagy
Copyright © 1980, 1997 The Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved. First edition 1979. Revised edition 1999. This document may be used, with this notice included, for noncommercial purposes within a subscribed
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§1. The social dimensions of the actual word akhos 'grief' have so far been explored mainly in terms of its thematic relationship with the concept of lâos 'host of fighting men' in epic diction. The time has now come to explore the meaning of akhos on its own terms.
§2. In Homeric diction, akhos 'grief' functions as a formulaic variant of another es-stem, penthos. Both words designate the grief of Achilles over his loss of tîmê (achos: I 188, XVI 52, 55; penthos: I 362); also, both words designate the grief of Achilles over his loss of Patroklos (achos: XVIII 22, XXIII 47; penthos: XVIII 73). Finally, not only akhos, as at XVI 22, but also
penthos designates the collective grief of the Achaeans, as at IX 3; in this passage, there is special emphasis on the grief of their king Agamemnon, which is called akhos as well, at IX 9. Outside the poetic diction, we find expressions like penthos poiêsasthai 'have public mourning [penthos]' (Herodotus 2.1.1; cf. 2.46.3, 6.21.1).[1] Even inside the poetic diction, the collective aspect of penthos is apparent in its application to the public mourning for Hektor (XXIV 708). [2]
§3. This collective aspect is also apparent in the opposition of penthos to kleos. When the healer Makhaon is summoned to heal the wound of Menelaos, the Trojan who had wounded him is said to have kleos as opposed to the collective penthos of the Achaeans:
... tôi men kleos, ammi de penthos
... for him kleos, for us penthos
Whereas the word kleos is used in traditional poetic diction to designate the public prestige of Epos or praise-poetry,[1] the word penthos can indicate the public ritual of mourning, formally enacted with songs of lamentation (as at XXIV 708-781, especially 720-722).
§4. The traditional relationship of penthos with kleos is reflected by its fixed epithet alaston 'unforgettable', which is morphologically parallel to aphthiton 'unfailing', the fixed epithet of kleos (IX 413).[1] There is also an important thematic connection with kleos in the application of alaston to both penthos (XXIV 105, xxiv 423) and akhos (iv 108), since the meaning of alaston is coordinate with the inherited theme of mnêmosunê 'memory'. The conceit of Homeric poetry is that the sacred mnemonic power of the Muses is the key to the kleos of epic. The aoidos 'singer' sings what he sings because the Moûsai put his mind in touch with the realities of the past (mnêsaiat' II 492, kleos II 486, Mousai II 484).[2]
§5. This is not the place for a detailed survey of the word kleos in its function of expressing the very notion of epic poetry within epic poetry--a task that I have attempted elsewhere.[1] I confine myself here to the differences between the traditional genres of poetry, as expressed by the contrast of kleos with penthos/akhos. Not only does the epithet alaston 'unforgettable' of penthos/akhos conjure up the traditional theme of mnêmosunê 'memory', which is inherent in the poetic concept of kleos, but also the word penthos itself is used by the poetry of the Homeric and Hesiodic traditions as a foil for kleos.[2] For a striking example, consider this Hesiodic passage:
ei gar tis kai penthos echôn neokêdeï thumôi azêtai kradiên akachêmenos, autar aoidos Mousaôn therapôn kleea proterôn anthrôpôn
humnêsêi makaras te theous, hoi Olumpon echousin, aips' ho ge dusphrosuneôn epilêthetai oude ti kêdeôn
memnêtai
And if someone has penthos and is distressed having akhos
in a thûmos beset with new cares, yet, when a singer,
therapôn of the Muses,[3] sings the kleos [plural] of men of old and also the blessed gods that inhabit Olympus,
at once he forgets his sorrows, and his cares he no longer remembers.
When the singer sings "the kleos [plural] of men of old," the song is in the tradition of an Iliad or an Odyssey; when he sings "the blessed gods," the song is in the general tradition of a Theogony. [4] (I avoid saying "the Iliad" or "the Theogony" in order to suggest that the diction refers simply to established poetic traditions rather than fixed texts.) The conceptual association of Theogonic poetry with the word kleos is made overt a few hexameters earlier in the Hesiodic Theogony, where the Muses are designated as the ones who make into kleos (kleiousin) the genos 'genesis' of the gods:[5]
theôn genos aidoion prôton kleiousin aoidêi
With song they first make into kleos the genesis of the gods, thing of reverence that it is.
Hesiod Th. 44 A few hexameters later, after the contrast of kleos with penthos (Th. 98-103), the Muses are finally invoked to sing the contents of our Theogony, with the following words:[6]
chairete tekna Dios, dote d' himeroessan aoidên: kleiete d' athanatôn hieron genos aien eontôn
Hail, children of Zeus! Grant an entrancing song.
Make into kleos the sacred genos[genesis] of the immortals,[7] who always are.
Hesiod Th. 104-105 The inherited function of our Theogony, then, is to give kleosto the genesis of the gods. The hearing of such kleos is a remedy for penthos, as we learn from the passage that inaugurated this discussion, the artistic manifesto of Th. 98-103. In Theogonic language, Mnêmosunê 'mnemonic power' gave birth to the Moûsai 'Muses', who were to be the lêsmosunê 'forgetting' of ills:[8]
tas en Pieriêi Kronidêi teke patri migeisa Mnêmosunê, gounoisin Eleuthêros medeousa, lêsmosunên te kakôn ampauma te mermêraôn
They were born in Pieria to the one who mated with the son of Kronos, to Mnêmosunê, who rules over the ridges of Eleuther--
born to be a lêsmosunê of ills and a cessation of anxieties.[9]
§6. Let us now turn from the kleos of the Theogonic tradition to "the kleos [plural] of previous men," as our Theogony calls it (kleea proterôn anthrôpôn: verse 100). To repeat, kleos is used in epic diction to designate the epic tradition itself.[1] Presently, however, we are concerned only with the specific use of this word as an antithesis of penthos/akhos. We begin with the song of Phemios in Odyssey i; his subject is the nostos 'homecoming' of the Achaeans (i 326-327),[2] and his song brings grief rather than entertainment to one of his listeners, who happens to be the wife of Odysseus. Penelope asks the singer to stop his song, because it brings her penthos alaston 'unforgettable grief' (i 342). Just before, her words had described the aoidoi 'singers' generically as those who give kleos to the deeds of heroes and gods:
erg' andrôn te theôn te, ta te kleiousin aoidoi
the deeds of men and gods, which the singers make into kleos
Just after, she says that she always has her husband on her mind (memnêmenê aiei: i 343), and then we hear the following description of Odysseus:
tou kleos euru kath' Hellada kai meson Argos
who has kleos far and wide throughout Hellas and midmost Argos
From the standpoint of an audience listening to the medium of epic, the word kleos can apply to the epic of Odysseus, to the narrative tradition of the Odyssey. From the standpoint of Penelope as a character within the epic, however, the kleos of Odysseus, with all its hardships, entails personal involvement: it brings to mind a grief that cannot be swept away from the mind (cf. memnêmenê aiei 'remembering always': i 343). Telemachus does not yet realize the extent of his own involvement in the unfolding action when he rebukes his mother and urges the singer to continue his song, on the grounds that it is fitting entertainment for an audience (i 346-347). The story of the poet's song is the Will of Zeus, he says (i 347-350),[3] and the song is popular with its audience:
tên gar aoidên mallon epikleious' anthrôpoi
hê tis akouontessi neôtatê amphipelêtai
For men would rather continue to make into kleos[4] the song that is the newest to make its rounds with the listeners.
On one level, the song is neôtatê 'newest' for an audience of epic, in that it tells of actions that will lead to the nostos'homecoming' of Odysseus, the last Achaean to come home from Troy. On another level, the song is "newest" specifically for Telemachus, in that he is about to become involved in the actions of this nostos.[5]
§7. The factor of personal involvement or noninvolvement decides whether an epic situation calls for penthos or kleos. The figure of Menelaos sets the tone for the involvement of Telemachus. As a warrior who had shared in the hardships of the Achaeans at Troy, Menelaos tells Telemachus that Odysseus is the warrior whose absence he misses and mourns the most of all (iv 100-105; see especially acheuôn 'having akhos' at 100). There is a reason for this:
... epei ou tis Achaiôn toss' emogêsen
hoss' Oduseus emogêse kai êrato. tôi d' ar' emellen autôi kêde' esesthai, emoi d' achos aien alaston
... since none of the Achaeans struggled so much
as Odysseus struggled and achieved. For him there would be
cares in the future, whereas I would have an akhos alaston[unforgettable grief] always.
iv 106-108 This unforgettable akhos now finally involves Telemachus, as he hears from Menelaos how Odysseus is probably being mourned, at this very minute, by his father, wife, and son (iv
110-112). Telemachus indeed begins to weep (iv 113-116), and from here on we find communal weeping at the table of Menelaos when the story of Odysseus comes up (see especially iv
183-185), since he is presently the only Achaean left who is still without a nostos:
... keinon dustênon anostimon oion ...
... that wretched one, the only one who has not come home ...
Later on, Helen tells Menelaos and his guests--Telemachus included--a story of Troy as an entertainment during dinner:
ê toi nun dainusthe kathêmenoi en megaroisi kai muthois terpesthe: eoikota gar katalexô
Sit now and dine in the palace, and be entertained
by the stories. For the things that I will say in proper order are appropriate. Her entertaining story, however, begins on a note of grief:
panta men ouk an egô muthêsomai oud' onomênô, hossoi Odussêos talasiphronos eisin aethloi:
all' hoion tod' erexe kai etlê karteros anêr
dêmôi eni Trôôn, hothi paschete pêmat' Achaioi
I could not possibly tell of or name
all the struggles that are the share of the enduring Odysseus. but I will tell of this one thing that he did and endured--
--that man of kratos--in the district of Troy, where you Achaeans suffered pains [pêma plural].
iv 240-243 All the characters listening to the story are personally involved, and we would expect its words to arouse instant grief on their part, were it not for what Helen did before telling her tale. She put a pharmakon 'drug' in their wine (iv 220), described as:
nêpenthes t' acholon te, kakôn epilêthon hapantôn
without penthos, without anger, making one forget all ills
One who drinks it would not even mourn the death of his mother, father, brother, or son (iv 222-226). What would otherwise be a penthos for Helen's audience can thus remain a kleos, since there is no personal involvement.
§8. Such a distinction between kleos and penthos is even more vivid when Odysseus himself becomes personally involved. He is an unidentified member of the audience as the poet Demodokos starts singing the klea andrôn 'kleos [plural] of men':
Mous' ar' aoidon anêken aeidemenai klea andrôn oimês tês tot' ara kleos ouranon eurun hikane
The Muse impelled the singer to sing the kleos [plural] of men
from a story thread that had at that time a kleos reaching up to the vast heavens.
The story of the singer concerns "the beginning of pain [pêma]" (pêmatos archê: viii 81) that befell Achaeans and Trojans alike, "on account of the plans of great Zeus" (Dios megalou dia boulas: viii 82). Odysseus immediately begins to weep, though he hides his grief (viii 83-95). Later on, the still-unidentified Odysseus compliments the Trojan story of the poet as "correct":
liên gar kata kosmon Achaiôn oiton aeideis,
hoss' erxan t' epathon te kai hoss' emogêsan Achaioi
You sing in very correct fashion the fate of the Achaeans, all the things that they did and suffered and struggled for.
He then asks Demodokos to shift ahead in subject matter (metabêthi: viii 492) and sing about the Trojan Horse (viii 492-495). The poet obliges, beginning within a traditional framework (enthen helôn hôs ... 'taking it from the place in the story where ...': viii 500), and the cumulative effect of his Trojan story is that Odysseus again bursts into tears (viii 521-534). This time the host Alkinoos draws attention to the still-unidentified guest's grief (akhos: viii 541), and he calls on Odysseus to explain what amounts to an internalized lamentation:
eipe d' ho ti klaieis kai odureai endothi thumôi Argeiôn Danaôn ide Iliou oiton akouôn.
ton de theoi men teuxan, epeklôsanto d' olethron anthrôpois, hina êisi kai essomenoisin aoidê
Tell why you weep and lament within your thûmos
upon hearing the fate of the Argive Danaans and of Ilion. The gods fashioned it, and they were the ones who ordained
destruction for men, so that it might be a song for men yet to be.
What is an akhos for Odysseus is for future audiences simply a "song" like the Iliad, with its plot enacted by the Will of Zeus and his gods.
§9. The plot in this third song of Demodokos is strikingly parallel to the plot of the Cyclic Iliou Persis as we find it in the Proclus summary (pp. 107-108 Allen). But there is an interesting variation. On the one hand, the narrative in the Iliou Persis draws to a close with the destruction of Troy and such specific scenes as the killing of Astyanax by Odysseus and the enslavement of Andromache by Pyrrhos (p. 108.8-9).[1] On the other hand, the narrative of Demodokos is interrupted, before it draws to a close, by the weeping of Odysseus. The action stops just when various Achaean heroes are performing their various grisly feats during the destruction of Troy, such as the killing of Deiphobos (viii 516-520). At this point, the weeping of Odysseus is compared by way of a simile to the weeping of a widow who is taken as captive by a ruthless enemy after the destruction of her city and the killing of her husband (viii 523-531). The husband
is described as a hero who fell in front of his city, where he was defending both the community and his children (viii 524-525). The resemblance with Hektor is unmistakable. The generic situation in the simile is thus strikingly parallel to the specific situation of Andromache at the end of the Iliou Persis. In this sense, the simile that pictures the weeping of Odysseus completes the narrative that his weeping had interrupted. And the captive widow also has akhos (viii 530), so that the akhos of Odysseus is universalized: he now feels the grief of his own victims in war, and his involvement is thus complete.
§10. In sum, we see from the evidence of epic itself that the kleos heard by its audiences may be akhos/penthos for those involved in the actions that it describes. Alkinoos perceives the akhos of Odysseus when he sees his guest's reaction to the kleos sung about the Trojan War. As a considerate host, he even asks Odysseus whether he had a male relative or hetaîros 'comrade' who died at Troy (viii 581-586). This theme brings us back to the Iliad, where Achilles has akhos/penthos (XVIII 22/73) over the death of Patroklos, his hetaîros (XVIII 80, etc.). It is this grief that impels him to go forth finally and fight, and here is how Achilles says it:
... nun de kleos esthlon aroimên
... but now let me win worthy kleos
After the death of Patroklos, the Achilles figure uses the expression nun de 'but now' (as also here) no fewer than fifteen times in our Iliad.[1] With his akhos/penthos over Patroklos, "Achilles enters the realm of kleos."[2]
§11. By entering his war, Achilles knowingly approaches certain death (XVIII 95-99), which in turn will bring penthos to his mother (XVIII 88).[1] The choice for him had been clear all along: either a nostoswithout kleos (IX 414-415) or kleos without nostos (IX 412-413). If he gives up a safe homecoming--that is, if he chooses not to be the hero of a story about homecoming-- Achilles will die at Troy but will have a kleos that is aphthiton 'unfailing' (IX 413). In other words, he will be the central figure of an epic tradition that will never die out.[2] And the key to the kleos of Achilles' epic is the akhos/penthos over Patroklos.
§12. We are now ready to consider the semantics of the name Patroklos (cf. I 345, etc.)/ Patrokleês (cf. I 337, etc.),[1] a compound formation referring to the kleos 'glory' of the pateres 'ancestors' (on the latter meaning of the word pateres, see VI 209, etc.). These two notions of "glory" and "ancestors" within the compound Patro-kleês(/Patro-klos) should be compared with the two notions in the combination kleea = kleos [plural] and proterôn anthrôpôn = "previous men" in Hesiod Th. 100 (where kleos [plural] is antithetical to penthos at verse 98). The semantics of kleea proterôn anthrôpôn 'the kleos [plural] of previous men', an expression that had provided the starting point for this discussion of akhos/penthos and kleos, has a parallel in epic, where the specific application is to Achilles himself. Here is the Iliadic parallel to the combination in Hesiod Th. 100:
houtô kai tôn prosthen epeuthometha klea andrôn hêrôôn ...
We learn this also from the kleos [plural] of men of the past, who were the heroes ... [2]
These words introduce the story that Phoinix tells Achilles, taken from the epic tradition of Meleager. As Dale Sinos has shown in detail, this story is intended to illustrate the ethical principle of philotês 'being a philos' in warrior society.[3] It is an epic exemplum, or klea andrôn 'kleos [plural] of men', set before Achilles so that he may be persuaded to lay aside his anger and to rejoin his hetaîroi 'comrades-in-arms', who are his philoi.[4]
§13. As we proceed to consider the story of Meleager, we must keep in mind the institutional and sentimental connotations of this word philos/philoi, conventionally translated as "friend" when it is a noun and as "dear" or "one's own" when it is an adjective. For a suggestive discussion, I refer to Benveniste's acute reading of philos in its Homeric contexts.[1] For now, however, I merely cite what he sees as the results of his findings:[2]
It would take many chapters to list and analyze with the necessary care all the examples of phílos where it is said to be "possessive." We believe, however, that we have interpreted the most important. This re-examination was necessary to expose a long-standing error, which is probably as old as Homeric exegesis, and has been handed down from generation to generation of scholars. The whole problem of phílos deserves a full examination. We must start from uses and contexts which reveal in this term a complex network of associations, some with the institutions of hospitality, others with usages of the home, still others with emotional behavior[italics mine]; we must do this in order to understand plainly the metaphorical applications to which the term lent itself. All this wealth of concepts was smothered and lost to view once phílos was reduced to a vague notion of friendship or wrongly interpreted as a possessive adjective. It is high time we learned again how to read Homer.
§14. The story of Meleager, like the story of Achilles, tells of the hero's withdrawal from battle. Like Achilles, Meleager is angry:
... cholon thumalgea pessôn
... mulling his anger, which caused pain for his thûmos
The same words apply to the anger of Achilles:
... cholon thumalgea pessei
Compare also these words addressed to Achilles:
paue', ea de cholon thumalgea
Stop! Abandon your anger, which causes pain for your thûmos.[1]
The parallels are even deeper: while the anger of Achilles was preceded by the anger of Apollo, the anger of Meleager (IX 525, 553) was preceded by the anger of Apollo's sister, Artemis (IX 533-535).[2] Just as Achilles is destined by tradition to die at the hands of Apollo himself (XXI 275-278; cf. Pindar Paean 6.78-80), so also Meleager (Hesiod fr. 25.9-13MW).[3]
§15. I save the most important point of comparison for last: the comrades of Meleager, his hetaîroi, rate as next-to-highest in the narrative sequence that catalogues those who have ties to the hero and who are now entreating him to rejoin his comrades-in-arms. The ranking of the hero's social affinities at IX 574-591 implicitly presents Meleager as one who loves the elders not so much as the priests not so much as his father not so much as his sisters not so much as his mother not so much as his hetairoi not so much as his wife. As the studies of J. T. Kakridis have shown, variations in the listing of a hero's affinities represent a relative ranking of these affinities in Homeric narrative and constitute a poetic convention in itself.[1] In comparison with other attested occurrences of this convention, which Kakridis calls "the ascending scale of affection," the position of the hetaîroi in the Meleager story is noticeably high.[2] This preeminence can be seen not only on the level of theme but also on the level of form. Here is how the hetaîroi of Meleager, his comrades-in-arms, are described:
... hetairoi,
hoi hoi kednotatoi kai philtatoi êsan hapantôn
... the hetaîroi,
who were for him the most cherished and most philoi of all
On the level of theme, the one relation in the listing that outranks even the hetaîroi is the wife of Meleager, Kleopatre. This name Kleo-patrê (IX 556) combines the same notions kleos 'glory' and pateres 'ancestors' as that of Patroklos ~ Patro-kleês. By their very etymologies, these compound names Kleo-patrê and Patro-kleês convey with their mutually inverted members a parallel epic theme.[3] For Achilles, then, the story of Meleager has a distinct message: in his own ascending scale of affection as dramatized by the entire composition of the Iliad, the highest place must belong to Patroklos, whose name has the same meaning as the name of Kleopatre. In fact, Patroklos is for Achilles the polu philtatos ...hetairos--the 'hetaîros who is the most philos by
far' (XVII 411, 655). The words of Achilles himself put it this way, as we find him in a later
scene grieving for his fallen comrade:
alla ti moi tôn êdos, epei philos ôleth' hetairos, Patroklos, ton egô peri pantôn tion hetairôn
But what pleasure is there for me in these things? For my philos hetaîros has perished, Patroklos, to whom I gave more tîmê than to all the other hetaîroi.
§16. For Phoinix, however, the code of the Meleager story, as he introduces it, has a different message.[1] In his words, the Achaeans who are "most philoi" to Achilles (philtatoi: IX 522) are now entreating him to rejoin them in their desperate battle. As Achilles refuses to relent, another of the three delegates describes the hero with these words of reproach:
... oude metatrepetai philotêtos hetairôn
... and he is not swayed by being philos of his hetaîroi
The speaker here is Ajax, and he is speaking for all his fellow delegates as he affirms that they all want to be, among all the Achaeans, "the most philoi" to Achilles (philtatoi: IX 642). Achilles himself, who had been brought up by his father to choose "being philos" over strife (philophrosunê: IX 256), actually addresses the delegates as "the most philoi of the
Achaeans" (Achaiôn philtatoi: IX 198; cf. 204). Nevertheless, the delegates fail in their attempt to persuade Achilles to rejoin the philoi. The klea andrôn = 'kleos [plural] of men', the story about Meleager as told by Phoinix "in the midst of all the philoi" (en ... pantessi philoisi: IX 528), points Achilles first towards the individual philos, Patroklos, and only the death of this comrade will finally lead the central hero of the Iliad back to the collective philoi. As Sinos has argued in detail, Patroklos is the link of Achilles to the philoi.[2] When Patroklos enters the war as the surrogate of Achilles, the Trojans are terrified, thinking that Achilles has cast aside his mênis so that he may rescue his philoi:
mênithmon men aporripsai, philotêta d' helesthai
that he has cast aside his state of mênis and has chosen being philos instead.
But it is really Patroklos who restores the philotês 'state of being philoi' between Achilles and the Achaeans. As Sinos points out, Patroklos will have to sacrifice himself and die so that Achilles
may recognize his social obligation to his philoi:[3]
oude ti Patroklôi genomên phaos oud' hetaroisi tois allois, hoi dê polees damen Hektori diôi
I did not become the Light[4] for Patroklos or for the other hetaîroi
who fell in great numbers at the hands of brilliant Hektor.
§17. The delegates to Achilles fail where the death of Patroklos succeeds. Despite their claim to be the most philoi to Achilles, he rejects their offer of compensation to him because--from the standpoint of the Iliad--Patroklos is even more philos than they. This ultimate motivation, however, is not yet manifest in Book IX, as Ajax is expressing his outrage at the rejection:
autar Achilleus
agrion en stêthessi theto megalêtora thumon, schetlios, oude metatrepetai philotêtos hetairôn tês hêi min para nêusin etiomen exochon allôn, nêlês: kai men tis te kasignêtoio phonêos poinên ê hou paidos edexato tethnêôtos.
kai rh' ho men en dêmôi menei autou poll' apoteisas, tou de t' erêtuetai kradiê kai thumos agênôr
poinên dexamenôi: soi d' allêkton te kakon te thumon eni stêthessi theoi thesan heineka kourês oiês.
But Achilles
has made savage the great-hearted thûmos within his breast,
the wretch. And he has no care for being philos with his hetaîroi, the way we honored him by the ships far beyond the others,
the pitiless one. And yet it can happen that a man takes compensation from the murderer of his own brother or of his own son who is killed.
And the offending party pays much and stays there in the district, while the injured party's heart is curbed, and so too his proud thûmos, once he accepts the compensation. But the gods have placed in you
a thûmos that is unyielding and bad, all on account of one girl.
Achilles may be the most philos to his comrades-in-arms, but they are not the most philoi to him. Ajax thinks that the girl taken away from Achilles by Agamemnon, with the passive acquiescence
of the Achaeans, is even more philê than they. This theme again conjures up Kleopatre, who was indeed by implication the most philê to Meleager--especially in view of what Achilles himself had said of the girl Briseis, who was taken from him:
epei hos tis anêr agathos kai echephrôn
tên autou phileei kai kêdetai, hôs kai egô tên ek thumou phileon, douriktêtên per eousan
Since whatever man is good and sensible
loves his own wife [has a wife who is philê to him] and cares for her. So also I loved her [she was philê to me]
with all my thûmos, even though she was only a prisoner.
There is another connection in what Achilles says just before this profession that Briseis is philê
to him:
ê mounoi phileous' alochous meropôn anthrôpôn Atreïdai;
Or is it that the Atreidai are the only men
who love their wives [whose wives are philai to them]?
The wife in question here is distinctly not philê: she is Helen, cause of the entire Trojan War.
§18. To continue: Ajax thinks that Briseis ranks highest in the ascending scale of affection that determines the behavior of Achilles. In the passage already quoted, the protest of Ajax is founded on the surface inequity: whereas another man would accept compensation from the killer of his own brother or son, Achilles persists in refusing compensation from Agamemnon and the Achaeans--who had merely taken away from him a girl-prisoner (IX 628-638). And yet, as we have seen, the theme of Briseis as philê to Achilles conjures up the theme of Kleopatre as philê to Meleager. The words of Ajax are a code with one message for Ajax himself but with quite another message for the audience of our Iliad. Meshing with the theme of Kleopatre, the words of Ajax indirectly point toward Patroklos as the ultimate philos. But now we will also see that the theme serving as a foil for that of the girl, namely the readiness of a man to accept compensation from the killer of his own brother or son, also points to Patroklos.
§19. From the retrospective vantage point of Book XXIV, Apollo is telling why the hero Achilles is so repellent to him:
mellei men pou tis kai philteron allon olessai,
êe kasignêton homogastrion êe kai huion
For a man could easily lose someone else who is more philos, either a brother from the same womb or even a son.
More philos than whom? Patroklos, of course! Here the issue is no longer whether or not Achilles is to accept compensation from Agamemnon and the Achaeans for the taking of a girl, but rather, whether or not he is to accept compensation first from Hektor and later from his family and the Trojans in general for the killing of Patroklos. Apollo is repelled by the refusal of Achilles to show pity and cease taking vengeance on Hektor's corpse. The theme of a brother's or son's death is already at work in the words of Ajax at IX 628-638, but there it serves as a foil for the taking of a girl, not yet directly for the actual killing of Patroklos. In both passages, IX 628-638 and XXIV 46-47, the constant is the pitiless temperament that refuses compensation.
§20. The same temperament we find frozen in the artistic microcosm of the Shield of Achilles, Iliad XVIII. This panorama of universal situations applying to the central themes of the Iliad features as one of its main scenes the image of a litigation between two parties:
ho men eucheto pant' apodounai
dêmôi piphauskôn, ho d' anaineto mêden helesthai
One man, in his declaration to the dêmos, was saying that he paid [the compensation for murder] in full,
while the other [the man with ties to the victim] was refusing to take anything.
For the translation and exegesis, I am guided by the brilliant work of Leonard Muellner,[1] who has also shown that the archetypal quarrel pictured here concerned whether the man with affinities to the victim is or is not bound to accept the compensation offered him--the word for which is poinê (XVIII 498), precisely the same term that was applied to the compensation offered for the hypothetical death of one's brother or son in the speech of Ajax (IX 633, 636). In addition, Muellner points out that the syntax of mêden at XVIII 500 must mean that the little man in the picture on the shield will absolutely never accept any compensation.[2] This utter inflexibility of an aggrieved party who is permanently frozen into the picture reflects the same temperament that is so repellent to Apollo in the heroic figure of Achilles. Apollo says of him:
hôi out' ar phrenes eisin enaisimoi oute noêma gnampton eni stêthessi, leôn d' hôs agria oiden
His thinking is not right and his sense of noos
is not flexible within his breast, but like a lion he knows savage ways.
Old Phoinix had already entreated him with these words:
all', Achileu, pore kai su Dios kourêisin hepesthai timên, hê t' allôn per epignamptei noon esthlôn
So, Achilles, you too must grant that the Daughters of Zeus [Litai 'Prayers', personified] be given their honor,
which makes flexible the noos of others, good as they are.
What Ajax had said against Achilles still applies when Apollo saysit again:
agrion en stêthessi theto megalêtora thumon
He made savage the great-hearted thûmos within his breast.
... agria oiden
... he knows savage ways
nêlês...
< part="I">pitiless one ...
... eleon men apôlesen
... he lost pity
§21. The savage and inflexible temperament of Achilles is a constant extending all the way to Iliad XXIV, which marks the point where pity begins to set in and the ultimate heroic refinement of the Iliadic hero is about to be achieved.[1] The remarkable thing is that the ethical dilemma of the Iliad is already set in the Embassy Scene of Book IX, where the words of the Achaean delegates--without their being aware of it--are a code that carries the message of Patroklos for Achilles.
§22. Just as Patroklos led Achilles to rejoin his comrades-in-arms, it was Kleopatre who had impelled Meleager to reenter his war. The words of Kleopatre had conjured up the grief that happens when a city is destroyed:
... kai hoi katelexen hapanta
kêde' hos' anthrôpoisi pelei tôn astu halôêi: andras men kteinousi, polin de te pur amathunei, tekna de t' alloi agousi bathuzônous te gunaikas
... and she told him in their proper order
all the cares that befall men whose city is captured: they kill the men, fire reduces the city to ashes,
and strangers lead away the children and deep-girdled wives
Within this highly compressed presentation, we see the same themes as in the formal lamentation of Andromache (XXIV 725-745) during the public penthos for Hektor. In Andromache's lament, the thematic setting for her personal grief is the portended collective grief surrounding the portended destruction of the city.[1] In fact, Kleopatre herself has the stance of lamentation (oduromenê 'mourning', IX 591), just as those who "mourn" Hektor (odurontai: XXIV 740). Furthermore, Kleopatre even has a by-name that connotes the very essence of penthos:
tên de tot' en megaroisi patêr kai potnia mêtêr Alkuonên kaleeskon epônumon, hounek' ar' autês mêtêr alkuonos polupentheos oiton echousa
klaien ho min hekaergos anêrpase Phoibos Apollôn
And her father and mother in the palace called her Alkuonê,
because her mother had the fate of an alkuôn, a bird of much penthos, and wept because far-reaching Apollo snatched her away.[2]
In sum, it was the grief conjured up by Kleo-patrê that impelled Meleager to enter the war and
thus undertake the epic deeds that resulted in "the kleos [plural] of men who lived before, heroes" (tôn prosthen ... klea andrôn hêrôôn: IX 524-525). Similarly, the grief caused by the actual death of Patro-kleês leads to the "unfailing kleos" of Achilles in the epic tradition of the Iliad (kleos aphthiton: IX 413).[3]
§23. Because of Patro-kleês, Achilles gets kleos. Conversely, because of *Akhi-lâuos, Patroklos gets akhos/penthos from the Achaeans. In general, the akhos that Patroklos gets from Achilles at XXIII 47 is formalized in a public dimension as the Funeral Games throughout Iliad XXIII.[1] In particular, this akhos is formalized when Achilles leads the Achaeans in lamentation for Patroklos:
... hoi d' 'môxan aollees, êrche d' Achilleus
... and they all wailed together, and Achilles led them
toisi de Pêleïdês hadinou exêrche gooio
The son of Peleus led them in frequent goos [lamentation].
Similarly, in the public penthos over Hektor (XXIV 708), Andromache leads the Trojan women in songs of lamentation for her husband:
thrênôn exarchous, hoi te stonoessan aoidên
hoi men ar' ethrêneon, epi de stenachonto gunaikes. têisin d' Andromachê leukôlenos êrche gooio
And they seated next to him [Hektor's corpse] aoidoi [singers, poets] who were to lead in the
thrênoi[lamentations].
They sang a wailing song, singing thrênoi. And the women wailed in response, and white-armed Andromache led them in the goos [lamentation].
The dimension of singing lamentations, which is only implicit in the epic use of the words akhos/ penthos by way of contrast with kleos, is here made explicit. As Margaret Alexiou has shown in detail, the traditional genre of lamentation is an integral element in funerary ritual, requiring an interplay of two subgenres: the kin sing gooi while poets sing thrênoi, as described in the Iliadic passage we have just considered.[2] The genre of epic, however, imposes numerous restrictions
on its own thematic treatment of lamentations. Nowhere, for instance, can we see epic overtly telling the contents of the thrênoi, even though they are suitable for singing by aoidoi 'singers, poets', as at 720-721 above; only gooi are "quoted," as at XXIV 725-745 (Andromache),
748-759 (Hekabe), and 762-775 (Helen).[3]
§24. There is an even more important restriction evident in epic: the Iliad itself does not treat the tradition of lamentations for Achilles within the actual context of a real funerary ritual. True, Thetis and her sister Nereids have a stylized wake for Achilles as if he were a corpse being laid out for the prothesis 'wake' (cf. especially XVIII 71),[1] and the stylized mourning for Achilles commences immediately after he gets his permanent akhos, from hearing the news that Patroklos is dead (XVIII 22-73). But the Iliadic tradition requires Achilles to prefigure his dead self by staying alive, and the real ritual of a real funeral is reserved by the narrative for his surrogate Patroklos. Only outside our Iliad, in the retrospective format of the Odyssey, can we witness the actual wake of Achilles, with the Muses and his own kin, the Nereids, singing lamentations over his corpse (xxiv 58-61).[2] As we have already seen from its other retrospective glimpses of the Trojan War story, our Odyssey treats Iliadic traditions as if it were referring to other poetic traditions, such as that of lamentation itself.[3]
§25. The point remains, then, that the epic tradition of the Iliad assigns the overtly ritual dimension of akhos/penthos to Patroklos. Conversely, the kleos that Achilles gets from the Iliad is distinctly nonritual on the level of epic. As we have seen from the internal evidence of epic itself, the klea andrôn 'kleos [plural] of men' are intended as an elevated form of entertainment, and they bring akhos/penthos only to those who are involved in the akhos/penthos that the kleos may happen to describe. For the uninvolved audience of epic, the death of Patroklos is a subject for kleos. For the involved Achilles, it is akhos/penthos. It follows, then, that the death of Achilles himself would be akhos/penthos for those involved and thus unsuitable for the kleos of epic. From the fact that our Iliad substitutes the death of Patro-kleês, we may infer that the death of Achilles may have been unsuitable for the kleos of the Iliadic tradition partly because the audience itself was involved in his death. There is a religious dimension here. Communal involvement in akhos/penthos requires the rituals of cult, as we have already seen from the evidence on the cult of Demeter Akhaiâ. By performing ritual lamentations, the community involves itself with the akhos of Demeter over the kathodos of Kore.
§26. The death of Achilles would be an akhos not only to the lâos, in epic, but also to the community at large, in cult.[1] There are clear traces that we can cite from the hero cults of Achilles in the classical and even postclassical periods. For just one example, let us consider a custom in Elis that Pausanias mentions in connection with various local athletic traditions--among them the restricted use of a site with the epichoric name of hieros dromos 'sacred run' (6.23.2). On an appointed day at the beginning of the Olympic Games, as the sun is sinking in the west, the women of Elis perform various rituals to worship Achilles (tou Achilleôs drôsin es timên), and the ritual that is singled out specifically is that of mourning (koptesthai: Pausanias 6.23.3).[2] Whereas Achilles gets kleos from epic, he gets akhos/ penthos from cult.[3]
§27. This is not the place, of course, to attempt a detailed exposition of how the cult of heroes in Greek religion is decidedly not some relatively late phenomenon, motivated somehow by the stories of heroes in Greek epic.[1] The monumental work of Erwin Rohde remains one of the most eloquent sources for our understanding the hêrôs 'hero' as a very old and distinct concept of
traditional Greek religion, requiring cult practices that were also distinct from those of the gods. The cult of heroes was a highly evolved transformation of the worship of ancestors, within the social context of the city-state or polis.[2] As a parallel, I would propose that the klea andrôn / hêrôôn 'kleos [plural] of men who were heroes' of Iliad IX 524-525 represents the evolution of Greek epic from earlier "stories about the ancestors," as still represented by the names Kleo- patrê/Patro-kleês, and, vestigially, by the function of the traditional figures assigned to these names.
§28. In order to understand the Homeric perspective on hêrôes, the emergence of Homeric Epos must be seen in its social context, dated to the eighth century B.C. This same era is marked by the emergence of (1) the polis and (2) intensive intercommunication among the elite of the various poleis, a phenomenon which we have defined as Panhellenism.[1] I will leave the details and documentation to Anthony Snodgrass and others,[2] confining myself here to the problem of contrasting the cult of heroes, which is restricted to the local level of the polis, with the Homeric kleos of heroes, which is Panhellenic and thus free from such restrictions. The point is, essentially, that the eighth century B.C. is the setting not only for the emergence of Homeric Epos but also for the upsurge of hero cults,[3] an institution that reflects not the beginnings but rather the strong revival of a continuous heritage.[4] Following Rohde, we may properly refer to such a heritage in terms of ancestor worship, which later became hero cult.[5] It is in the context of the polis that the worship of ancestors evolved into the cult of heroes.[6] Moreover, the epic tradition was also evolving within the same context. The internal evidence of the Iliad and the Odyssey reflects the ideology of the polis in general[7] --but without being restricted to the ideology of any one polis in particular.[8] Here, then, is the central issue: the Panhellenic Epos is the product of the same era that produced an upsurge in local hero cults.
§29. The hero of cult must be local because it is a fundamental principle in Greek religion that his power is local.[1] On the other hand, the Iliad and the Odyssey are Panhellenic. What results is that the central heroes of this epic tradition cannot have an overtly religious dimension in the narrative. Such a restriction on the self-expression of epic led Rohde to misunderstand the Homeric evidence on heroes. In general, his thesis was that the overall Homeric silence on the subject of hero cults implies an absence of even the ideological background.[2] In specifics, however, Rohde himself noticed sporadic instances in the Iliad and the Odyssey where some sort of reference is indeed being made to hero cults, but he did not integrate this evidence, which went against his thesis. Each of these instances would require a detailed exposition, but I restrict the discussion here to just one instance that reflects on the status of Patroklos/Achilles in the Iliad.
§30. As Rohde himself had noticed, the Funeral of Patroklos at Iliad XXIII has several features that connote the rituals of hero cults.[1] For example, the wine libation (XXIII 218-221) and the offering of honey with oil (XXIII 170; cf. xxiv 67-68) "can hardly be regarded as anything but sacrificial."[2] Such marginal details of cult, as also the integral element of singing lamentations at XXIII 12 and 17, give ritual form to the akhos of Achilles for Patroklos at XXIII 47.[3] Even the central epic action of Book XXIII, the Funeral Games of Patroklos, has ritual form.[4] In Homeric narrative, the funeral of a hero is the primary occasion for athletic contests (XXIII
630-631: Amarynkeus; xxiv 85-86: Achilles himself).[5] In classical times, local athletic contests were still motivated as funeral games for the epichoric hero (cf., e.g., Pausanias 8.4.5). As a general principle, the agôn was connected with the cult of heroes, and even the Great Panhellenic Games were originally conceived as funeral games for heroes.[6] The custom of mourning for
Achilles at the beginning of the Olympics (Pausanias 6.23.3) is a striking instance of this heritage. [7] As a parallel, epic offers a corresponding single event in the mourning for Patroklos that inaugurates the Funeral Games in Book XXIII. Even though there are hints within the Iliad that the Funeral of Patroklos is presented as a grand beginning of cult (XXIV 592-595),[8] the overt singularity of the event forced Rohde to rule it out as a parallel to the cult of heroes, which is recurrent.[9] And yet, the Iliad itself is a singularity. What is recurrent in ritual is timeless in the epic tradition, just like the kleos aphthiton of Achilles.
Notes
§2n1. Cf. also the parallel use of penthos in inscriptions (e.g., Sokolowski 1955 no. 16.11-13).
§2n2. Cf. also XVI 548-553: it is penthos that makes the Trojans want to recover the body of Sarpedon.
§3n1. Ch.1§2, Ch.12§3; cf. Nagy 1974.229-261.
§4n1. Nagy 1974.256.
§5n1. Nagy 1974.244-255; see also Koller 1972.
§5n2. Nagy, pp. 255-261.
§5n3. On the notion "therapôn of the Muses": Ch.17§§3-9, Ch.18§§1-6.
§5n4. Cf. Kullmann 1956, esp. pp. 11, 20.
§5n5. Cf. also line 33: humnein ... genos.
§5n6. Cf. West 1966.189.
§5n7. The connection of genos here with the notion of "theogony" is made even more explicit at
Th. 114-115. On the traditional nature of theogonic poetry: Duban 1975.
§5n8. On the etymology of Moûsai: Ch.1§3n2.
§5n9. Cf. also Th. 61.
§6n1. Nagy 1974.244-255.
§6n2. Even this narrative of a narrative obeys the convention of beginning with a word that serves as title (in this case, nostos at i 326), followed by an epithet and then a relative clause that sets forth the relationship of the title word to the main subject (in this case, how Athena caused the nostos of the Achaeans from Troy to be a baneful one indeed: i 327). See Ch.5§8n1. Thus the word nostos here designates not only the homecoming of the Achaeans but also the epic tradition
that told about their homecoming.
§6n3. On the Will of Zeus as the plot of the narrative, see the comments on viii 577-580 at §8; also Ch.5§25n2 and Ch.7§17.
§6n4. For the semantics of kleiô/epikleiô, compare aineô/epaineô, the technical and programmatic words for "praise" in praise poetry (e.g., Pindar O.4.14/P.2.67; see Detienne 1973.18-22). Cf. also the technical word used by rhapsôidoi for the notion of "recite Homer": Homêron epaineîn (Plato Ion 536d, 541e).
§6n5. See also n2 above. For further discussion of the two-level application of kleos to characters within the narrative and to the audience outside the narrative: Nagy 1974.11-13. More on i
351-352 in Nagy 1990.69.
§9n1. See Friis Johansen 1967.28 on the corresponding theme in archaic iconography: warriors killing children in the presence of women. In fact, the iconographical evidence indicates "a coherent Iliou Persis narrative as source" (Friis Johansen, p. 36).
§10n1. Bassett 1933.58.
§10n2. Sinos 1975.104.
§11n1. At XXIV 105, her penthos is described as alaston 'unforgettable'.
§11n2. Ch.2§11; cf. also Nagy 1974.250-255.
§12n1. Cf. Eteoklos in Hesiod fr. 70.34MW, a by-form of Eteokleês; also Dioklos (H.Dem. 153), a by-form of Diokleês/Dioklês (H.Dem. 474, 477).
§12n2. To justify my interpretation of this passage, I cite Schmitt 1967.93-95.
§12n3. Sinos 1975.67-70. For further observations about the intent of this story: Rosner 1976.
§12n4. Sinos 1975.70-79.
§13n1. Benveniste 1969 I 338-353.
§13n2. Benveniste 1969 I 352-353 = 1973.288.
§14n1. For additional parallelisms on the level of diction between the stories of Meleager and Achilles, see Rosner 1976.323.
§14n2. Cf. Lord 1967.243.
§14n3. At XXI 275-278, Apollo alone is pictured as killing Achilles; at XIX 416-417 and XXII 358-360, on the other hand, Achilles is killed by Apollo and Paris.
§15n1. Kakridis 1949.21-24.
§15n2. Kakridis, p. 21.
§15n3. Cf. Howald 1946.132.
§16n1. On the terms code and message (as used by Jakobson 1960), see further at Ch. 12§§18-19.
§16n2. Sinos 1975.
§16n3. Sinos 1975.74.
§16n4. The same notion of "becoming the Light" for men by virtue of being their savior is more fully expressed by way of simile: see Ch.20§20.
§20n1. Muellner 1976.105-106.
§20n2. Ibid.
§21n1. See Rosner 1976.321-322, supplementing Whitman 1958.203-207 and Segal 1971.18 ff.
§22n1. For the tradition of lamentation over the destruction of cities: Alexiou 1974.83-101. Compare the akhos of the captive woman in viii 530, corresponding to the akhos experienced by Odysseus when he is about to hear Demodokos narrate the destruction of Troy. Discussion at §9.
§22n2. Cf. Anthologia Palatina 9.151.8, where only the Nereids remain after the destruction of Corinth: sôn acheôn mimnomen halkuones. For the traditional connection of (h)alkuones and Nereids, see Theocritus 7.59-60. See also Alexiou 1974.97: "Like the folk songs for the fall of Constantinople, many of these ballads open with the theme of weeping birds--nightingales, swallows and cuckoos--which, as sole survivors of the disaster, bring the news to others and are called upon to join in the general lamentation."
§22n3. For a possible allusion to this theme in the Odyssey: §10. Note the last words of Andromache's first lament for Hektor: kleos einai 'that there be kleos' (XXII 514).
§23n1. More details at §30.
§23n2. Alexiou 1974.10-14. I should note that the semantic distinction between gooi and thrênoi
is generally not maintained in the diction of Athenian tragedy.
§23n3. See Alexiou, p. 13, with more details about the social prestige of the thrênos.
§24n1. See Kakridis 1949.67-68.
§24n2. Cf. Alexiou 1974.10-14. Here too (as at XXIV 721), thrênoi are being sung (xxiv 61); however, now the singers are not aoidoi (as at XXIV 720) but the Muses themselves (xxiv 60). Cf. also Pindar P.3.100-103: the death of Achilles causes goos for the Danaans.
§24n3. For example, the narrative convention of the Dios boulê'Will of Zeus' as at Iliad I 5 is
treated as a foil by Odyssey i 7 (see Maehler 1963.23) as well as by viii 577-580.
§26n1. For the traditional use of the word lâos outside the context of epic to designate the community at large, see Benveniste 1969 II 91-95, esp. on lêiton, leitourgiâ. Note that lêiton is described in Herodotus 7.197 as a word proper to the Akhaioi.
§26n2. For this and other examples of cult practices in honor of Achilles, see Nilsson 1906.457. In the case of Pausanias 6.23.2, I am unsure about any direct connection between the hieros dromos 'sacred run' and the lore surrounding Achilles, but it may be worth pointing out this hero's specific affinity with the theme of running; see esp. Ch.20§9 (cf. also XVIII 56 as discussed at Ch.10§11 and n4).
§26n3. Cf. Herodotus 5.67.5, where the earliest known stages of the local cult of Adrastos at Sikyon are being described: ta te dê alla hoi Sikuônioi etimôn ton Adrêston kai dê pros ta pathea autou tragikoisi choroisi egerairon 'the people of Sikyon gave tîmê to Adrastos in various ways; in particular, they honored him [gave him geras] with tragic songs/dances corresponding to the things that he suffered [pathos plural]'. On pathos 'thing suffered' as related to penthos 'grief', see Nagy 1974.258-260. Both nouns are derived from the root *k
§27n1. See especially Rohde I 146-199. For a strong critique of the opposing view as represented by L. R. Farnell, see Brelich 1958.99n81, who comments also on the irony that Farnell is a noted commentator on the poetry of Pindar. See also the criticism of Farnell by Pötscher 1961.336n91.
§27n2. Cf. Rohde I 108-110; also Brelich 1958.144n202, Nilsson I 186, Schnaufer 1970.34, Alexiou 1974.19.
§28n1. See Intro.§14.
§28n2. See Intro.§14nn1-2.
§28n3. On which see Snodgrass 1971.191-193. Cf. Intro.§18.
§28n4. Snodgrass, pp. 398-399. I cannot agree with the argument of Coldstream 1976 that the upsurge of hero cults in the eighth century is a mere result of Homeric poetry. Snodgrass himself has offered a refutation of this view in a paper presented at the Convegno internazionale sulla ideologia funeraria nel mondo antico, Naples/Ischia 6-10 December 1977 (sponsored by the Istituto Universitario Orientale [Naples] and the Centre de Recherches Comparées sur les sociétés anciennes [Paris]). The title of the paper read by A. Snodgrass was: "The Origins of the Greek Hero-Cults"; other papers include: J.-P. Vernant's "L'idéologie de la mort héroïque," A. Schnapp- Gourbeillon's "Les funérailles de Patrocle," and N. Loraux's "Mort civique et idéologie de la cité." In developing my present argument, I draw considerable encouragement from the views of Vernant and his colleagues. See now Snodgrass 1982.
§28n5. Rohde I 108-110, 228-245, esp. 235n1.
§28n6. Cf. Rohde I 167-171. This evolution can be correlated with the obsolescence of the
thrênos as a genre, and with the history of vigorous legislation against it; see Alexiou 1974, esp.
pp. 13, 18-19, 104, 108.
§28n7. Snodgrass 1971.435; see also Luce 1978.
§28n8. Cf. Intro.§14.
§29n1. Rohde I 184-189: once a hero ceases to be epichoric, he may become a god. Cf. also Rohde's discussion on pp. (I) 59-65, 141-145, 159-166, etc.
§29n2. For a sensible critique: Hack 1929; also Sinos 1975.91-94.
§30n2. Rohde I 16n1 = 1925.45n13.
§30n3. Besides the element of song, we also find that of dance. In Aristotle fr. 519 Rose (on which see the correction made by Meuli 1968 [= 1926] 70n3; also West 1978.372n1), there is a report of a tradition that Achilles danced the purrhikhê at the pyre of Patroklos. From the same source (ibid., ap. scholia to XXIII 130), we hear of a funerary custom in Cyprus: tôn basileôn kêdeuomenôn proêgeito purrichizôn ho stratos 'at the funerals of kings, the procession was led by the army, who danced the purrhikhê'. Compare the proceedings at the Funeral of Patroklos, XXIII 131-137 (and the commentary of Rohde I 165-166n1).
§30n4. See Sinos 1975.83-88 on the significance of the sêma at XXIII 331.
§30n5. Rohde I 14-22. Kirk (1968.115) refers to the chariot contest at the Funeral Games of Amarynkeus as "an apparent predecessor of the Olympic Games."
§30n6. Rohde I 151-152 and Nilsson 1951 [=1911] 99-100.
§30n7. It should be noted, however, that the primary hero of the Olympics is Pelops (Pausanias 5.13.1); see Burkert 1972.108-119.
§30n8. Rohde I 55-59, esp. p. 59n1; Sinos 1975.92-94.
The Best of the Achaeans Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry Revised Edition
Gregory Nagy
Copyright © 1980, 1997 The Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved. First edition 1979. Revised edition 1999. This document may be used, with this notice included, for noncommercial purposes within a subscribed
institution. No copies of this work may be distributed electronically outside of the subscribed institution, in whole or in part, without written permission from the JHU Press.
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§1. As we contemplate the ritual aspects of the Iliadic hero, we are faced with a conflict between a trend and a constant: while Achilles is becoming Panhellenic by way of Epos, the powers of the hero in hero cult remain strictly local.[1] By evolving into the hero of the epic tradition that culminated in our Iliad, the Achilles figure stands to lose his overtly ritual aspects. For illustration, let us consider the inherited poetic diction describing the prestige of a typically local hero in cult, and compare the words that our Iliad chooses to describe the destiny of its own prime hero. By losing his chance to be exempt from mortality and by being awarded as compensation a hero cult at Eleusis that will last for all time to come, the youthful Demophon is described in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter as getting a tîmê that is aphthitos
'unfailing' (H.Dem. 261, 263).[2] The epithet here is crucial, because heroes are generically distinguished from gods by virtue of not having a bios 'lifespan' that is aphthitos (Simonides 523.3P).[3] Achilles, on the other hand, names as compensation for his impending death not tîmê but a kleos that is aphthiton 'unfailing' (IX 413). Whereas tîmê 'honor' is conferred by cult,[4] the prestige that kleos brings is the undying glory of Epos.[5] Within the timelessness of epic, the Funeral of Patroklos will have to serve as indirect compensation to Achilles for the absence of the ritual tîmê that is his due. Outside of epic, however, there evolved another form of indirect compensation that befits the Panhellenic hero in the dimension of cult.
§2. The historical setting is unique: it is Delphi, the Panhellenic Sanctuary for the Oracle of Apollo, where the presiding Hero is none other than the son of Achilles, Pyrrhos/Neoptolemos. [1] In Pindar's words, the Hero of Delphi is destined to be one of the Aeacids (Aiakos [[arrowright]] Peleus [[arrowright]] Achilles [[arrowright]] Pyrrhos [[arrowright]] ... ), and the Aeacid to be chosen is the son of Achilles:
... echrên de
tin' endon alsei palaitatôi
Aiakidan kreontôn to loipon emmenai
theou par' euteichea domon, hêroïais de pompais themiskopon oikein eonta poluthutois
... but it had to be that
one of the royal Aeacids be inside the most ancient grove for all time to come, by the well-built abode of the god,
and that he should have his home as the one which presides over the Heroes' Processions, which are distinguished by many sacrifices[2]
By Pindar's time, the institutions of Delphi reflect no longer simply a polis that happens to have a sanctuary of Panhellenic importance, but rather, the reverse: the entire community of Delphi now functions as a sacral extension of the Sanctuary.[3] Accordingly, the status of Pyrrhos at Delphi transcends that of the typical hero: whereas the hero of a polis is by nature local, the son of Achilles is more of a Panhellenic figure by virtue of being Hero of Delphi.
§3. There would be no gain in our trying to retroject the figure of Pyrrhos as the Hero of Delphi all the way to, say, the eighth century B.C.[1] It is enough to say that the inherited epic themes associated with this figure are so close to the inherited ritual themes of the Hero at Delphi that an identification was in effect by the time the Sanctuary evolved into the form known to Pindar. In the poet's own words (N.7.44-47), other Aeacids would have been equally appropriate as Hero of Delphi--Achilles included. But the bones of Achilles--and bones are the basis for establishing the locale of hero cults--anchor him in the Iliad as the Hero of the Hellespont.[2] The Panhellenic stature of the Iliad has thus precluded Achilles as Hero of Delphi, and the Delphic sanctuary of Apollo has in turn developed a Panhellenic ideology that complements the Iliad. In short, the identification of Pyrrhos with the Hero enshrined at Delphi is another in a series of interrelated Panhellenic phenomena that go far beyond the local constraints of Hellenic religion.[3]
§4. The reality of the cult, however, is based on localization: Pyrrhos was Hero of Delphi because of the local belief that he was buried there (Pindar N.7.34-35). In fact, his grave and the cult that goes with it were officially recognized to be part of the precinct of Apollo himself, as we learn not only from the words of Pindar (above, N.7.44-47)[1] and the detailed reports of Pausanias (10.24.6; cf. 1.4.4) but also from the archaeological evidence.[2] This institutional symbiosis of the Hero's cult with that of Panhellenic Apollo must be correlated with the numerous myths which, although they vary in detail, converge on the theme that Apollo killed Pyrrhos, just as he had killed the father Achilles.[3] A sampling of the documentation can wait until we finish confronting a vital detail: the death of the father and the death of the son are both celebrated as parallel events in Pindar's Paean 6 to Apollo (lines 78-80: Achilles; lines 117-120: Pyrrhos). Even the traditional exultation iê iê of the paean bursts forth immediately following the words retelling the death of Pyrrhos (Paean 6.121-122). Since Paean 6 was composed specifically for a Delphic setting and in honor of Apollo, we should be especially mindful of the central role of its hero as the ritual antagonist of the god. For we see here a striking illustration of a fundamental principle in Hellenic religion: antagonism between hero and god in myth corresponds to the ritual requirements of symbiosis between hero and god in cult.[4]
§5. Now we are ready to examine some of the variant myths about how Pyrrhos actually met his death, and we begin with those that have a bearing on the Achilles figure as well. One version has Pyrrhos attempting to plunder the riches of Delphi; Apollo thwarts him and brings about his death.[1] There is an important parallel in the figure of the impious Phleguâs and/or the band of plundering warriors called Phleguai,[2] who similarly attacked or even burned down the Delphic shrine and were, in some versions of the myth, destroyed by Apollo.[3] Even the name Phleguâs
'fiery' (from phlegô 'burn') is semantically comparable to Purrhos 'fiery red'.[4]
§6. The theme of plundering Delphi, common to Pyrrhos and Phlegyas, also applies to Achilles himself in the Iliad--albeit indirectly. In the only Iliadic mention of Delphi (aside from the reference in the Great Catalogue, II 519),[1] Achilles is renouncing the prospect of plundering the riches of Apollo's sanctuary there, which have just been juxtaposed with the riches contained in the citadel of Troy (at IX 401-403):
oud' hosa laïnos oudos aphêtoros entos eergei, Phoibou Apollônos, Puthoi eni petrêessêi. lêïstoi men gar te boes kai iphia mêla,
ktêtoi de tripodes te kai hippôn xantha karêna.
nor all the things contained within the stone threshold of the Archer, Phoebus Apollo, in rocky Delphi.
For cattle and fat sheep can be plundered
and tripods can be won, as well as tawny heads of horses.
It is remarkable that a theme so appropriate to the Hero of Delphi on the level of cult should apply in particular to the Achilles figure in the single instance where the Iliad conjures up directly the traditions of Delphi.
§7. This Homeric focusing of theme is all the more remarkable when we consider the additional evidence of the Odyssey, which likewise has only two overt references to Delphi. One of them is out of focus for our immediate purposes (xi 581), but the other brings us back to the first song of Demodokos (viii 72-82), which in turn will lead us back to the death of Pyrrhos. Demodokos is singing about the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi, and how it has revealed to Agamemnon a prophecy that applies in a particular setting, to wit, at a dais 'feast' of the gods (theôn en daiti thaleiêi: viii 76), where Achilles and Odysseus are having a quarrel. This quarrel is described as the "beginning of grief [pêma]" (pêmatos archê: viii 82) for Achaeans and Trojans alike, and we have seen that the death of Achilles is a major theme implied by the notion of pêma as it applies to the Achaeans.[1] Such a thematic correlation of the death of Achilles with Delphi/sacrifice/ quarrel presents us with a mythological ensemble that is parallel, however indirectly, to another variant myth about the death of Pyrrhos.
§8. The myth that we are about to consider is the same one that is celebrated by Pindar in his Paean 6 to Apollo, composed for the occasion of the theoxenia at Delphi.[1] From the words of this composition, we see that Pyrrhos met his death at Delphi as the direct result of a quarrel over slices of meat that were being distributed at a sacrifice:
amphipolois de
en teme]neï philôi gas par' omphalon eurun
When he [Pyrrhos] quarreled with the attendants over his rightful tîmai,
he [Apollo] killed him
in his own precinct, right by the broad center of the Earth.
Pindar Paean 6.117-120
In another variation on this myth, the killer is not Apollo himself but one of his temple attendants:
'cheto de pros theon
kteat' agôn Troïathen akrothiniôn: hina kreôn nin huper machas elasen antituchont' anêr machairai.
barunthen de perissa Delphoi xenagetai
And he went to the god
bringing the riches of first-fruit offerings from Troy. And there a man with a makhaira smote him
as he got into a quarrel over slices of meat.
And the Delphians, conductors of xenoi, were greatly vexed.
The thematic ingredients of (1) the attendant with the makhaira 'sacrificial knife' and (2) the Delphians as xenâgetai 'conductors of xenoi' have interesting variants in still other versions of the myth, where the killer is named as (1) Makhaireus, son of Daitâs,[5] or (2) Philoxenidês. [6]
§9. Taken on the level of myth, these themes are all pertinent to the ritual of the Delphic theoxenia, which actually involved the awarding of slices of meat from the sacrificial table.[1] Consider the following testimonium, which seems to have survived for us only because of a quaint detail in the ritual proceedings:
diatetaktai para Delphois têi thusiai tôn Theoxeniôn, hos an komisêi gêthullida megistên têi Lêtoi, lambanein moiran apo tês trapezês.
There is an arrangement among the Delphians, at their festival of the Theoxenia, that whoever brings the biggest gêthullis [a vegetable] to Leto is to get a slice of meat from the sacrificial table.
Polemon ap. Athenaeus 372a We should note in particular the sacrificial motif of exchanging a vegetal offering for a slice of the
sacrificial victim's meat--called a moîra. In Pindar's Nemean 7, we have seen Pyrrhos himself being featured as one who acts in the ritual manner of the Delphic theoxenia, in that he is making a grand offering from the rich spoils of Troy in return for a slice of meat from the sacrificial table (above, line 42). In fact, even his offerings are called akrothinia 'first fruits [of war]' (line 41)--a word with vegetal connotations in that it is primarily appropriate for designating "first fruits [of Earth]" (e.g., Aeschylus Eumenides 834; etc.).[2] Pyrrhos gets involved in a quarrel over not receiving his due moîra of meat, and Paean 6 describes the issue in dispute as kûriân [or moiriân!] peri tîmân 'concerning his rightful tîmai' (line 118).[3] Moreover, the theme of being deprived of one's moîra of meat at the sacrificial table is actually attested in the ritual lore of Delphi.
§10. In a fragment from the Life of Aesop tradition, we see the following ritual scenario about a particular sacrificial custom at Delphi:[1]
... epan [eise]lthêi t[is] tôi theôi thusias[ôn o]hi Delph[o]i per[i]estêkasi ton bôm[o]n huph' heautois machairas k[o]mizontes. sphagiasamenou de tou hiereiou [emended to hiereôs] kai deirantos to hiereion kai ta splanchna periexelomenou hoi periestôtes hekastos hên an ischusêi moiran apotemnomenos apeisin, hôs pollakis ton thusiasanta auton amoir[o]n api[e]nai. ...
When someone goes in for the purpose of initiating sacrifice to the god, the Delphians stand around the altar carrying concealed makhairai. And after the priest has slaughtered and flayed the sacrificial victim and after he has apportioned the innards, those who have been standing around cut off whatever moîra of meat each of them is able to cut off and then depart, with the result that the one who initiated the sacrifice oftentimes departs without having a moîra himself.
Pap.Oxy.1800 fr. 2 ii 32-46 = Aesop Testimonia 25 Perry The internal motivation for this interesting description has to do with a story about Aesop and how he ridiculed this ritual at Delphi.[2] Elsewhere too, we find what seem to be mostly jesting allusions to the same ritual practice, as in the following proverb:[3]
Delphoisi thusas autos ou phagêi kreas
If you sacrifice at Delphi, you will not eat any meat yourself.
Corpus Paroemiographorum Graecorum I 393 (Appendix Proverbiorum I 95)
§11. Such allusions, if we did not have an actual description of the ritual, would have impressed us as nothing more than anticlerical jokes at the expense of the Sanctuary and its proverbially greedy attendants. But the description in the Life of Aesop fragment presents the scenario of a free-for-all over slices of meat as a genuine ritual practice--and not simply as a matter of greedy behavior on the part of the attendants.[1] As we will have a chance to observe later, the jest may present the ritual practice as if it really were greedy behavior, but even the jesting itself may have
had a formalized ritual basis.[2] The point remains that there is indeed a ritual basis to the customary free-for-all over the slices of sacrificial meat, as we can also see from such parallels as the festival of ritualized greed at Lykosoura in Arcadia (Pausanias 8.37.8).[3] There is apparently even an element of ritualized stealth in the Delphic proceedings: consider the expression k[ru]pha 'stealthily', applied again to the attendants in another fragment describing how Aesop ridiculed the Delphians' ritual custom.[4]
§12. Even more important for now, the program of the ritual as described in the Life of Aesop tradition converges closely with the program of the myth about the death of Pyrrhos as described in Pindar's Paean 6 and Nemean 7. Both myth and ritual feature the themes of (1) a wrangle over slices of meat that takes place between the sacrificer and the attendants who perform the sacrifice and (2) the sacrificer's being deprived of his share. In fact, the convergence of themes is so close that we may see in the death of Pyrrhos the official Delphic myth that integrates the ideology of the ritual. However, the myth has the sacrificer himself, Pyrrhos, becoming the ultimate victim of the sacrifice--butchered at the table of the god by the very knives that sliced the meat to be shared in the ritual.[1]
§13. We come back to the first song of Demodokos in the Odyssey (viii 72-82), where the implicit theme of a future death for Achilles is correlated with the three other themes of Delphi/ sacrifice/quarrel. We have now witnessed a myth about the death of Pyrrhos that--on an altogether different level--has a parallel correlation of these three other themes. The parallelism can be observed in the dimension of form as well: the verb describing the quarrel of Pyrrhos in the Pindaric narrative, [dêri]azomenon (Paean 6.119), corresponds to the one that twice describes the quarrel of Achilles in the Homeric, dêrîsanto/dêrioônt (viii 76/78). Some aspects of the parallelism, however, are still problematical. Whereas Pyrrhos is killed during a quarrel at a sacrifice in Delphi, the death of Achilles is merely presaged in Delphi--and indirectly at that: Agamemnon apparently thinks that the quarrel of Achilles at a sacrifice is only a sign that Troy will be taken, not realizing that it is also a sign of future pêma for the Achaeans when Achilles withdraws and again later when he dies. The relationship of Achilles to the themes of Delphi/ sacrifice/quarrel obviously requires still further scrutiny. Let us begin by going beyond the dais 'feast' of the gods at viii 76, in an attempt to understand the overall testimony of hexameter diction about the hero's relationship to sacrifices in particular and to feasts in general.
§14. Not just for Achilles but for any Homeric character, the eating of meat at feasts is by nature a sacrificial occasion: in the words of George M. Calhoun, "every meal was a sacrifice and an act of worship, and every sacrifice a meal."[1] By treating the Homeric hero simply as an idealized man taken out of the second millennium B.C., this statement may be overly one-dimensional in its view of epic action,[2] but it remains a valid observation about the contents of Homeric narrative: feasts where meat is consumed are indeed regularly occasioned by sacrifice. The Homeric word for such occasions is dais/daitê (e.g., iii 33/44, etc.),[3] and both nouns are etymologically derived from the verb daiomai 'divide, apportion, allot'. Consider the following Homeric collocation of verb and noun:
moiras dassamenoi dainunt' erikudea daita
Apportioning moîrai [portions], they feasted a very glorious dais [feast].
We will have more to observe about moîrai later. For now it will suffice to add that the notion of "division" latent in dais becomes overt in expressions involving daitos eisês 'of an equal dais' (as at I 468, 602; II 431; VII 320; XXIII 56)--denoting situations where everyone has his proper share at the sacrificial feast.[4]
§15. Is there, then, a special relationship of Achilles to the dais? Certainly this seems to be so not only in the case of Achilles but also in the case of all his heroic lineage, according to the Hesiodic passage that describes the Aeacids as follows:
... polemôi kecharêotas êüte daiti
... delighting in war as well as in the dais
Hesiod fr. 206MW
The key, I submit, to such a close relationship of the Aeacids to the dais is the etymological connection of the word with the notion inherent in daiomai 'divide, apportion, allot'. This notion constitutes a mythological theme that runs through the whole line of Aeacids, starting with the prime ancestor himself. The hero Aiakos, in the words of Pindar, was so fair and just as to be worthy of settling matters pertaining to the gods themselves:
Aiakon ... kedno-
taton epichthoniôn. ho kai daimonessi dikas epeiraine
Aiakos ... the most cherished of mortals,
who rendered dikai [judgments, justice] even for the gods[1]
The correlation here of the word dikê with the concept of making fair allotments reminds us of the wording used to describe how the honor of Achilles himself is to be tested one more time in the Iliad. As the actual setting for Agamemnon's final offer of compensation to Achilles in return for having at the outset deprived him of his fair share, Odysseus proposes the holding of a special dais:
autar epeita se daiti eni klisiêis aresasthô pieirêi, hina mê ti dikês epideues echêistha
But let him [Agamemnon] make amends to you [Achilles] with a rich dais in the tents, so that you may have no lack in dikê.
It is at this dais, when Achilles is to be tested one more time with the compensation offered by Agamemnon (XIX 268-281), that he even bids his fellow Achaeans to go and feast (XIX 275)-- though without his participation.[2]
§16. As we now follow the line of Aiakos down to his son Peleus, the association of the Aeacids with the themes of the dais becomes more involved. In the words of Pindar, the hero Peleus actually feasted with the gods:
kai theoi daisanto par' amphoterois kai Kronou paidas basilêas idon chru- seais en hedrais, hedna te
dexanto
And the gods had a dais with each of them [Peleus and Kadmos],
and they [Peleus and Kadmos] saw the royal children of Kronos sitting on their golden seats, and they received wedding-gifts from them.
Pindar P.3.93-95 The singular occasion for the dais of Peleus, where the Olympian gods themselves attended, was the feast of his wedding with Thetis--a traditional theme celebrated by the Cypria as an appropriate setting for the onset of the entire Trojan Cycle (Proclus p. 102.14-15 Allen). There is an evocative reference to the theme of this dais even in the Iliad, where Hera reminds Apollo that he too had attended:
pantes d' antiaasthe, theoi, gamou: en de su toisi dainu' echôn phorminga
And all you gods attended the wedding.[1] And you too were feasting among them, and you had your lyre with you.
At this dais celebrating a marriage that led to the conception of Achilles himself, Zeus willed that Eris 'Strife' would bring about a neîkos 'quarrel' among the gods; these specific themes of eris/ neîkos at a dais constitute the opening scene of the Cypriain particular and of the Trojan Cycle in general (Proclus p. 102.13-19: Eris/neîkos at 14/15).[2] Short range, these themes are appropriate to the motivation of the Trojan War; long range, the very same themes also provide a setting for the evolution of Achilles as a heroic figure.[3]
§17. We come back again to the first song of Demodokos in the Odyssey (viii 72-82), where the
theme of a future death for Achilles is implicitly signaled by a quarrel at a sacrifice. The sacrifice is described as a daisof the gods (viii 76), and the quarrel is a neîkos (viii 75). The neîkos and all else that happened thereupon are described as the Will of Zeus (viii 82), which is the same traditional device that motivates the neîkos at the beginning of the Cypria (Proclus p. 102.13-14; Cypria fr. 1 Allen).[1] Likewise at the beginning of our Iliad, the Will of Zeus (I 5) leads to eris 'strife' between Achilles and Agamemnon (erisante: I 6; eridi: I 8),[2] and this strife takes the form of a neîkos 'quarrel' (eridas kai neikea: II 376).[3] In the words of Agamemnon, eris 'strife' is a theme that defines the very character of Achilles:
aiei gar toi eris te philê polemoi te machai te
eris is always dear to you, as well as wars and battles[4]
§18. In the beginning of the Iliad, we can now see a marked divergence in theme. The setting for the strife and quarreling between Achilles and Agamemnon is not a feast--let alone a sacrifice.[1] In fact, it is just the opposite. During the time that Achilles and Agamemnon were having their quarrel, Zeus and all the Olympians were away at a dais (kata daita: I 424) in the far-off land of the Aithiopes (I 423-424), situated at the extremities of the universe.[2] Whenever the gods are away at such a dais with the remote Aithiopes, the efficacy of a sacrifice by the heroes in the here-and-now of the epic narrative is in question.[3] Yet the notion of "divide, apportion, allot"
inherent in the institution of the dais is very much present in the Strife Scene that begins the Iliad, even if the dais itself is notably absent as a setting. The word daiomai 'divide, apportion, allot' is actually used in Iliad I to describe the grievance of Achilles over his being deprived of his fair allotment in the spoils of war (dassanto: I 368, to be read in the overall context of I 365-392, especially 392).
§19. In the beginning of the Iliad, the more pervasive mode of describing the loss by Achilles of his fair share is by way of the noun tîmê 'honor' and the verbs formally related to it (see especially I 505-510, 558-559; II 3-4).[1] The word tîmê, as we have seen, is also appropriate for designating what it was that Pyrrhos had pursued by quarreling over slices of meat: the hero's wrangle was "on account of his rightful tîmai" (kûriân [or moiriân!] peri tîmân: Pindar Paean 6.118).[2] As for Achilles, he loses his tîmê 'honor' specifically because Agamemnon has taken away his geras 'honorific portion':[3]
... atar min nun ge anax andrôn Agamemnôn êtimêsen: helôn gar echei geras, autos apouras
But Agamemnon, king of men, has taken away his tîmê;
for he got and keeps his geras, having himself taken it away.
In this particular case, of course, the geras is a captive girl. Elsewhere in the Iliad, however, the same word refers to a choice cut of meat, le morceau du héros, awarded to the foremost warrior of the moment:
autar epei pausanto ponou tetukonto te daita, dainunt', oude ti thumos edeueto daitos eïsês: nôtoisin d' Aianta diênekeessi gerairen
hêrôs Atreïdês, euru kreiôn Agamemnôn
But when they finished with their efforts and prepared the dais [feast],
they had the dais [feasted], and there was no thûmos lacking in a fair dais[allotment].
And wide-ruling Agamemnon the hero, son of Atreus, gave as geras to Ajax the whole back [of beef].[4]
Let us contrast again the concern over the tîmê of Achilles in Iliad I: The situation is unlike that of Ajax in Iliad VII, in that Iliad I lacks the setting of a dais. Even later on in the Iliad, there seems to be a set of insistent allusions to this initial Iliadic divergence from the theme of the dais, as when Odysseus says to Achilles:
chair', Achileu: daitos men eïsês ouk epideueis êmen eni klisiêi Agamemnonos Atreïdao
êde kai enthade nun: para gar menoeikea polla dainusth': all' ou daitos epêratou erga memêlen ...
Hail, Achilles! You are not without a fair dais
either in the tent of Agamemnon son of Atreus
or here and now. There is at hand much that would suit your menos, for you to have as dais. But the concern is not
about a pleasant dais ...
The detailed side-stepping here of the theme of a dais draws all the more attention to it. The wording of this passage, so strikingly parallel in detail to the one we have considered immediately before (VII 319-322), again conjures up for us the theme of awarding, in the context of a dais, the choice cut of meat--this time to the foremost warrior of the Iliad in its entirety. And the speaker is Odysseus, who had quarreled in another traditional scene with Achilles himself at a dais where the preeminence of the epic heroes was somehow at stake (viii 72-82). Later on in the Iliad, again it will be Odysseus who proposes a dais as the setting for Agamemnon's making amends to Achilles (XIX 179-180), and it will be at this dais that Achilles finally witnesses the undoing of his loss of tîmê (XIX 268-281).[5]
§20. The time has come to underscore an interesting contrast that has been emerging between the figures of Achilles and Pyrrhos. For the Achilles of our Iliad, the restoration of tîmê happens at a dais--but the same does not hold for the Strife Scene where he had originally lost that tîmê. Pyrrhos, on the other hand, has his Strife Scene on account of his tîmai at an overt sacrifice; furthermore, his actions mirror closely on the level of myth the proceedings of the sacrifice on the level of ritual. To put it another way, our story of Pyrrhos is much closer to a ritual quarrel over cuts of sacrificial meat than our story of Achilles, where the narrative elements have been considerably stylized--especially in Iliad I.
§21. The epic stylization that affects the theme of a choice cut of meat for Achilles, le morceau du héros, actually runs very deep. In certain instances of Homeric diction, even the comparative approach secures the notion of "allotment, portion" for words that designate the epic destiny of Achilles. Such is the case with aîsa, designating the Iliadic destiny of Achilles in contexts stressing his excessively brief lifespan (e.g., I 416, 418); when we turn to the comparative method, we find such related forms as Oscan aiteis, functionally equivalent to Latin partis (genitive of pars 'share, allotment').[1] More overtly, the word moîra not only functions as a synonym of aîsa in some Homeric contexts where it carries the sense of "fate".[2] It also designates specifically "cut of meat" in other contexts (e.g., iii 66).[3] Finally, for yet another example of stylized imagery that is traditionally connected with the theme of a champion's portion for Achilles, I cite the complex word kêr.[4] In the plural, kêres at IX 411 specifically designates the two possible courses of epic action between which Achilles must choose[5] --a nostos 'safe homecoming' with a long life on the one hand or, on the other, a brief life with a kleos 'glory' that is everlasting (IX 410-416).[6]
§22. Such highly elaborated formal imagery surrounding the Achilles figure in the Iliad distances him considerably from Pyrrhos, that stark figure of a savage warrior who is lunging after a choice cut of meat to which he lays claim. And yet, the same Iliad that stylizes the actions of Achilles to their ultimate epic refinement can also bridge the vast distance of heroic evolution and suddenly picture Achilles on the most fundamental level of savage behavior. The god Apollo, who brought about the death of both father and son, says these words to mark the hero of the Iliad, Achilles himself:
hos t' epei ar megalêi te biêi kai agênori thumôi eixas eis' epi mêla brotôn, hina daita labêisin
But, like a lion, he [Achilles] knows savage ways
--a lion that yields to its great biê and overweening thûmos, and goes after the sheep of men, in order to get a dais.[1]
The use of the word dais in this image of stark savagery is particularly striking as it applies to the Achilles figure. Actually, this characterization of the Iliadic hero is quite in tune with a latent dimension that keeps surfacing at moments of intense heroic anguish, as when Achilles is
grieving over his dead hetaîros:
terpeto, prin polemou stoma dumenai haimatoentos
nor was he gladdened in his thûmos
until he entered the jaws of bloody war
The verb terpomai 'be gladdened' can conventionally designate gratification by way of eating (e.g., XI 780), and it is precisely this theme of eating that functions as the immediate context for the passage under consideration. The elders of the Achaeans are imploring Achilles to eat (XIX 303-304), but he refuses and insists on keeping a fast (XIX 304-308, 319-321); while he is fasting, he actually reminisces about the meals that Patroklos used to serve up to him (XIX
314-318, especially 316). This grim juxtaposition of two images, the bloody jaws of war and the hero who goes without meals while Patroklos lies unavenged, is only part of a ghastly Iliadic theme that finally comes to a head at the moment when a victorious Achilles is standing triumphant over the sprawled figure of a dying Hektor and says:
ai gar pôs auton me menos kai thumos aneiê m' apotamnomenon krea edmenai, hoia eorgas
I wish that somehow my menos and thûmos impelled me to slice you up and eat your meat raw, for the things you did.
We recall the simile, uttered by Apollo himself, comparing Achilles to a carnivorous lion whose thûmos impels it to its dais 'feast' of sheep (XXIV 41-43).[2] So also here, the menos and thûmos of Achilles are bringing our hero to the verge of a bestial deed. In another simile comparing Achilles with a raging lion (XX 164-175), the beast is described as impelling itself to fight:
... hee d' auton epotrunei machesasthai
... and it is impelling itself to fight
The stance of the beast is then directly compared to the manner in which the menos and thûmos
of Achilles impel him to fight:
hôs Achilê' otrune menos kai thumos agênôr
so also the menos and overweening thûmos of Achilles impelled him onwards[3]
In effect, then, the simile is saying that Achilles has the thûmos of a lion, in that the beast's intrinsic behavior is set in the same way as Achilles is driven by his thûmos. Little wonder, then, that Achilles qualifies as thûmoleôn 'he who has the thûmos of a lion' (as at VII 228).[4] Little wonder, moreover, that the mother of Hektor reviles Achilles as ômêstês 'eater of raw
§23. By the end of the Iliad, however, these hideous dimensions of the heroic temperament are a thing of the past, as compassion finally takes hold of Achilles and he restores the body of Hektor to the grieving father. What is more, the setting for this ultimate scene of heroic compassion and refinement is again a feast--this time initiated by Achilles himself (XXIV 599-601). No sooner said than done, the feast is held, and we get our last Iliadic glimpse of Achilles as he presides over the affair--and actually apportions the sacrificial meat:
... atar krea neimen Achilleus
... and Achilles distributed the meat
§24. To sum up our survey: the Aeacids, we now see, have a special affinity to the theme of the dais, but for Achilles the Homeric tradition expresses this affinity in a manner that downplays the ritual aspects of the dais. For the Achilles figure, the most overt--or the least downplayed-- Homeric manifestation of the ritual element is the first song of Demodokos at viii 72-82, where the hero's future death is implicitly linked with the themes of Delphi/sacrifice/quarrel--and these are the same themes that frame the death of Pyrrhos as it is presented in Pindar's Paean 6 and Nemean 7.
§25. The narrative of viii 72-82, however, is so compressed that we are still left with a number of mysteries surrounding the neîkos 'quarrel' of Achilles and Odysseus. Perhaps the most intriguing question is this: we know that the neîkos happened at a dais of the gods (viii 76), but why is this dais connected with a prophecy that emanates specifically from Delphi (viii 79-81)? From what we have seen of the close parallelism between the story of how Pyrrhos died at Delphi and the themes of viii 72-82, we are led to speculate whether the dais where Achilles and Odysseus quarreled is a theme that actually incorporates Delphic lore. If this were the case, then the epic scene that opens the first song of Demodokos would be even more ritual in orientation than we had imagined, what with the sacral ideology of Delphi as an informing principle. The contrast with the opening of the Iliad, where the neîkos of Achilles and Agamemnon lacks even the setting of a feast--let alone a sacrifice--would then be all the more remarkable.[1] We may add that the opening of the first song of Demodokos is in any case a treatment with more ritual undertones
than even the opening of the Cypria, where the dais that serves as the setting for the neîkos of the gods is presented from a narrative vantage that stresses not so much a sacrifice by heroes to gods but rather a feast attended by heroes and gods together.[2]
§26. What kind of epic composition can we imagine that commences not only with an overt sacrifice as the opening scene but also with links to the sacral lore of Delphi? To confront the first part of the question, let us look at the evidence of allusions in actual Homeric diction and theme. The most suggestive passage for our purposes is the lengthy Cretan narrative in Odyssey xiv (192-359), told by Odysseus in the guise of a Cretan princeling. The main adventure, an expedition led by our Cretan adventurer to plunder the wealth of Egypt (xiv 245-286), is twice directly correlated in the narrative with the great Achaean expedition to Troy (xiv 229-231,
235-242). In fact, the hero of the narrative claims that he not only fought in the Trojan War but also was actually the leader of the Cretan contingent, along with the mighty Iliadic hero, Idomeneus himself (xiv 237-238). Since the narrative endeavors to enhance the scale of the Egyptian expedition so as to match the epic proportions of the Trojan expedition, it is important to observe precisely how the launching of the enterprise is described. Significantly, the Cretan leader of the expedition to Egypt holds an overtly sacrificial dais lasting for six days (xiv 249-251), and only thereafter can his ships sail off. From this passage, then, we infer that a dais might be an appropriate setting to open a narrative about a Trojan expedition.
§27. We come now to the second part of our question: why should Delphi be connected with the theme of the dais at which Achilles and Odysseus quarreled? Here the historical evidence about Delphi itself may be pertinent. From the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. onward, by virtue of its becoming a centralized Panhellenic repository of myriad local religious traditions, the Delphic Oracle was evolving into the ideological and political center that coordinated the launching of expeditions for the purpose of founding new cities and for other such monumental enterprises.[1] From the standpoint of a local epic that relates the founding of one city or the destruction and plundering of another, the setting of a dais--especially in the context of Delphi--could provide for an appropriate opening scene.[2]
§28. The Iliad as we have it, on the other hand, is of course a composition that goes far beyond the dimensions and interests of any local epic tradition. Our Iliad is clearly Panhellenic in scope, and an opening like the one in the first song of Demodokos may have fallen far too short of the thematic range that Homeric Epos requires. But whether or not the specific themes in the first song of Demodokos are worthy of Iliadic standards, it is more important for us now to stress two facts about our Iliad that pertain directly. First, the isolated Iliadic reference to Delphi actually concerns Achilles: aside from the Catalogue reference (II 519),[1] all that remains is the one mention of Delphi which, as we have seen, apparently confronts Achilles with the remote thematic alternative of plundering Delphi instead of Troy (IX 404-405).[2] Second, we are about to see that there are Iliadic references to local epic traditions concerning Achilles, although they are as a rule merely marginal. In the Iliad, such references could not be allowed to interfere with the Panhellenic central theme of the expedition to Troy--an expedition that goes far beyond local epic interests.[3]
§29. The Trojan expedition, as it is presented in its ultimate form by our Iliad, is a grand theme which, by converging on the one main goal of Troy, unites on the level of content the heroic and material resources of the various cultural centers that may each once have had their own epic
traditions about conquering various territories.[1] Aside from its centralized thematic concern about the expedition to Troy, however, the Iliad also manages some marginal references to epic traditions about various other expeditions to other places, notably Lesbos (IX 129, 271, 664), Skyros (IX 668), Tenedos (XI 625), and Lyrnessos and Pedasos (XIX 60; XX 90-92, 188-194; cf. XI 104-112).[2] These expeditions all involve territories that would have been Aeolic at the time that our Iliad took its present shape,[3] and the Iliadic references to them consistently stress the heroic preeminence of Achilles.[4] This emphasis on Achilles is particularly striking in the case of Lesbos: the Iliad says that Achilles himself captured all Lesbos (IX 129, 271), and the significance of such a heroic deed seems to have less to do with the epic fate of nearby Troy and far more with the here-and-now of a Homeric audience in the eighth or seventh century B.C.[5] The Iliad is here verifying something that applies from the standpoint of this era: that the affinity of the Achilles figure with this particular Aeolic island is a matter of acknowledged tradition, incorporated even by Panhellenic Epos.[6]
§30. From the standpoint of such localized epic traditions, the first song of Demodokos would have been appropriate as the opening of an epic composition about an expedition undertaken by Achilles. Such a composition would have acknowledged the Oracle of Delphi as the authority that inspired the epic expedition, and the setting of a sacrifice would provide an appropriate opening Strife Scene for motivating the eventual death of the main hero who undertook the enterprise. This much I can now say with somewhat more confidence, having found a distant parallel in the form of a Strife Scene at a Delphic sacrifice, leading to the death of Pyrrhos, son of Achilles.
Notes
§1n1. For a brief survey of cult practices in honor of Achilles, see Nilsson 1906.457; cf. also Ch. 6§§26/30 above and Ch. 20§24n3 below.
§1n2. The word tîmê can specify the "honor" that a god or hero receives in cult. (The article s.v. timê in Liddell and Scott does not allow for such a distinct semantic category.) The diction of Herodotus about matters of ritual provides adequate illustration for this particular usage of tîmê, as at 1.118.2 (cult of a god) and 1.168 (cult of a hero). As for the verb tîmaô in the sense of "worship," see Herodotus 1.90.2, 2.50.3, 2.75.4, 5.67.5 (in the last passage, the cult of the god Dionysos is designated in the same terms as the cult of the hero Adrastos, on whom see also the verb tîmaô at Herodotus 5.67.4). For a clear discussion of tîmê as "cult," see Rudhardt 1970.6-7; also Rohde I 99n1. Besides, see Richardson 1974.260-261 on the Homeric Hymn to Demeter 311-312, where the theme of the gods' getting tîmai is explicitly correlated with the observance of their respective cults by mortals (see also H.Dem. 353, 366-369). Note that the cult figure gets tîmê from two directions: the "honor" is performed by mortals but determined by immortals. On the status of Demophon as a daimôn of cult: Ch.10§10.
§1n3. On the semantics of aphthito-: Ch.10§§3-19. The word for "heroes" in this passage from Simonides is hêmitheoi, which is appropriate in the dimension of cult. See Ch.9 in general and
§1n4. See n2. For the interpretation of tîmâ at Pindar N.7.31 as applying to Pyrrhos, see Köhnken 1971.46. For the possibility that "the tîmâ of the Hero" in the Amphictionic law SIG
145.32 (380 B.C.) refers to Pyrrhos: Burkert 1966b.437. In this case, the word tîmâ specifies the sacrifice of a bull to the Hero.
§1n5. Ch.1§2. We must also contrast Achilles and Demophon in this regard with Anchises in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite: in compensation for his mortality, Anchises wins immortality neither for his kleos nor for his tîmê, but rather for the continuation of his progeny, the Aeneadae (H.Aphr. 196-197, 239-end).
§2n1. For the tradition of the double name, see Cypria fr. 14 Allen. The names Purrhos/ Neoptolemos are more appropriate to cult/epic respectively; see especially Usener 1912/1913 [= 1904] 460-461. For the sake of convenience, I will refer to the hero as Pyrrhos. Consider also the interesting variant verse for Iliad XIX 327, where we find Purês instead of Neoptolemos (for a discussion: Delcourt 1965.31-32).
§2n2. On the validity of this Pindaric testimony about the cult of Pyrrhos, see Fontenrose 1960.191-198, with polemics and bibliography. On Nemean 7 itself, see especially Köhnken 1971.37-86 and Lloyd-Jones 1973.
§2n3. For a key factor in this transformation, the First Sacred War of ca. 590 B.C., see Wiechers 1961, esp. p. 24.
§3n1. I refer to the discussion of the problem by Fontenrose 1960.198-205.
§3n2. On the burial of Achilles at the Hellespont: Ch.20§§22-24. On the function of bones in hero cults, see Rohde I 159-166; cf. also Ch6§29.
§3n3. The Homeric tradition itself, I submit, is informed by many such interrelated Panhellenic phenomena. Following the reasoning of Pfister 1948.151, I would even suggest that the Homeric Catalogue of Ships in Iliad II amounts to a Panhellenic survey of the Homeric heroes from the diverse local standpoints of their primary cults, the locations of which are represented as their respective homelands. On the possibility that the systematization of the Catalogue is derived from Delphic traditions, I cite Giovannini 1969.51-71.
§4n1. See also Pherecydes FGrH 3.63, 64a-b; Asclepiades FGrH12.15. Note the interesting additional detail that Pyrrhos was first buried under the threshold of Apollo's temple, only to be transferred later into the area of the god's temenos 'precinct' (for discussion, see Delcourt 1965.44; cf. also Rohde I 197).
§4n2. See Burkert 1972.136n12 for the basic bibliography; also Fontenrose 1960.191- 198 and Burkert 1966b.440n2.
§4n3. For a collection of references to the testimonia: Fontenrose, p. 212.
§4n4. See Burkert 1972.17n41, 68; also Burkert 1966.102-104 and 1975.19. Cf. Delcourt 1965.38.
§5n1. Pausanias 10.7.1 (cf. also 2.5.5); scholia to Pindar N.7.58, 150a; Strabo 421. For parallelisms with the traditional lore about King Pyrrhos of Epeiros, see Delcourt 1965.42-43. I
should note, however, my disagreement with the notion that the lore about the historical figure is the source for the theme of plundering associated with the mythical figure (cf. also Burkert 1966b. 437).
§5n2. The parallelism with Pyrrhos is pointed out by Burkert 1966b.437. On Phleguâs as the eponym of the Phleguai: Strabo 442c.
§5n3. Pausanias 10.7.1; Ephorus FGrH 70.93; Servius ad Virgil Aeneid 6.618; scholia ad Statius Thebaid 1.713; Eustathius adXIII 301; etc. For an extensive discussion of the myths associated with the name Phleguâs/Phleguai: Vian 1960.219-222. We may note in particular the claim, in the scholia (T) to IliadXIII 302, that the verb phleguân in the dialect of Phokis means hubrizein 'commit hubris'. For the connotations of hubris, see Ch.9§§9-10.
§5n4. See Vian 1960.221. For the mythological connection of the Pyrrhos and Achilles figures with the themes of fire, see, in general, Delcourt 1965. One of the most interesting points of formal convergence is the epithet Purrhaiê of Thetis (Hesychius s.v.), who dips the infant Achilles into fire much as Demeter had done to Demophon; see Delcourt, pp. 36-37, Detienne/ Vernant 1974.136, and Richardson 1974.237-238.
§6n1. On the theory that the Catalogue is organized on the basis of Delphic traditions: Giovannini 1969.51-71.
§8n1. For the relationship of Pindar's Paean 6 to Nemean 7, see especially Köhnken 1971.71-72, with bibliography. For a pioneering study: Finley 1951.
§8n2. On the basis of murian in the scholia to Nemean 7.94, Boeckh had suggested moirian instead of kurian. For the morphology, I would compare moirios/moiridios with kourios/ kouridios. (For kourios, see Iliad XIII 433c.)
§8n3. For the argument in favor of this reading, see Lloyd-Jones 1973.131, pace Fontenrose 1960.223n14.
§8n4. In Greek ritual, the priest or attendant may preside as a stand-in for the god himself: cf., e.g., Pausanias 6.20.9. See now Nagy 1996 Ch.3-4.
§8n5. Asclepiades FGrH 12.15; Callimachus fr. 229.7 Pfeiffer; Strabo 421. From these sources, we also learn of the tradition that one of the descendants of Makhaireus was Brankhos, founder of Apollo's Oracle at Didyma near Miletos.
§8n6. Scholia to Euripides Andromache 53. On the semantics of the word xenos: Ch.12§§12-16.
§9n1. On the reciprocity of the theoxenia, in that the roles of host and guest are interchangeable for gods and men, see Gernet 1968 [= 1928] 32-33. The figure of Pindar himself, by virtue of his poetry on the subject, becomes incorporated into the myths surrounding the Delphic theoxenia-- and eventually even into the ritual itself; for a collection of testimonia, see Deneken 1881.9-10. Here again, the most pervasive theme is that a choice cut of meat from the sacrificial table is to be
awarded to Pindar, to Pindar's ghost, or to his descendants. There is a particularly interesting ritual detail in Life of Pindar p. 92.50-53 Westermann [1845] (see also Drachmann I, p. 216): every day, as the neôkoros 'temple attendant' is about to close the entrance to Apollo's temple, he calls out to Pindar that the poet should have his meal with the god. Note too the tradition that Theoxenos (praised in Pindar fr. 123SM) was the poet's lover (Life of Pindar p. 102.11 Westermann). On the connection between the myths in the traditional Lives of poets and the rituals surrounding the hero cults of poets, see Ch.18.
§9n2. For a particularly interesting Delphic attestation, see the regulations of the Labyadai, DGE 323 D.47; the semantics of akro-thin- 'top of the heap' are of course readily transferable from agricultural to military contexts (cf. Pindar O.2.4 and O.10.57 besides N.7.41).
§9n3. For moiriân, see again §8n2.
§10n1. The pertinence of this text was noticed by Burkert 1966b.439.
§10n2. For the rest of the text, also connected with this particular story, see Ch.16§7; also Wiechers 1961.15-16.
§10n3. For further allusions, in comedy and elsewhere, see Wiechers 1961.16-18; cf. Delcourt 1965.39.
§11n1. Cf. also the scholia to Pindar N.7.62, describing the attendants' behavior towards Pyrrhos in these words: hôs ethos autois 'as was their custom'.
§11n3. For this and other parallels, see Burkert 1966b.440n1. Cf. H.Apollo 535-536; cf. also the expression krea diarpazontas 'snatching away the cuts of meat' describing the Delphians in Pherecydes FGrH 3.64a.
§11n4. Scholia Florentina (=Pap.Soc.Ital. 1094), line 23, to Callimachus fr. 191 Pfeiffer; see also Burkert 1966b.439n2.
§12n1. On the connection of the Aeacids, especially Achilles and Pyrrhos, with the mythology of rituals featuring the pharmakoi 'scapegoats' of Apollo, see Wiechers 1961.43-49, with bibliography; cf. also Toepffer 1888.144. For the basic text on pharmakos, see Harpocration s.v., based on Istros FGrH344.50 (on which there is more at Ch.16§2). For a pharmakos, our attested material indicates stoning or being thrown off a cliff as the primary modes of death; in the case of stoning, we see a specific application of this theme to Pyrrhos in Euripides Andromache 1085-1165.
§14n1. Calhoun 1962.446; cf. Motto and Clark 1969.124n21.
§14n2. For an alternative view, where we see the Homeric hero's actions not as something modeled on how we ordinary mortals behave but as the epic dimension of heroes who also have a ritual dimension, see Ch.9.
§14n3. At iii 420, there is a more specific reference to the very same occasion: theou es daita thaleian 'to the sumptuous dais of the god [Poseidon]'.
§14n4. Cf. Motto and Clark 1969.118-119. Of course, everyone gets an equal share not in the sense of the same amount but in the sense of varying amounts equal to the varying worth of each hero. For example, Ajax at VII 321-322 gets a choice cut of meat in a distribution (dais) that is described as eîsê 'equal' at VII 320.
§15n1. The use here of daimones to designate "gods" makes the reverse theme of a mortal's deciding allotments for the gods even more striking, since the word daimôn is derived from the same root as found in daiomai 'divide, apportion, allot'. For the etymology, see Chantraine I 246-247. For the Homeric theme of daimôn as "he who apportions," see Kullmann 1956.51-56 (cf. also Boreckyô' 1965.75 on Pindar P.3.81-82); also Richardson 1974.257 on the expression daimonos aisêi (further discussion at §21n1).
§15n2. After Odysseus proposes the dais, Agamemnon approves the proposal and calls it en moirêi '[said] in proper measure [moîra]' (XIX 186). Achilles, however, wishes not to eat while his comrade lies unburied and unavenged (XIX 199-214), but Odysseus argues for the necessity of having a feast before fighting (XIX 216-237). In this context, Zeus is called the tamiês polemoio 'apportioner of war' (XIX 224); in nonmetaphorical contexts, the tamiês/tamiê is a male/female functionary who allots food (e.g., XIX 44).
§16n1. The verb antiaô/antiaomai 'come forth [to get]' used at XXIV 62 is appropriate for describing the coming of a god in order to receive the sacrifice that is being offered to him (cf., e.g., I 67, i 25, etc.).
§16n2. The eris/neîkos then extends to the figure of Paris, who has to choose from among Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite (Cypria/Proclus p. 102.14-19 Allen; also Iliad XXIV 25-30). In the Judgment of Paris, he brings about neîkos for Hera and Athena (neikesse: XXIV 29) but aînos for Aphrodite (êinês': XXIV 30). For the social and poetic significance of aînos/neîkos in the sense of praise/blame, see Ch.11§16 and the following Ch.12.
§16n3. The Thebais tradition (fr. 3 Allen) also concerns a quarrel, specifically over portions of meat. Oedipus curses his sons because they once gave him the wrong moîra of meat (the iskhion 'haunch, ham' rather than the ômos 'shoulder'). The theme of the fatal strife that ensues between the brothers Eteo-kleês and Polu-neikês is even reflected in their names; for the implication of poetic genre in the contrast of kleos/praise and neîkos/blame, see Ch.14§12n3 (cf. also Ch. 12§7n3). The theme of the moîrai of Oedipus is probably reflected in the expression mêlôn henek' Oidipodao 'on account of the sheep of Oedipus' (Hesiod W&D 163). For the correlation of mêla 'sheep' and the theme of moîrai, see §22n1 below.
§17n1. Zeus wants to alleviate the Earth by depopulating the many heroes who weigh upon it (Cypria fr. 1 Allen). For more on the Will of Zeus, see n3 and Ch.5§25n2.
§17n2. See also I 177, 210, 277, 319.
§17n3. At XIX 270-274, Achilles says that his quarrel with Agamemnon was the Will of Zeus,
so that many Achaeans may die; at the very next verse, XIX 275, he bids the Achaeans to go and eat at Agamemnon's feast.
§17n4. Compare this characterization ("strife and war") with Hesiod fr. 206MW about the Aeacids in general ("feasts and war"), as discussed at §15. Note too that the same words that characterize Achilles at I 177 recur at V 891 to characterize none other than the god of war himself, Ares! The symmetry is more extensive: whereas Achilles is reproached by the socially superior Agamemnon, Ares is reproached by Zeus himself!
§18n1. In the attested evidence, the closest thing to a quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon in the context of a dais is the incident at Tenedos as told in the Cypria (Proclus p. 104.21-24 Allen). Here the mênis 'anger' of Achilles seems to center on his not being invited in time to a banquet, on account of which he loses tîmê (see the brief summary in Aristotle Rhetoric 1401b1g; note too the wording: mênis and atîmazomenos).
§18n2. For the geographical symbolism of the Aithiopes and their realm, see Ch.10§§25-45. As for the chronology of Iliad I, there are of course many details that remain unclear. This much is for sure, however: at the time Thetis is speaking to Achilles, his quarrel with Agamemnon has just happened, and it is here that she tells how Zeus and the other Olympians had left for the Aithiopes on the day before (I 423-425).
§18n3. See Lowenstam 1975.132-133, (=1981.53) esp. on XXIII 205-209.
§19n1. On the use of tîmê to specify "cult", see §1n2 above. Motto and Clark (1969.119) draw a parallel between the loss of tîmê by Achilles and the incident in the story of Meleager (IX
533-537) where Artemis is deprived of her share in a sacrifice--which, we may note, qualifies as a dais (dainunth': IX 535).
§19n2. See §8. Consider also the periodic sacrifice of a bull as "the tîmâ of the Hero" in a Delphic inscription (§1n4), where the unnamed hero may be Pyrrhos.
§19n3. For more on geras in the sense of "honorific portion" (and tîmê 'honor'), see Benveniste 1969 II 43-50. Beyond the material discussed by Benveniste, I cite the evidence of inscriptions dealing with sacral regulations, where the same word geras (especially in the plural: gerê) specifies a cut of sacrificial meat that is destined for the god who presides over the sacrifice or, less directly, for the priest who performs the sacrifice. For documentation, see Stengel
1910.169-171, Puttkammer 1912.2, and Gill 1974.127-128. Note that the vocabulary of sacral regulations frequently fails to distinguish the god's portion from the priest's (Puttkammer, pp. 16-18 and Gill, pp. 128-131). In poetry too, we find the use of geras and tîmê in contexts that overtly specify cult--e.g., Hesiod Th. 392-396. On H.Hermes 112-141, see Kahn 1978.41-73.
§19n4. The translation "whole" for diênekeessi at VII 321 is based on the evidence of the inscriptions: in the language of sacral regulations, diânekês marks a portion of meat that is not subdivided, like a whole leg or a whole back (see Puttkammer, p. 11). Ajax gets the choice cut of meat for having fought with Hektor, who had challenged whoever is the "best of the Achaeans" to fight him (VII 50-51, 73-75); see Ch.2§3. The theme of "the champion's portion," le morceau du héros, has important Celtic parallels, discussed by Arbois de Jubainville 1899.45-47, 52,
62-63; cf. also Girard 1902.262, 268-271. In Old Irish saga, the two most relevant narratives are the Tale of MacDathó's Pig and Bricriu's Feast; translations are conveniently available in Cross and Slover 1936.199-207/254-280.
§21n1. For a discussion of the etymology and semantics of aîsa: Chantraine I 38-39. For the interesting collocation daimonos aisêi at H.Dem. 300, see Richardson 1974.257. We may add that there are in fact sporadic attestations, in the corpus of surviving sacral regulations, of aîsa designating "portion of meat" (see Puttkammer 1912.40n8).
§21n2. See Lee 1961.196-197. Consider especially the use of aîsa/moîra in expressions for "according to destiny" ~ "contrary to destiny": kat' aîsan (XVII 716, etc.) and kata moîran (I 286, etc.) ~ huper aîsan (III 59, etc.) and huper moîran (XX 336). For more on the convention itself: Ch.2§17, Ch.5§25n2, Ch.15§3n9.
§21n3. For moîra as "cut of meat" in sacral inscriptions, cf. Gill 1974.124n6. The epic convention of correlating the plot at hand with the Will of Zeus (on which see again Ch.5§25n2) seems to be the basis for the imagery inherent in tamiês polemoio 'apportioner of war' as epithet of Zeus (XIX 224, etc.); see §15n2.
§21n4. Note the correlation of Moîrai and Kêres in Hesiod Th. 217 (see West 1966.229). For the difficulties of the etymology and semantics, see Chantraine II 526. For an attempt at deriving the word kêr from the same root *ker- 'cut' as in Latin carô, carnis 'meat, flesh', see Lee 1961; his most important contribution, in any case, is at pp. 196-197, where he lists the parallel combinations of kêr and moîra in Homeric diction.
§21n5. For an interesting local-oriented variation on this theme, see XIII 663-672; for parallel applications of kêrand its themes to Achilles/Herakles, see XVIII 115/117.
§21n6. The kleos is aphthiton 'unfailing' in that it is a glory conferred by poetry; for the poetic connotations of kleos, see Nagy 1974.244-255. On the contrast in genre between kleos and nostos: Nagy, pp. 11-13; also Ch.2§§3 and 11, to be read in conjunction with Ch.6§6nn2 and 5.
§22n1. Note that the dais of the lion is the meat of sheep, the prime sacrificial animals at Apollo's Delphi, and that the god's attendants are conventionally described as slaughtering them eagerly with makhairai 'knives' (H.Apollo 535-537).
§22n2. The expression "yielding to the thûmos" at XXIV 42-43 (thumôi /eixas) is a reflexive equivalent of the active expression "[the menos and] the thûmos impel," as at XXII 346 (menos kai thumos aneiê). See n3.
§22n3. Note that the active construction here ("the menos and the thûmos impelled") is drawn into a parallel, by way of the simile, with a reflexive construction at XX 171 ("the lion is impelling itself"). For the relationship of menos and thûmos, see XXII 312-313, where Achilles fills his thûmos with savage menos (meneos d' emplêsato thumon / agriou); this passage is in the immediate vicinity of the threat to eat Hektor raw (XXII 346-347). On the savagery of Achilles,
see esp. Redfield 1975.
§22n4. In the Iliad, Herakles is the only other hero who also qualifies (V 639).
§22n5. Achilles is the only Homeric hero to be described with this epithet, otherwise restricted to beasts (e.g., dogs at XXII 67). See also Robertson 1940.177-180 on Pindar N.3.48: the phrasing here concerns animals not yet dead, whose marrow will be sucked by the savage young hunter Achilles (see also Apollodorus 3.13.6).
§25n1. The Iliad not only veers away from the themes of Delphi: it also presents the word ossa 'voice' in a negative light, which may be significant in view of this word's association with the oracular voice of Apollo (see Pindar O.6.61-62). In the Iliad, the False Dream that almost aborts the Trojan Expedition (and by extension the Iliad itself) is equated with Dios angelos 'messenger of Zeus' (II 26, 63, 94), which in turn is equated with ossa personified (II 93). Compare Agamemnon's false expectations upon hearing the False Dream (II 36-40) with his false expectations upon hearing the Oracle of Apollo (viii 77-82).
§25n2. Even though the dais at the Wedding of Peleus and Thetis is presented more as a banquet than as a sacrifice, the diction at XXIV 62-63 describes the attendance of Apollo and the other gods in a manner appropriate to gods who come to receive sacrifice. See §16n1.
§27n1. See Vian 1963.83 and Parke/Wormell I 78-79; cf. also Snodgrass 1971.416- 417. For a useful bibliography on the Panhellenic importance of Delphi: Giovannini 1969.66n2.
§27n2. For a survey of attested epic traditions about colonizations and the prominent role played in such poetry by the Delphic Oracle of Apollo, see Schmid 1947.148-153.
§28n1. On the Delphic orientation of the Catalogue: Giovannini 1969.51-71.
§28n3. For an interesting introduction to the traditional genre of ktisis ('colonization') poetry, see in general Schmid 1947. One of the most important lessons to be learned from Schmid's book is that ktisis poetry is fundamentally local rather than Panhellenic in orientation, and that its contents are therefore continually subject to shifts each time the colony itself undergoes shifts in population or politics. Another is that the hero in a ktisis poem may be presented overtly as a cult figure (see esp. Schmid, p. 138).
§29n1. See Schmid 1947, esp. pp. 4-8, 83-87, 141-148; also Norden 1922.16 on Iliad II 653-670, the earliest attested passage that refers overtly to the genre of ktisis poetry. In this
particular instance, the ktisis of Rhodes, we already see the conventional themes of (1) a formal arkhaiologiâ and (2) a description of tribal divisions (Norden, ibid.). As I have done with other Iliadic passages, I reject any assumption that II 653-670 involves the interpolation of a distinct text that is later in date than the main body of the Iliad. Instead, I would again argue that we see in this passage the incorporation of a distinct poetic tradition.
§29n2. There are further references in the Cypria (Proclus p. 101.4-11; p. 102.10-12 Allen). See Bethe 1927 III 66-75 for an interesting discussion; I disagree, however, with the relative
chronologies offered, as well as with the ad hoc theories of textual interpolation (notably in regard to the passages in Odyssey xxiv about the funeral mound of Achilles).
§29n3. On the archaeological evidence for the Aeolic settlement of the Troad by the end of the eighth century B.C.: Cook 1973.360-363.
§29n4. For a discussion of these expeditions in terms of ktisis poetry, see Schmid 1947.83-87, esp. p. 86.
§29n5. Similarly with the Hellespont, its navigational importance as the passage to the Black Sea concerns not the second millennium B.C. but rather the period of politically organized colonizations--that is, from the eighth and seventh centuries onwards. See Ch.20§24. For the importance of the thematic affinity between the Achilles figure and the Hellespont, see Ch.20 in general.
§29n6. If we try to reconstruct the situation backward as well as foward in time, we observe that there are stories connecting Achilles with the conquest of Lesbos that are attested in the classical period as well. A particularly interesting example is the story of Achilles and Peisidike (Parthenius Erotica 21), which tells how the hero captured the Lesbian city of Methymna. A variant of this story is localized at Pedasos and seems to be attested already in the Hesiodic tradition (fr. 214MW). See again Schmid, pp. 83-87, 141-148.
The Best of the Achaeans Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry Revised Edition
Gregory Nagy
Copyright © 1980, 1997 The Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved. First edition 1979. Revised edition 1999. This document may be used, with this notice included, for noncommercial purposes within a subscribed
institution. No copies of this work may be distributed electronically outside of the subscribed institution, in whole or in part, without written permission from the JHU Press.
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§1. By comparing the death of Achilles with the death of Pyrrhos, we have come to see more clearly the factor of ritual antagonism between god and hero. If, of course, we had only the Iliad as evidence, this factor would be much more difficult to discern in the case of Achilles, whose own antagonism with the god Apollo is so poetically stylized and elaborated as to suit the artistic
framework of Panhellenic Epos. Even within such a monumental structure, however, the basic outlines emerge clearly enough. Although the death of Achilles himself at the hands of Apollo is deferred beyond the Iliad, the death of his surrogate Patroklos is presented in a manner that makes the experience apply directly to the hero of the Iliad.[1]
§2. Aside from this basic observation on the level of theme, we can also adduce detailed evidence on the level of diction. We have seen that the Iliad applies mênis 'anger' as a word appropriate specifically to Achilles among heroes, and that his mênis over his loss of tîmê 'honor' results from the earlier anger of Apollo, likewise specified as mênis, over his respective loss of tîmê. The first mênis, of Apollo, had caused what is called a loigos 'devastation' for the Achaeans in the form of a plague; the second mênis, of Achilles, then causes them devastation in the form of a dire military situation inflicted by Hektor at the Battle of the Ships. This second devastation is also specifically called a loigos. Moreover, both the first and the second loigos are described as bringing algea 'pains' to the Achaeans. The first loigos is removed when the plague is lifted, whereupon the Achaeans sing a paiêôn 'paean' to Apollo; the second is removed when Hektor is killed, and this time Achilles bids them to sing, again, a paiêôn.[1] We could go on multiplying examples of thematic and formal convergences between Apollo and Achilles. For instance, Walter Burkert is so struck by the physical resemblance in the traditional representations of the god and the hero--especially by the common feature of their both being unshorn in the manner of a koûros [2] --that he is moved to describe Achilles as a Doppelgängerof Apollo.[3] For now, however, let us simply adhere to this main point: that god and hero mirror each other, both formally and thematically, in the dimension of ritual.
§3. In order to observe how the formal and thematic matchings between Apollo and Achilles are actually enacted in an epic scene of ritual antagonism, let us contrast the Iliadic stance of Achilles with that of the intrepid Diomedes, who in his own right actually dares to wound the Olympian gods Aphrodite and Ares in Iliad V. After three consecutive attempts, even Diomedes shrinks from a fourth and final confrontation with Apollo (V 432-444), and in doing so he is specifically described as avoiding the god's mênis (mênin aleuamenos: V 444). At the moment that he is making this fourth attempt, Diomedes qualifies as daimoni îsos 'equal to a daimôn' (V 438, which is then reported at V 459), and the deployment of this epithet coincides with the climax of ritual antagonism between the god and the hero.[1]
§4. When Patroklos, the surrogate of Achilles, confronts Apollo four consecutive times in two separate but closely related scenes, he too qualifies during his fourth attempt in both scenes as daimoni îsos 'equal to a daimôn' (XVI 705, 786). In the first scene, Patroklos shrinks from a fourth and final confrontation with the god--and he lives (XVI 705-711). In the second scene that follows shortly thereafter, Patroklos fails to avoid the fourth and final confrontation--and he is killed (XVI 786-789). In the first scene, Patroklos, like Diomedes, is specifically described as avoiding the god's mênis (mênin aleuamenos: XVI 711); in the second scene, he has intrinsically incurred it.[1] So also with Achilles himself: when the time comes for his own final confrontation with Apollo, the hero of the Iliad will die by failing to avoid the god's mênis, and the diction of the Iliad itself predicts this. Consider the "rehearsal" at XX 447-454, where the action would have proceeded as it had in the second confrontation scene of Patroklos at XVI
786-789, if only Apollo had not made the action void (XX 441-446).[2] But even if the epic action of Achilles is here ineffectual, his stance of antagonism towards Apollo is ominously clear:
as he is making his fourth attempt, he too is daimoni îsos 'equal to a daimôn' (XX 447).
§5. With the perspective of ritual at our disposal, and with the evidence of the traditionals epic diction that keeps formally matching the figures of Achilles and Apollo, we may now even ask whether the antipathy of the god toward the Achaeans in the Iliad has less to do--at least in origin--with his sympathy toward the Trojans and more with the theme of his antagonism toward the hero of the Iliad. In order to assure ourselves that the factor of ritual antagonism between god and hero can actually determine the antipathies of various gods in the epic tradition of the Trojan War, let us now turn to the figure of Hektor, the prime enemy of Achilles in the Iliad.
§6. The question is, which Olympian god would qualify as Hektor's ritual antagonist? Let us suppose that the heroic pattern of Hektor is inverse to that of his prime epic opponent. In that case, the Olympian who should bring about his death is Athena. And indeed, just as Paris and Apollo are named by the Iliad as the killers of Achilles (XIX 416-417, XXII 359-360), so also the death of Hektor is described as being actually caused by Athena, albeit with Achilles and his spear serving as her instrument (XXII 270-271, 445-446). Athena not only intervenes overtly in the final duel of Hektor and Achilles (see especially XXII 222-223, 275-277, 298-299); she even says that Achilles and she are to be the ones who vanquish Hektor (XXII 216-218).
§7. The mutual function of Athena and Apollo as the ritual antagonists of the two prime heroes who will fight each other in the Iliad, Hektor and Achilles respectively, becomes overt in Iliad VII 17-61. There the two Olympians, championing the Achaeans and Trojans respectively, decide to call a halt to the general battle between the two warring sides and to bring about instead a one- to-one conflict that pits Hektor against "whoever is best of the Achaeans" (VII 50).[1] At VII
58-61, as the preparations take place for a duel that should have matched Hektor against Achilles himself,[2] we get a singularly uncanny picture of the two main Olympian antagonists of Hektor and Achilles, Athena and Apollo, in the shape of two birds perched on the Tree of Zeus, observing the events that unfold--and all along "delighting in the heroes" (andrasi terpomenoi: VII 61).
§8. If indeed we may call Athena the ritual antagonist of Hektor, what is there in the hero that mirrors the goddess? To put it another way, how do the figures of Hektor and this divinity converge in theme and form? Let us first consider Hektor's heroic attributes and then his aspirations. Among his attributes, we note that Hektor is the only Trojan in the Iliad who is described as "equal to Zeus in mêtis" (Diï mêtin atalante: VII 47, XI 200).[1] In the words of Agamemnon himself (X 47-52), no other Trojan had performed more deeds of mêtis (mêtisasthai: X 48) against the Achaeans than Hektor.[2] In this respect, then, the function of the hero has a close affinity to Athena, the goddess of mêtis incarnate.[3] Here is a divine figure who not only boasts that her mêtis confers upon her the kleos that is hers from poetry (mêti ... kleomai: xiii 299): the poetic tradition actually establishes her as daughter of Zeus and Mêtis personified (Hesiod Th. 886-900).
§9. Another of Hektor's traditional attributes is his reputation for protecting the city and its people. At VI 402-403 and XXIV 729-730, this basic function of the hero is heralded in what can almost be described as programmatic fashion. In fact, Astuanax, his son's name, comes directly from the father's function of protecting the astu 'city':[1]
ton rh' Hektôr kaleeske Skamandrion, autar hoi alloi Astuanakt': oios gar erueto Ilion Hektôr
Hektor used to call him [his son] Skamandrios, but the others called him Astuanax; for Hektor alone protected Ilion.[2]
What is more, the name of Hektôr himself is an agent noun derived from the verb ekhô in the sense of "protect," as is attested precisely in the context of Hektor's protecting the city of Troy and its inhabitants:
hos te min autên
rhuskeu, eches d' alochous kednas kai nêpia tekna
... you [Hektor] who guarded it [the city],[3]
and you protected the cherished wives and helpless children[4]
phês pou ater laôn polin hexemen êd' epikourôn oios:
Perhaps you [Hektor] think that you will protect
the city [polis] all alone, without the fighting men and the allies.[5]
In this respect, too, the function of the hero has a close affinity to Athena, who is worshiped by the Trojans as the official guardian of their city. She is the goddess whose idol is enshrined in their citadel, and it is to her that they as a community pray in their hour of need (see especially VI 286-311). In fact, when they specifically pray to Athena that she ward off the onslaught of Diomedes, the verb that designates the action is a derivative of ekhô (aposchêi: VI 277). What is more, she is invoked in their prayers as (e)rusiptolis 'protector of the city' (rhusiptoli: VI 305), which is a generic cult epithet of Athena that we find applied exclusively to her in both of the two attested Homeric Hymn(s) to Athena (11.1, 28.3).[6]
§10. Both of these attributes showing an overlap between the figures of Hektor and Athena--as paragon of mêtis and as guardian of the city--are significantly involved in the actual death of the hero. The scene of Hektor's demise (at Iliad XXII) is motivated by an earlier scene of deliberation in the Council of the Trojans (XVIII 243-314), where Hektor goes against the pattern of action
that is marked out even by his name. He advocates an offensive strategy in response to the impending onslaught of Achilles, whereas his counterpart Poulydamas is advocating a defensive strategy. The immediate stance of Poulydamas as a counterpart of and alternative to Hektor is highlighted in the narrative by the manner in which this hero is described: he was born on the same night as Hektor (XVIII 251), and he had the reputation of excelling with words whereas Hektor excelled "with the spear" (XVIII 252).[1] Significantly, the scene of deliberation ends with the stratagem that wins approval, that of Hektor, being described as bad in contrast with that of Poulydamas (XVIII 310-313); moreover, the narrative specifies that Athena had here taken away Hektor's senses (XVIII 311), and that the hero's mêtis had gone bad (kaka mêtioônti: XVIII 312). For good measure, when the time comes for Hektor's final confrontation with Achilles, Athena again takes away Hektor's senses--this time by actively deluding him (XXII 222-247, 296-299).
§11. We come now to the question of Hektor's aspirations in the Iliad. The hero himself says that he wishes he were immortal and "honored"--specifically like Athena and Apollo:
ei gar egôn hôs
eiên athanatos kai agêrôs êmata panta, tioimên d' hôs tiet' Athênaiê kai Apollôn,
hôs nun hêmerê hêde kakon pherei Argeioisin
If only I were
immortal and unaging for all days to come,[1]
and if only I got tîmê [were honored] just as Athena and Apollo get tîmê [are honored]
--as surely as this day brings misfortune to the Argives.
What is more, he is accused by Poseidon (in the form of Kalkhas) of boasting that he is the child of Zeus:
Hektôr, hos Dios euchet' eristheneos païs einai
Hektor, who boasts to be the child of mighty Zeus.[2]
In fact, Hektor himself wishes that he were the child of Zeus:
ei gar egôn houtô ge Dios païs aigiochoio eiên êmata panta, tekoi de me potnia Hêrê, tioimên d' hôs tiet' Athênaiê kai Apollôn, hôs nun hêmerê hêde kakon pherei Argeioisi
If only I were the child of aegis-bearing Zeus
for all days to come, and the Lady Hera were my mother, and if only I got tîmê just as Athena and Apollo get tîmê
--as surely as this day brings misfortune to the Argives.
For the second time, we see an overt comparison of the hero with the gods Athena and Apollo. And the epithet Dios pais 'child of Zeus' is equally unmistakable: when they had met at the Tree of Zeus in the context of planning the duel that pits Hektor against whoever is the best of the Achaeans, both Apollo and Athena were specifically designated as son/daughter of Zeus (VII 23/24).[3] After Hektor is dead, his own father says of him:
Hektora th', hos theos eske met' andrasin, oude eôikei andros ge thnêtou païs emmenai, alla theoio
Hektor, who was a god among men; and he seemed to be the child not of a mortal but of a god.[4]
The wording here conveys a striking variation on the conventional theme of a hero's getting tîmê
from the community:
... theos d' hôs tieto dêmôi
... and he got tîmê from the dêmos, like a god
V 78 X 33 XI 58 XIII 218 XVI 605[5]
On the level of epic, of course, the hero gets tîmê by virtue of his reputation as a warrior; on the level of ritual, on the other hand, the hero gets tîmê in the form of cult--which is what the word tîmê itself can actually designate.[6] In the specific case of Hektor, the tîmê to which he aspires is that of Apollo and Athena themselves, and it is hard to imagine a more direct way for epic to convey the ritual aspect of a hero.
§12. The epic tradition of the Iliad has neither the vocabulary nor really the thematic need to distinguish the cult of heroes from the cult of gods. The hero's ritual antagonism with a divinity can find its epic expression in his aspiration to get the same tîmê as his divine counterpart, and the narrative leaves it at that. More directly, the plot of epic represents the ritual antagonism in a format where the god actually contrives the hero's death. What epic will not represent, however, is the symbiosis of god and hero in cult. On the level of epic, the Trojans cannot worship Hektor as the main protector of their city, in a manner that complements their worship of Athena.[1] For the Iliad, even the worship of Athena by the Trojans is a difficult theme to elaborate, because of the fundamental antagonism that exists between her and Hektor, the prime hero who protects the
Trojans. For the Iliad, the narrative focus on the antipathy that Athena has for Hektor blurs whatever sympathy she would have had for the Trojans. The scene where the Trojans pray to her is but a vestige of her relation to them.[2] And aside from this one scene with its strong ritual orientation, the Iliad, with its overall epic orientation, highlights instead the sympathy of Athena toward Achaean champions like Achilles, parallel with the sympathy of Apollo toward Hektor.
Notes
§1n1. See again Ch.2§8 on the function of Patroklos as therapôn of Achilles and Ch.6§§23-26
on the mourning over Patroklos as a substitute for the mourning over Achilles.
§2n1. For citations and further discussion of how all these words function in the Iliad, see Ch. 5§§8-16.
§2n2. Compare Apollo's epithet akersekomês 'unshorn' (as at XX 39) with the hair-shearing scene of Achilles at XXIII 140-153. Burkert (1975.19) stresses the association of this theme with vestigial aspects of what anthropologists would call initiation. Cf. also Brelich 1958.361.
§2n3. Burkert 1975.19. Cf. Chirassi Colombo 1977. In this connection, we may note that Achilles even swears by Apollo (I 86), and that the significance of this theme emerges from a careful study of the word apeileô'predict, threaten' and its deployment in the Iliad. I refer to a forthcoming work by Leonard Muellner, who also explores the thematic and formal links between apeileô and Apellôn/Apollôn.
§3n1. For more on the word daimôn: Ch.9§§5-6 (cf. Lowenstam 1975). Cf. also Muellner 1976.82-83 on XX 102.
§4n1. More on this crucial scene at Ch.17§5.
§4n2. Cf. also XXII 7-20.
§7n1. The essence of the gods' will is understood by Helenos, who imparts it to Hektor (VII 44-53). See Ch.2§3.
§7n2. See again Ch.2§3.
§8n1. On mêtis, see Ch.3§§5-8.
§8n2. The Achaeans' loss, which is in proportion to Hektor's gains in mêtis (X 43-52), is also equated with lack of boulê kerdaleê 'crafty planning' (boulês ... / kerdaleês: X 43-44). Compare this use of boulê 'plan, planning' in the context of mêtis with the uncanny image of Hektor as he "plans his plans," boulas bouleuei (X 415), at the sêma 'tomb' of Ilos, local hero of Troy. For the semantics of sêma, cognate of Indic dhyama 'thought', see Sinos 1975.83-90.
§8n3. See Detienne/Vernant 1974, esp. pp. 167-175, 176-200.
§9n1. For a correlation of the word astu itself with the theme of a protecting Hektor, see XXIV
499.
§9n2. This passage is the clearest example of a traditional convention in the naming of heroes: the son is named after one of the father's primary heroic characteristics. See Clader 1976.30-31 on Megapenthês 'he who has great penthos', the son of Menelaos (iv 11); the father's akhos/ penthos 'grief' is a traditional epic theme (e.g., iv 108-110). Cf. also the son of Nestor, Peisi- stratos 'he who persuades the army'. As for the son of Odysseus himself, Têle-makhos, his name may mean either "he who fights far away [at Troy]" or perhaps "he who fights from far away [with arrows]"; both characterizations are appropriate to the father. Finally, see van der Valk 1958.147n164 on the names of two of Herakles' three children by Megara: Thêrimakhos 'he who fights beasts' and Dêikoôn 'vigilant in battle' (vel sim.; cf. Chantraine II 551). These names correspond respectively to five of the hero's labors involving beasts and to five involving treacherous enemies. (The themes of Hades/death and Hesperides/life round out the number of labors to twelve.)
§9n3. The pronoun is referring to the polis 'city' of Troy, at XXIV 728.
§9n4. On the semantics of nêpios 'helpless': Edmunds 1976.
§9n5. Chantraine (II 330) considers the derivation of Hektôr from ekhô without discussing the semantics of the verb. The article by Meier 1976 helps fill the gap, although I think that his definition of the semantic sphere of ekhô is overrestrictive. The notion of "domination" need not always imply "domination by conquest." Consider the semantics of ktizô, etc.
§9n6. For more on the generic cult function of Athena as protector of the city: Nilsson I 346-349. For another distinctive epithet that apparently emphasizes the protective and defensive aspects of Athena, consider alalkomenêis as at IV 8 and V 908. On the derivation from alalkeîn 'ward off', see Chantraine I 57. For a survey of traditional themes featuring Athena on the defensive and offensive, see Vian 1968.58.
§10n1. On the spear as an emblem of biê (as opposed to mêtis), see the use of biê at Hesiod W&D 148, in the context of W&D 143-155 as discussed at Ch.9§9; see also §12. Compare the image of Achilles as a boy, armed with nothing but a spear (Ch.20§8).
§11n1. On the function of this wording in the process of immortalization: Ch.10 §30n2. More on
VIII 538-541 and related passages in Nagy 1990b.294.132-133.
§11n2. Having studied the inherited phraseology of eukhetai/eukheto 'boast', Muellner observes (1976.78): "This, the ultimate genealogy, is being put forward not as pretentious or boastful but true." For amplification, see the important discussion by Muellner at pp. 50-52, 80(n23).
§11n3. The specific wording Dios pais 'child of Zeus', as applied to Hektor (XIII 54), is also appropriate for female divinities (e.g., viii 488).
§11n4. Note too Muellner 1976.50 on VII 298, where the women of Troy are described as eukhomenai 'praying' to Hektor (dative): "This is the only place in all the Homeric corpus (including eukhomai in secular contexts) where a dative noun after eukhomai is not a god or a
collection of gods."
§11n5. In the Iliad, this expression is applied respectively to Dolopion, priest of Skamandros; Agamemnon; Aeneas; Thoas; and Onetor, priest of Zeus Idaios. Its significance can best be appreciated by considering more closely what is represented by the dêmos, described here as the source of tîmê for the hero. See n6.
§11n6. On tîmê in the sense of "cult": Ch.7§1n2. Moreover, we have observed en passant in Ch. 6§29 that cult practices were a strictly localized phenomenon in archaic Greek religion. Accordingly, the Homeric association of tîmê with dêmos (n5) is of utmost significance, in view of the connotations this word inherits. Derived from the root *dâ- 'divide, allot,
apportion' (Chantraine I 274), dêmos had originally meant something like "district," and this intrinsic local connotation is still overt in numerous Homeric contexts (e.g., V 710; XVI 437, 514; etc.); see especially Detienne 1968.131 on dêmos in Odyssey ii 32, 44 and Herodotus 1.62. It is even possible that the element dêmo- in compound names like Dêmophoôn (H.Dem.234: "shining for the dêmos") and Dêmodokos (viii 44, etc.: "approved by the dêmos") emphasized the localized functions of such figures. For more on the name Dêmophoôn: Ch.10§10n4; also Nagy 1990b.132-133.
§12n1. For a latent reference to the worship of Hektor: §11n4.
§12n2. Thus I disagree with the notion (cf. Bethe 1927 III 19-20) that the scene in Iliad VI where the Trojans worship Athena necessarily represents a "new" tradition--let alone that the passage itself is an interpolation. As for the observation that Athena's being guardian of Troy seems to be a more central theme in the Iliou Persis (Proclus pp. 107-108 Allen), it does not necessarily follow that such a divergent thematic treatment is less archaic than that of the Iliad. Newer compositions like the Iliou Persis may in fact use older themes than what we find in the Iliad. The theme of Athena's being guardian of Troy may well suit the political realities of the eighth or seventh centuries B.C. in the Troad, but the theme itself may be much more archaic.
The Best of the Achaeans Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry Revised Edition
Gregory Nagy
Copyright © 1980, 1997 The Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved. First edition 1979. Revised edition 1999. This document may be used, with this notice included, for noncommercial purposes within a subscribed
institution. No copies of this work may be distributed electronically outside of the subscribed institution, in whole or in part, without written permission from the JHU Press.
Go to Previous chapter; Next chapter; Table of Contents; Information
§1. In the Iliad, Hektor's aspiration to get the same tîmê that is accorded to Athena (and Apollo) not only formalizes the antagonism between hero and god; it also implies a slighting of the superior god's tîmê by the inferior hero. On the level of Homeric discourse, the dimension of cult that is conveyed by the word tîmê is latent in such situations, so that the hero's stance amounts to what seems to be--on the surface of the narrative--simply a slighting of the god's honor. On the level of Hesiodic discourse, by contrast, the tîmê of the gods in an analogous situation is overtly expressed in terms of cult.[1]
§2. The passage in question comes from the Myth of the Five Generations, in the Works and Days. Let us join the narrative midstream, at the description of the Second, or "Silver," Generation of Mankind, and how it came to grief after having enjoyed only the briefest span of adolescence (W&D 132-134). We are now about to be told the reason for this sudden demise:
hubrin gar atasthalon ouk edunanto
allêlôn apechein, oud' athanatous therapeuein êthelon oud' erdein makarôn hierois epi bômois, hê themis anthrôpoisi kat' êthea. tous men epeita
Zeus Kronidês ekrupse choloumenos, houneka timas ouk edidon makaressi theois hoi Olumpon echousin
For they could not keep wanton hubris from each other,
and they were unwilling either to be ministers to the immortals or to sacrifice on the sacred altars of the blessed ones,
which is the socially right thing for men, in accordance with their local customs. And Zeus the son of Kronos was angry and made them disappear,
because they did not give tîmai to the blessed gods who control Olympus.
§3. In this passage, remarkable as it is for both its explicitness and its precision, we see the institutional observance of cult being overtly expressed in terms of giving the gods tîmai.[1] This point is essential as we read further in the Works and Days. For, despite the fact that the men of the Silver Generation did not give tîmai to the gods, they still receive what they had failed to give:
deuteroi, all' empês timê kai toisin opêdei
They are second in rank, but nevertheless they too get tîmê.
The Silver Generation is "second," of course, to the First, or "Golden," Generation (W&D
109-126); by implication, it is to the Golden rather than Silver Generation that tîmê is primarily due-- next to the gods themselves.[2] Also by implication, the tîmê received by the Golden and Silver Generations comes from sacrifice, as performed by the mankind of the here-and-now.
§4. It is not immediately clear from these Hesiodic verses, however, if the Silver Generation actually represents a classification of heroes, in their ritual dimension as antagonists of gods. The specifically heroic nature of the Silver Generation becomes explicit only when we see how it complements the nature of the Golden Generation, with which it is formally and thematically coordinated. This coordination was observed in the irreplaceable Psyche of Erwin Rohde, and it is his reading that I will attempt to reformulate here.[1] The narrative of the Works and Days makes it clear that the lifespan of the Silver Generation would have been but a copy of the Golden, had it not been for the former's committing hubris 'outrage' (W&D 134-135).[2] The hubris of the Silver Generation is a consequence of its nature, which is to be contrasted with that of the Golden (W&D 129). In the case of the Golden Generation, the Hesiodic description of its nature is explicitly appropriate to heroes as they are worshiped in cult:
toi men daimones eisi Dios megalou dia boulas esthloi, epichthonioi, phulakes thnêtôn anthrôpôn hoi rha phulassousin te dikas kai schetlia erga, êera hessamenoi pantêi phoitôntes ep' aian, ploutodotai: kai touto geras basilêïon eschon
And they are the daimones, by the Will of Zeus.
They are the good,[3] the epikhthonioi, the guardians of mortal men. They guard the dikai and against bad deeds.
Invisible, they roam all over the Earth,[4]
givers of wealth. And they had this too as a geras, befitting kings.[5]
Whereas the Silver Generation commits hubris, the Golden is here described as upholding dikai (W&D 124). We will have more to say presently about this contrast in hubris/dikê, as also about the explicitly heroic characteristics of the Golden Generation; for now, the most important thing to observe is the description of this class of mankind as epikhthonioi (W&D 123).[6]
§5. As Rohde points out,[1] the epithet epi-khthonioi marks the earthbound condition of mankind (besides W&D 123, see Th. 416, Iliad IV 45, etc.; khthôn = 'earth'), as compared to the celestial existence of the Olympian gods, who are ep-ouranioi (see Iliad VI 129, etc.; ouranos = 'sky'). We must keep in mind that the function of epi- 'on, at' in these two formations is simply to associate figures with places. That much said, we now come to the description of the Silver Generation as the hupo-khthonioi 'those who abide under the earth':
toi men hupochthonioi makares thnêtoi kaleontai
And they are called the hupokhthonioi, blessed mortals.
Let us juxtapose the corresponding description of the Golden Generation:[2]
esthloi, epichthonioi, phulakes thnêtôn anthrôpôn
They are the good, the epikhthonioi, the guardians of mortal men.
True, the Silver Generation abides beneath the earth by virtue of being hupo-khthonioi, but this formation does not imply that the Golden Generation abides above the earth by virtue of being epi-khthonioi. As Rohde surveys the association of institutional hero cults with figures like Amphiaraos, Trophonios, Althaimenes, Teiresias, Erekhtheus, Phaethon, and others, he finds that the characteristics of these heroes match closely those of the Golden Generation, and yet their abodes in cult are all under the earth.[3] Even the diction of Hesiodic poetry bears out this feature. A figure like Phaethon is specifically called a daimôn in his function as nêopolos mukhios 'underground temple-attendant' of the goddess Aphrodite (Th. 991).[4] As we have already seen, those in the Golden Generation are also specifically called daimones (W&D 122).
§6. The essence, then, of the Golden and Silver Generations is that together they form a complete picture of the hero in cult. The evidence of Hesiodic diction even corroborates that both generations--not just the Golden--qualify as daimones.[1] In this respect, they are both like the Olympian gods, who also qualify as daimones (e.g., Iliad I 222, etc.).[2]
§7. If indeed the First and Second Generations of Mankind are designed as complementary categories, it remains to ask why a distinction was made in the first place. The answer is available in a study by Jean-Pierre Vernant, who has observed that the entire Myth of the Five Generations is permeated with the central theme of contrasting dikê with hubris.[1] The composition of the Works and Days elaborates this theme even further in the lengthy moral (W&D 213-285) that follows the Myth of the Five Generations (W&D 106-201).[2] We have, in fact, already seen that the concept of dikê characterizes the First Generation, as compared to the hubris of the Second. We must now add that the Third Generation is again characterized by hubris (hubries: W&D 146);[3] furthermore, it is then set off from the Fourth Generation for the specific reason that the Fourth has dikê, as compared to the Third (dikaioteron: W&D 158).[4] By virtue of dikê, the Fourth is also superior to the Third (dikaioteron kai areion: W&D 158), whereas the Second had been inferior to the First (polu cheiroteron: W&D 127). In other words, Generation I, which is marked by dikê, serves as a positive foil for Generation II, marked by hubris; correspondingly, Generation III, which is marked by hubris, serves as a negative foil for Generation IV, again marked by dikê. As for Generation V, which describes the realities of the Hesiodic world, the good is to be mixed in with the bad (W&D 179). In this world of the here-and-now, hubris is
engaged in an ongoing struggle with dikê (W&D 213-218 and beyond). I could put it another way: Generation V is the quintessence of the four opposing types of human condition, Generations I versus II, and III versus IV. The here-and-now incorporates all the oppositions of the past and the hereafter.
§8. It remains to ask what kind of human condition is represented by Generations III and IV. My answer will be based on the proposition that Generations I and II together form an integral picture of the hero in cult. Correspondingly, I propose that Generations III and IV together form a complete picture of the hero in epic. Furthermore, just as Generation I had represented the positive side of Generation II, so also Generation III represents the negative side of Generation IV.
§9. As in our discussion of the first two generations, let us approach the next two by beginning with the negative side of the picture. The Third or "Bronze" Generation is depicted as bent on nothing but hubris and war:
Zeus de patêr triton allo genos meropôn anthrôpôn chalkeion poiês', ouk argureôi ouden homoion,
ek melian, deinon te kai obrimon: hoisin Arêos erg' emele stonoenta kai hubries
And Zeus made another Generation of meropes men, the Third. And he made it Bronze, not at all like the Silver.
A Generation born from ash trees, violent and terrible.
Their minds were set on the woeful deeds of Ares and acts of hubris.[1]
Their very birth and essence, ash trees and bronze respectively, add up to a prime emblem of war: the generic spear of epic diction has a staff made of ash wood and a tip made of bronze, so that a Homeric word for "spear" like enkhos can bear either the epithet meilinon'of ash' (e.g., V 655) or khalkeon 'of bronze' (e.g., V 620).[2] The description of the Bronze Generation continues, with more details about their savage ways:
êsthion, all' adamantos echon kraterophrona thumon, aplastoi: megalê de biê kai cheires aaptoi
ex ômôn epephukon epi stibaroisi melessin.
tôn d' ên chalkea men teuchea, chalkeoi de te oikoi, chalkôi d' eirgazonto: melas d' ouk eske sidêros. kai toi men cheiressin hupo spheterêisi damentes bêsan es eurôenta domon kruerou Aidao, nônumnoi: thanatos de kai ekpaglous per eontas heile melas, lampron d' elipon phaos êelioio.
And they did not eat grain,
but their hard-dispositioned thûmos was made of hard rock.
They were forbidding: they had great biê and overpowering hands growing out of their shoulders, with firm foundations for limbs.[3]
Their implements were bronze, their houses were bronze, and they did their work with bronze. There was no iron.
And they were wiped out when they killed each other, and went nameless to the dank house of chill Hades.[4]
Terrible as they were, black Death still took them, and they left the bright light of the Sun.
§10. As the comparative studies of Francis Vian have shown,[1] this blood-crazed behavior of the Bronze Men is like that of a runaway Männerbund on the fringes of civilized society.[2] The Bronze Men are in the same mold as various other bands of impious warriors in Greek myth-- most notably the Spartoi and the Phlegyai.[3] We may note in particular that the Phlegyai are also characterized by hubris (Phleguôn ... hubristaôn: Ê.Apollo 278),[4] while the Spartoi are traditionally depicted as bearing the sign of the spear as a birthmark (Aristotle Poetics 1454b22). [5]
§11. Besides such remote figures as these Spartoi and Phlegyai, we can find a much more immediate manifestation of the heroic type represented by the Bronze Men. As we have seen in Chapter 7, Achilles himself is associated--however remotely--with the theme of plundering Delphi, as if he were of the same mold as the wanton Phlegyai.[1] Then too, Achilles himself has his epic moments of wanton slaughter, where the diction of even the Iliad presents its prime hero on the very fringes of savagery. More than that, we have seen in Chapters 3 and 4 that Achilles himself is the champion of biê in the Homeric tradition.[2] Now as we begin to see in the Works and Days that biê is also the mark of the Bronze Generation (W&D 148), we may be ready to infer that this Hesiodic classification of mankind suits the dark and latent side of the Homeric hero.[3] What may carry conviction is yet another striking convergence in detail between the figures of Achilles and the Bronze Men.
§12. We have already seen that bronze and ash wood are emblematic of the Third Generation (W&D 143-151) and that the spear of Homeric diction consists of the same elements: a tip of bronze and a shaft of ash wood. We must now observe further that the bronze-tipped ash spear of Achilles in particular is the only piece of the hero's armor that was not made by the divine smith Hephaistos (see XVII 194-197, XVIII 82-85). Rather, the spear of Achilles was inherited from his father, to whom it had been given by Cheiron the Centaur:
Pêliada meliên tên patri philôi pore Cheirôn Pêliou ek koruphês, phonon emmenai hêrôessin
the Pelian ash-spear, which Cheiron had given to his philos father, from the heights of Mount Pelion, to be death for heroes
In fact, Achilles is described as the only hero who could wield this magnificent spear (XVI 140-142), which is also the only piece of the hero's armor that Patroklos did not take with him
when he fatally replaced Achilles (XVI 139-141) and which is therefore the only piece not to be despoiled and then actually worn by the killer of Patroklos, Hektor. As Richard Shannon points out, the spear of Achilles is a theme that reaffirms the hero's connection with his mortal father, just as the rest of his armor connects him with his immortal mother.[1] What is more, as Shannon's whole monograph shows convincingly, the meliê 'ash spear' of Achilles is a word that is "restricted in the Iliad to describing the individual weapon of a specific character in particular contexts."[2] In sum, the diction of the entire Iliad makes the bronze-tipped ash spear an emblem of Achilles just as surely as the birthmark of a spear characterizes the wanton Spartoi, or as bronze and ash wood characterize the equally wanton Bronze Men.[3]
§13. Having seen how the Third Generation corresponds to the recessive dark side of the Homeric hero, we are ready to examine whether the Fourth Generation corresponds to the dominant illustrious side, worthy of glorification by epic poetry.[1] In the process, we will also have to examine the more basic question: to what extent may we look at Generation IV as the positive side of Generation III?
§14. The Hesiodic description of those in the Fourth Generation overtly names them as the heroes who fought at Thebes and at Troy (W&D159-165). Even the diction corresponds to that of Homeric Epos: the expression andrôn hêrôôn theion genos 'the divine generation of
hêrôes' (W&D 159) features the conventional Homeric word for "hero": hêrôs/hêrôes (Iliad I 4, etc.). In the entire Works and Days, the word hêrôs/hêrôes is in fact restricted to the Fourth Generation (W&D 159, 172).
§15. Conversely, the next epithet applied to the Fourth Generation, hêmitheoi 'half-gods' (W&D 160), is restricted in the entire Iliad and Odyssey to one attestation, XII 23. The immediate context is one of those rare moments when the narrative of the Iliaddistances itself from the epic action of the moment long enough to take in the wider view of the entire Iliad--and then the even wider view of the entire Trojan War. As the time frame expands, the perspective shifts from the heroic past to the here-and-now of the Homeric audience. The whole shift is occasioned by the topic of the wall that the Achaeans had built.[1] After a description of how the wall had functioned up to this point in the narrative (XII 3-9), we hear that it will no longer exist after a while (XII 9). Then comes a recounting of all the epic action that is yet to happen before the wall is destroyed: at this point in the narrative, Hektor is still alive (XII 10), Achilles still has his mênis (XII 10), and the Troy of Priam is not yet destroyed (XII 11). With the mention of the last theme, we are transported beyond the time frame of the Iliad into a brief account of Troy's destruction (XII
12-16)--after which Apollo and Poseidon let loose the rivers of the Troad in order to sweep away all traces of the Achaean Wall (XII 17-33, especially 26-32).[2]
§16. It is almost as if all the "props" that mark an Achaean expedition against Troy are to be obliterated once the expedition is over and the attention of epic switches to other places, other stories.[1] Among these "props" destined for obliteration, we get the following description of the
remains lying on the riverbanks:
hothi polla boagria kai truphaleiai
kappeson en koniêisi kai hêmitheôn genos andrôn
where many cowhide-shields and helmets
fell in the dust--as also a generation of hêmitheoi[2]
I have taken all this time in elaborating on the single Homeric attestation of hêmitheoi in order to show how closely the diction of archaic hexameter poetry responds to variant traditional perspectives on heroes. Whereas hêrôes is the appropriate word in epic, hêmitheoi is more appropriate to a style of expression that looks beyond epic.[3]
§17. In sum, I propose that the diction of the Works and Days represents the Fourth Generation of Mankind in a manner that is both appropriate to the heroes of epic tradition (consider hêrôes at W&D 159) and at the same time removed from the epic perspectives of the heroic age (consider hêmitheoi at W&D 160). It follows that we are now faced with an important question about the theme reflected by the diction. In specifically identifying the men of the Fourth Generation as those heroes who had fought at Thebes and at Troy, the Works and Days is doubtless making reference to actual epic traditions, and we have yet to ask what these may be.
§18. Let us look first at the Theban War. Actually, we may have to choose between two separate epic traditions about two separate Theban Wars: the Seven against Thebes, otherwise known as the Thebais, and the Epigonoi. Through the medium of Athenian tragedy--specifically through the Seven against Thebes by Aeschylus--we at least know indirectly the main themes inherited by the first of these two epic traditions, although there is very little that survives directly from either (see Thebais/Epigonoi at pp. 112-114/115-116 Allen). Even aside from the Aeschylean play, however, the Iliad itself gives us valuable glimpses of themes from the traditions of both the Thebais and the Epigonoi.[1] In fact, the references in Iliad IV-V reveal an interesting contrast between heroic types as represented by two distinct epic traditions.
§19. As we join the action in Iliad IV, we find Agamemnon goading Diomedes into battle with taunting words of neîkos 'blame' (neikessen: IV 368).[1] The king's taunt takes the form of an episodic narrative about the heroic exploits of Tydeus in one of his skirmishes with the Thebans (IV 370-400).[2] Since Tydeus was of course not only the father of Diomedes but also one of the Seven against Thebes, the narrative has a special application as a taunt for Diomedes, since he in turn was one of the Epigonoi. Even more important, the conclusion of Agamemnon's taunt is that Diomedes is inferior, khereia (accusative), to his father in battle (IV 400), and we note that we have seen a variant of the same word used in contrasting the Generations of Mankind (kheiroteron 'inferior': W&D 127).
§20. Diomedes responds to the taunt of Agamemnon by showing an eagerness to prove himself in battle (IV 401-402, 412-418), but his comrade Sthenelos cannot resist a rejoinder to Agamemnon. As we examine his words, we must keep in mind that Sthenelos was also one of
the Epigonoi, while his father Kapaneus was also one of the Seven against Thebes:
Atreïdê, mê pseude' epistamenos sapha eipein: hêmeis toi paterôn meg' ameinones euchometh' einai: hêmeis kai Thêbês hedos heilomen heptapuloio, pauroteron laon agagonth' hupo teichos areion, peithomenoi teraessi theôn kai Zênos arôgêi:
keinoi de spheterêisin atasthaliêisin olonto. tô mê moi pateras poth' homoiêi entheo timêi
Son of Atreus! Don't warp your talk when you know how to speak clearly! We boast to be much better than our fathers.
We even captured the foundations of seven-gated Thebes, having mustered a smaller army against a stronger fortress, and having heeded the signs of the gods and the help of Zeus. But they perished, by their own wantonness.
So do not bestow on our fathers a tîmê that is like ours.
Although Diomedes is socially compelled to answer Agamemnon's taunt with action rather than words,[1] the very theme of the taunt leads to his vindication. If indeed action weighs more heavily than words--which is after all the ideological basis for the taunt itself-- then surely the Epigonoi are better than the Seven against Thebes, since the sons captured Thebes and thus succeeded where their fathers had failed.[2] Thus the whole interchange that began with the taunt of Agamemnon amounts in the end to an affirmation that the Epigonoi were indeed superior to the Seven against Thebes.[3]
§21. Again, we are reminded of the Hesiodic Myth of the Five Generations. Since Generation IV is not only "more just" but also "better" (areion: W&D 158) than Generation III, we may ask whether there is a traditional parallel in the theme that makes the Epigonoi superior to the Seven against Thebes. Here too, after all, we see a contrast of actual generations. Moreover, the fathers of the Epigonoi are said to have died because of their "wantonness," atasthaliêisin (IV 409), and we must recognize that the word atasthalo- 'wanton' and its derivatives are conventionally associated in Homeric diction with acts denoted by the word hubris and its derivatives (XI 695, XIII 633-634, iii 207, xvii 588, etc.); the adjective atasthalo- even serves as an epithet of the noun hubris (xvi 86, xxiv 352). So too in Hesiodic diction: in fact, it is the same epithet atasthalo- 'wanton' that marks the hubris of Generation II (W&D 134), which is parallel to the hubris of Generation III (W&D 146).
§22. As we look about for an instance illustrating the "wanton" (atasthalo-) nature of the Seven against Thebes, we come upon a particularly grisly and negative theme--one that also happens to contrast sharply with a positive theme that reflects on the nature of the Epigonoi. We begin by considering the positive theme. There is a poetic tradition, as we learn from Skolion 894P, that both Diomedes and Achilles were immortalized on the Isles of the Blessed.[1] In the case of Diomedes, we see from the Pindaric allusion at Nemean 10.7 that it was Athena who brought
about his immortalization. The scholia to this passage reveal the corresponding negative theme.[2] Athena was about to confer immortality upon Tydeus, father of Diomedes, as he lay dying from wounds inflicted in his duel with the Theban hero Melanippos, who had also been mortally wounded. What stopped the goddess from fulfilling her initial design was her sheer disgust at what she saw: Tydeus was eating the brains of Melanippos.[3] Here, then, is the grisly deed that deprived Tydeus of an immortality that could have been his--but was passed on to his son Diomedes. Again we may compare the Hesiodic Myth of Generations, and how the men of Generation III are assigned to Hades (W&D 153) while those of Generation IV are eligible for the Isles of the Blessed (W&D 164-173).[4] For all these reasons, I conclude that the war against Thebes at W&D 162-163 is the war of the Epigonoi.[5]
§23. Having first looked at the Theban War, let us now turn to the Trojan War. The compressed Hesiodic retelling of the fate in store for the Achaean heroes who fought at Troy (W&D 167-173) resembles the plot of the Aithiopis more than that of the Iliad, in that the heroes who fell are said to be transported after death into a state of immortality on the Isles of the Blessed (W&D 171).[1] In the Aithiopis, both the main hero and the main heroic opponent--Achilles and Memnon respectively--are similarly transported after death into a state of immortality by their respective divine patronesses, Thetis and Eos (Proclus p. 106.14-15 and 6-7 Allen). By contrast, the plot of the Iliad ends on the theme of death for both the main hero and the main heroic opponent; the death of Hektor, which is the theme that ultimately closes the composition, explicitly requires the ensuing death of Achilles (XXII 359-360), and there is no overt prediction of impending immortality for either Achilles or Hektor anywhere in the Iliad (or in the Odyssey).[2]
§24. This dichotomy in how the Achilles story ends has led to the commonplace inference that the Iliad, being apparently an older composition than the Aithiopis, somehow represents an older set of beliefs according to which the Achilles figure fails to achieve immortality after death.[1] The two underlying assumptions are (1) that the Achilles figure ends at the same point where a given Achilles story ends and (2) that Hades had always represented an eschatological rather than a transitional state. Neither assumption carries conviction.
§25. Let us begin to look beyond these assumptions by quickly examining a parallel to the Iliadic finale of Achilles, in an epic composition known as the Oikhalias Halosis ('Capture of Oikhalia'), [1] transmitted by a rhapsodic organization at Samos known as the Kreophyleioi.[2] Thanks to Walter Burkert's meticulous survey of the attested documentation about this lost epic,[3] we know that there were several features in the plot structure of the Oikhalias Halosis that paralleled the specific conventions of the Iliad. (The parallelisms between this epic composed in the tradition of the Kreophyleioi of Samos and those composed in the tradition of the Homeridai of Chios[4] had even led to a myth that has the founding father Kreophylos being "given" the Oikhalias Halosis by Homer himself, who had left Chios to visit him in Samos and had then wanted to reward the host's cordial treatment of his guest.)[5] We find perhaps the most striking parallel between the Iliad and this particular Herakles epic in the emphasis on the theme of mortality. As we see from the retelling in Apollodorus 2.7.7, Herakles at the end of the Oikhalias Halosis arranges for the funeral of those who fought on his side,[6] much as Achilles makes possible the funeral of Hektor at the end of the Iliad. Thus the Oikhalias Halosis ends on a note of death and lamentation, and Burkert infers that such an ending foreshadows the impending death of Herakles himself.[7] In fact we know from the Hesiodic tradition that the inherited story of Herakles and Iole, the central theme of the Oikhalias Halosis, presupposes his subsequent suffering and death
on Mount Oeta (Hesiod fr. 25.20-25 and fr. 229MW)[8] --a traditional theme that is pictured again for us many years later by Sophocles in his Women of Trachis.[9] And yet we also know that the inherited theme of the hero's death and descent to Hades (Hesiod fr. 25.20-25MW) in turn presupposes his subsequent accession to Olympus and immortality (Hesiod fr. 25.26-33MW). [10] Note the transition from death and Hades to Olympus and immortalization:
kai] thane kai rh' Aïd[ao polustonon hike]to dôma. nun d' êdê theos esti, kakôn d' exêluthe pantôn, zôei d' entha per alloi Olumpia dômat' echontes athanatos kai agêros, echôn kall[is]phuron Hêbên
And he died and went to the mournful house of Hades.
But now he is already a god, and he has emerged from all the evils,
and he lives where the others who have their abodes on Olympus live also;
he is immortal and unaging, having as wife Hebe with the beautiful ankles.[11]
Hesiod fr. 25.25-28MW As Burkert points out, the theme of immortality in store for the hero is simply left outside the framework of the Oikhalias Halosis, by virtue of its epic ending.[12] In this respect, then, the composition bears a Homeric mark.[13]
§26. Accordingly, we should not be surprised to find an adherence to the same sort of Homeric touch in the genuinely Homeric Odyssey, where we indeed see Achilles languishing in Hades (xi 467-540, xxiv 15-18).[1] If the Odyssey is to complement the Iliad, Achilles must not yet be seen on the Isles of the Blessed.
§27. Beyond the Iliad and Odyssey, Achilles is regularly featured as having won immortality after death through the intervention of his divine mother Thetis; in this glorious state, he abides on the mythical island of Leuke (Aithiopis/Proclus p. 106.12-15 Allen),[1] which is an individualized variation on his other traditional abodes in the afterlife--either the Isles of the Blessed (Skolion 894P, Pindar O.2.68-80) or Elysium itself (Ibycus 291P, Simonides 558P).[2]
§28. The formal description of these diverse mythical places in the diction of archaic poetry presents a remarkably unified vision. We begin our survey of the relevant passages with the Homeric account of the Plain of Elysium (Êlusion pedion: iv 563), situated at the Edges of Earth (peirata gaiês: iv 563),[1] where Menelaos will be "sent" by the gods because he is consort of Helen (iv 564-569). Life here is described as "most easy" for humans (rhêïstê: iv 565), and there is no bad weather (iv 566), but instead the earth-encircling River Okeanos makes the Wind Zephyros blow so as to reanimate mortals (iv 567-568).[2] Let us straightway juxtapose this picture with the Hesiodic description of the Isles of the Blessed, the abode of such heroes as those who fell at Troy and were then given immortal life by divine agency (W&D 167-168). These Isles of the Blessed are also situated at the Edges of Earth (peirata gaiês: W&D 168), where the earth- encircling Okeanos flows (W&D 171); here too life is easy (W&D 170) and the weather is so good that the Earth bears crops three times yearly (W&D 172-173).
§29. As we now look even more closely at this Hesiodic passage describing the heroes who inhabit the Isles of the Blessed (W&D 167-173), we discover a remarkable mirroring of both theme and diction between these representatives of Generation IV and those of Generation I: I:
hôste theoi d' ezôon akêdea thumon echontes
They lived like gods, having a thûmos without cares. IV:
kai toi men naiousin akêdea thumon echontes
And they live having a thûmos without cares. I:
karpon d' ephere zeidôros aroura automatê pollon te kai aphthonon
And the grain-giving Earth bore crops by itself--a great and generous supply.
IV:
toisin meliêdea karpon
tris eteos thallonta pherei zeidôros aroura
And for them the grain-giving Earth bears delicious crops that come into bloom three times a year.
I:
hoi men epi Kronou êsan, hot' ouranôi embasileuen
And they were in the time of Kronos, when he was king in the sky. IV:
toisin Kronos embasileuei
And Kronos is king for them.
§30. The form of this ring composition is the reflex of a theme: that the progression of mankind has come full circle from Generation IV back to the Golden Age of Generation I. From these convergences in diction and theme, I infer that the ring-composed Hesiodic Myth of the Five Generations of Mankind operates in a cycle from Generation I to II to III to IV back to I, by way of the quintessential V of the here-and-now.[1] In line with this reasoning, I am ready to reinterpret the following verses:
mêket' epeit' ôphellon egô pemptoisi meteinai andrasin, all' ê prosthe thanein ê epeita genesthai
If only I no longer lived in the Fifth Generation, but had either died before it or been born after it!
The poet's wish to have died before the Fifth Generation would place him in the Fourth, while his alternative wish to be born after the Fifth would place him ahead into the First. Either way, he would reach the Golden Age. His longing is for the Golden Age as a permanent state: he is seeking release from the cycle of human existence, which is diachronically represented in the sequence of I to II to III to IV back to I and synchronically represented in the quintessential V.[2]
§31. The theme of a cycle that leads to the permanency of a Golden Age is attested in the traditional poetic diction of Pindar. Significantly, one attestation comes from a specific type of lamentation, a thrênos:[1]
hoisi de Phersephona poinan palaiou pentheos dexetai, es ton huperthen halion keinôn enatôi eteï andidoi psuchas palin, ek tan basilêes agauoi
kai sthenei kraipnoi sophiai te megistoi
andres auxont': es de ton loipon chronon hêroes ha-
gnoi pros anthrôpôn kaleontai
On whose behalf Persephone will receive compensation for a penthos of long standing, the psûkhai of these she sends back up, on the ninth year, to the sunlight above,
and from these [psûkhai] will grow illustrious kings, vigorous in strength and very great in wisdom.
And for the rest of time they shall be called holy heroes.
Pindar fr. 133SM[2] The title hêroes hagnoi 'holy heroes' at line 5 recalls the words olbioi hêrôes 'blessed
heroes' (W&D 172), describing the immortalized Fourth Generation. Moreover, the title basilêes 'kings' at line 3 recalls the honor appropriate to the Golden Generation, which is called the geras basilêion 'honorific portion of kings' (W&D 126).[3] In Pindar's Olympian 2, a composition that adopts the thematic apparatus of the thrênos apparently because of this genre's ad hoc appropriateness to the special circumstances of the performance and audience,[4] we see further elaboration on the traditional vision of the Golden Age:O.2.70-71: The place is the Isles of the Blessed, with the Tower of Kronos as landmark. Compare the reign of Kronos in the Golden Age, W&D 111, and on the Isles of the Blessed, W&D 169.O.2.70-72: The winds blow from the Okeanos. Compare the gusts of Zephyros blowing from the Okeanos bordering Elysium, iv
567-568; compare too the Okeanos bordering the Isles of the Blessed, W&D 171.O.2.72-74: The plant life is golden.[5] Compare the golden essence of the First Generation, W&D 109-110.O. 2.75-77: Rhadamanthys is there, rendering justice. Compare his presence in Elysium, iv 564.O. 2.78-80: Achilles is among those heroes who abide on the Isles of the Blessed. Compare the transportation of heroes who fell at Troy to the Isles of the Blessed, W&D 167-173.
§32. The envisioning of Achilles on the Isles of the Blessed formalizes the promise of an afterlife--a consolatory theme that is apparently intrinsic to the genre of the thrênos. In the Aithiopis, moreover, the thrênoi sung by the Muses over the dead Achilles himself lead immediately to his being transported into the actual state of immortality by his divine mother (Proclus p. 106.13-15 Allen).[1] Thus the epic narrative here fulfills on the level of content the promise that the genre of the thrênos offers on the level of form. In the Odyssey, by contrast, no such self-fulfillment can come from the mention of the thrênoi sung by the Muses over the dead Achilles (thrêneon: xxiv 61). It is Agamemnon who is telling of these thrênoi, and he is speaking to Achilles--who along with Agamemnon is at this very moment languishing in Hades!
§33. As we come back to the Hesiodic passage describing the Fourth Generation of Mankind (W&D 156-173), we can reaffirm that the heroes of the Trojan War in this representation belong to a narrative type that fits Achilles as he appears in the Aithiopis, not the Achilles of the Iliad and Odyssey. But we can also expand the comparison by considering the end in store for the Third Generation of Mankind. After these bloodthirsty warriors die, they are relegated specifically to Hades (W&D 152-155), which is in direct contrast with the Isles of the Blessed, the ultimate destination of the Fourth Generation. In this particular respect, then, the blood-thirsty warriors of the Third Generation resemble the Achilles of the Iliad and Odyssey, who is likewise destined for Hades. In other respects as well, we have seen resemblances: the wanton behavior of the Third Generation corresponds to the dark and recessive dimension of the prime Homeric hero, just as their very emblems of bronze and ash wood correspond to the spear of Achilles. As we have seen, that spear is the only mortal aspect of this hero's otherwise immortal apparatus.[1] I must add that our calling the armor of Achilles "immortal" is not a case of forcing an interpretation. The
epithet ambrota'immortal' is actually applied to the teukhea 'armor' of Achilles, as at XVII 194, 202.[2]
§34. Of course, the Iliad is hardly primitive on account of its delving into the mortal aspect of Achilles. If anything, the Iliadic emphasis on mortality is a mark of sophistication, which we can appreciate only after we take another look at traditional representations of immortality.
Notes
§1n1. For tîmê as "cult," see Ch.7§1n2.
§3n1. Cf. Rohde I 99n1.
§4n1. See Rohde I 91-110.
§4n2. For the significance of the opposition between hubrisand dikê in the Works and Days, I will rely on the study of Vernant 1966 [= 1960].
§4n3. On the connotations of esthlos 'worthy, good': Ch.10§1n2, §3n2.
§4n4. For the interpretation of êera hessamenoi 'wrapped in mist' at W&D 125 as "invisible," see Rohde I 96n3.
§4n5. On geras 'honorific portion', see Ch.7§19n3; on the connotations of basilêïon 'befitting
basilêes [kings]', see §31.
§4n6. For cogent arguments against the bracketing of W&D 124-125, see Rohde I 96n1; also Vernant 1966 [= 1960] 29. Albert Henrichs calls my attention to a remarkable parallelism between W&D 122-126 and the parabasis of Aristophanes Heroes = fr. 58 Austin. See Merkelbach 1967 and Gelzer 1969 (esp. pp. 123 ff.).
§5n1. Rohde I 97n1; so also the Proclus commentary. Cf. also Goldschmidt 1950.37, Vernant 1966 [= 1960] 25 and 1966b.274, and West 1978.182.
§5n2. For the textual problems at W&D 122-123, see West, pp. 181-182.
§5n4. See Rohde I 135n1, as well as Ch.10§§22-36 below; also Sinos 1975.17-37.
§6n1. The etymology of daimôn as 'he who apportions' (see Ch.7§15n1) is paralleled by the epithet ploutodotai 'givers of wealth' at W&D 126, correlated with daimones at W&D 122. For a warning against equating the daimones of Hesiodic diction with the daimones of Plato's usage, see Rohde I 96n2. Cf. also Detienne 1963, esp. the preface by J.-P. Vernant. Finally, consider the comment on the word by Nock 1972 [= 1944] 580n21: "It is a word of reflection and analysis."
§6n2. The Olympian gods in turn have some cult functions that properly belong beneath the Earth, in which contexts they qualify as khthonioi (e.g., W&D 465, Th. 767) or mukhioi(see Rohde I 135n1 for a survey of attestations in cult; cf. also Hesiod Th. 119).
§7n1. Vernant 1966 [= 1960] 20, 24-26.
§7n2. Within this passage (W&D 213-285), the words dikê/hubris occur no fewer than 27/4 times (derivatives included). On the intervening aînos of the hawk and the nightingale (W&D 202-212), see Puelma 1972; also Ch.12§18 below.
§7n3. Whether we read the textual variant hubries or hubrios, the present argument remains unaffected.
§7n4. The inherited meaning of a comparative like dikaioteros is not "X has more dikê [than Y]" but "X has dikê [as compared to Y, who does not]." Similarly, Homeric skaioteros [compared to dexios] is not "X is more left [than Y]" but "X is left [as compared to Y, which is right]"; also, dexiteros [compared to skaios] is not "X is more right [than Y]" but "X is right [as compared to Y, which is left]"; see Benveniste 1948.115-125.
§9n1. We may take special note here of the close association between the Bronze Generation and Ares, on which see Vian 1968.64-66. With regard to Ares as the god who is the essence of bronze, see Muellner 1976.82 on Iliad XX 102.
§9n2. Moreover, the meliê functions as the word for both "ash tree" (e.g., XVI 767) and "ash spear" (e.g., XVI 143). For a thorough discussion of the Homeric evidence, see Shannon 1975, esp. pp. 46-48 for his comments on W&D 143-155.
§9n3. Verses 148-149 are bracketed in Solmsen's edition on the grounds that their phraseology recurs in the Hesiodic description of the Hundred-Handers at Th. 147-153, 649, 670-673. But the textual repetitions are well motivated by the thematic parallelisms. See also Vian 1968.61-63 on the close thematic parallelisms between the Bronze Generation and the general category of earth- born Giants.
§9n4. The Bronze Men are nônumnoi 'nameless' in that their deeds cannot be glorified by poetry; so also the Achaeans would be nônumnoi if they were to be destroyed at Troy without having succeeded in capturing the city (XII 70, XIII 227, XIV 70). This is not to say that the deeds of the Bronze Men are not a fitting subject for poetry--only that the treatment of their deeds in poetry will not win them any glory (cf. §20 below). For the inherited poetic theme that the hero's name depends on being glorified by poetry, see Schmitt 1967.90-93.
§10n1. See especially Vian 1968 (with further bibliography), following Vernant 1966 [= 1960].
§10n2. In this respect, their association with Ares is significant. As Nilsson (I 517-519) points out, by classical times this god has many myths but noticeably few cults. Without cult, the figure of Ares is liable to be an outsider from the standpoint of the polis. Cf. also Vian 1968.55.
§10n3. On whom see Vian, pp. 59-61.
§10n4. See also Ch.7§5n3 on phleguân = hubrizein.
§10n5. Cf. Vernant 1966 [= 1960] 34.
§11n2. Ch.3§§5-8, Ch.4§5, Ch.7§22.
§11n3. See also Ch.7§17 and n4 for a correlation of Iliad I 177/V 891, where Achilles/Ares is reproached by Agamemnon/Zeus for being a lover of strife and war--precisely the characteristics of the Bronze Men!
§12n1. Shannon 1975.31. In fact, Hephaistos made not only the armor that Thetis gives to Achilles in Iliad XVIII but also the armor that has to be replaced when Hektor strips Patroklos; this earlier set of arms was inherited by Achilles from his father, who had received it from the gods in honor of his marrying Thetis (see again XVII 194-197, XVIII 82-85; cf. also Cypria fr. 3 Allen).
§12n2. Shannon, p. 93.
§12n3. Compare the picture of Achilles as a boy, armed with nothing but a spear, in Pindar N. 3.43-47 as discussed at Ch.20§8.
§13n1. Contrast §9n4.
§15n1. Aside from what I intend to say here, see West 1969 for an interesting discussion of the Achaean Wall and the relation of this theme to the Iliad as a whole.
§15n2. Even the diction that frames the naming of these rivers (XII 19-23) is parallel in style to the Hesiodic catalogue of rivers (Th. 337-345), those of the Troad included (Th. 340-345); cf. West 1966.259-260.
§16n1. Note in particular that the area by the Hellespont is explicitly smoothed over by the flooding rivers (XII 30-32). I suspect that this volunteered detail is consciously offered as a variant of the tradition that tells how the Achaeans had made a funeral mound for the dead Achilles by the Hellespont (xxiv 80-84). There is then an ironic fulfillment of the dire threat made by the river Xanthos/Skamandros to bury Achilles under a mound of silt (XXI 316-323), as if the funeral mound of Achilles were to be in the end simply a natural formation adorning the landscape of the Troad. I draw attention to the irony that the River calls this mound the sêma 'tomb' of Achilles (XXI 322), from which the Achaeans will not even be able to recover the hero's bones (XXI 320-321).
§16n2. This passage marks the only Homeric attestation of not just hêmitheoi but also boagria 'cowhide shields'. (Note too the use of the word genos with hêmitheoi!) Besides W&D 160, the word hêmitheoi occurs also at Hesiod fr. 204.100MW; the context (lines 95-103) is that Zeus plans the Trojan War in order that mortals may die and thus be separated from the immortal gods. Note the word eris'strife' at line 96 and compare the opening of the Cypria as discussed at Ch.
7§16.
§16n3. Note the context of the collocation genos andrôn hêmitheôn 'generation of men who were hêmitheoi' at Homeric Hymn 31.18-19 (cf. also Homeric Hymn 32.18-19). On the basis of the diction, I would infer that such compositions as Homeric Hymn 31 (and 32) are not preludes to an epic composition like the Iliad. Cf. Koller 1956, esp. p. 180. In Plato Hippias Maior 285d, stories about the "generations of heroes" (peri tôn genôn ... tôn te hêrôôn kai tôn anthrôpôn) are treated as a genre parallel to stories about colonizations (... kai tôn katoikiseôn, hôs to archaion ektisthêsan hai poleis); see Schmid 1947.xiii. On the local orientation of ktisis ('colonization') poetry and its suitability for the subject of hero cults, see Ch.7§28n3. Note also the context of hêmitheoi at Alcaeus fr. 42.13LP (aimitheôn) and at Simonides fr. 523.3P; "the best of the hêmitheoi" in the first passage is Achilles himself, while the second passage is from a thrênos, on which see further at §§31-32, Ch.10§§1-5. Finally, note the application of hêmitheoi at Bacchylides 9.10 and 13.155 respectively to the Seven against Thebes and the Achaeans who fought Hektor at Troy.
§18n1. We have to speak in terms of traditions rather than compositions. See Wehrli 1972 [= 1957] 65-66n27 for speculations over whether there was more than one extant composition known as the Thebais in the classical period.
§19n1. For the social context of neîkos, see Ch.12.
§19n2. Cf. also V 793-813. As yet another instance of narrated heroic exploits that serve as taunts in the format of neîkos, we will examine in Chapter 15 the duel of Achilles and Aeneas, at Iliad XX. For an interesting parallel in Old Irish narrative, consider the Tale of MacDathó's Pig; a translation is conveniently available in Cross and Slover 1936.199-207.
§20n1. Note that Agamemnon's taunt accuses Diomedes of being worse in deeds but better in words than his father (IV 400). The situation is altogether different, however, when it comes to Athena's taunt at V 793-813: her challenge is both mental and physical. Appropriately, the immediate response of Diomedes is not action but clever words (V 815-824), which in turn are justified by his later heroic action.
§20n2. Even the Catalogue of the Iliad takes into account the destruction of Thebes by the Epigonoi (II 505). The failure of the original Seven to destroy Thebes qualifies them as nônumnoi 'nameless'. The point is not that we do not know their names (we do) but that epic cannot give them a good name, as it were: see §9n4.
§20n3. There is also the clear implication that the host assembled by the Epigonoi against Thebes was superior to the host of Agamemnon at Troy, in that the Epigonoi had fewer men arrayed against a stronger defense, as Sthenelos says (IV 407). The immediate foils here are the Seven against Thebes, but the negative contrast extends to the host assembled by Agamemnon, a king who is traditionally described as having far more men than what the Trojan defense could muster (cf. II 119-130, XIII 737-739, XV 405-407).
§22n1. See further at Ch.10§1.
§22n2. See Pindar scholia, vol. 3, pp. 167-168 Drachmann; see also the scholia (ABT) to Iliad V 126 (Pherecydes FGrH 3.97).
§22n3. For the thematic associations of this act with the ideologies of cult, see Delcourt 1966; cf. also Vian 1963.204 and 1968.65. In W&D 146-147, the Bronze Generation is described as not eating grain (see §9), and the scholia ad loc. interpret this detail as an allusion to cannibalism.
§22n4. As I read W&D 158-168, my understanding is that the heroes of the Theban as well as the Trojan War are eligible. On the problem of line 166, see West 1978.192; as my discussion will show, however, I do not agree with his reasoning ("Epic is constantly telling us that they went to Hades"). See Foreword §19n21.
§22n5. The object of the war, "the sheep of Oedipus" (W&D 163), is a theme that applies not only to Eteokles and Polyneikes but also to their descendants. For sheep as an emblem of kingship, see the interesting, though diffuse, article of Orgogozo 1949. See also Ch.7§16n3.
§23n1. Whether all or only some of the heroes are meant depends on the authenticity of W&D
§23n2. For an instance of a latent prediction, see Ch.10§50.
§24n1. For perhaps the most forceful presentation of this notion, see Rohde I 84-90.
§25n1. Oikhalias Halosis pp. 144-147 Allen.
§25n2. Cf. Neanthes FGrH 84.29, Aristotle fr. 611.10 Rose, and the other sources assembled by Burkert 1972b.76-80, esp. p. 77n15.
§25n3. Burkert 1972b, esp. pp. 82-85.
§25n4. On whom see the scholia to Pindar N.2.1 (Hippostratus FGrH 568.5) and Harpocration
s.v. Homêridai (Acusilaus FGrH 2.2, Hellanicus FGrH 4.20). Cf. Dihle 1970.115 and Burkert 1972b.79.
§25n5. See especially Callimachus Epigram 6 Pfeiffer, and Burkert's commentary (1972b.76-77). See also Plato Republic 600b, as well as the truncated accounts in Certamen p. 237.322-323 Allen and Proclus p. 100.11-13 Allen.
§25n6. Burkert 1972b.84.
§25n7. Burkert ibid.
§25n8. Burkert ibid. For the cult of Herakles on Mount Oeta, see Nilsson 1951 [= 1922].
§25n9. For the indebtedness of the dramatist to the Oikhalias Halosis in particular and to non- Homeric Epos in general, see the bibliography assembled by Burkert 1972b.80n27.
§25n10. See also Hesiod fr. 229MW and Th. 950-955.
§25n11. The sequence of events in Hesiod fr. 25.20-33MW (first Hades at 20-25 and then Olympus at 26-33) was confusing to scholars of the Hellenistic period and thereafter; witness the obelizing of lines 26-33 in Pap.Oxy. 2075. And yet consider Odyssey xi 601-627 and the discussion at §26n. Cf. also Roloff 1970.93.
§25n12. Burkert 1972b.83-84.
§25n13. Ibid.
§26n1. Similarly, the Odyssey presents a stop-motion picture of Herakles in Hades (xi 601-627). But the vision is hardly eschatological: Herakles is at that very moment on Olympus with the immortal gods (xi 602-604). What we see in the narrative is truly a "vision" (eidôlon: xi 602), appropriate for other phases in other tellings of the story. See further at Ch.10§48.
§27n1. The island is envisioned well beyond the Hellespont, in the Black Sea (see Alcaeus fr. 354LP and Pindar N.4.49); this orientation can be correlated with the penetration of Hellenic enterprises into that area (especially on the part of Miletos) and with the establishment of cult centers honoring Achilles in actual locales physically suitable for the description of Leukê 'White Rock'. For a survey of the places bearing that name in the Black Sea region, see Rohde II
371-373n2; for the thematic associations of the name Leukê, see Rohde ibid. and Diehl 1953; also Nagy 1973.137-148. For an illuminating article on the Iliadic evidence for the Hellenic penetration of the Black Sea, see Drews 1976, esp. pp. 20-22. See now Nagy 1990.71.
§27n2. See also Plato Symposium 179e, 180b; Apollonius of Rhodes Argonautica 4.811-816; Apollodorus Epitome 5.5. For an eloquent discussion of the thematic convergences that link Leuke, the Isles of the Blessed, and Elysium, see Rohde II 365-378, esp. pp. 369-370n2. He calls Leuke the "Sonderelysion" of Achilles (Rohde II 371).
§28n1. For the themes associated with the peirata gaiês 'extremities of Earth', see in general Bergren 1975; for a correlation with the earth-encircling cosmic river Okeanos, see Nagy 1973.148-154.
§28n2. The verb anapsûkhein 'reanimate' (iv 568) implies, I propose, that death had somehow preceded the ultimate state of immortality. See further at Ch.10§28. After all, the prophecy at iv 561-562 says to Menelaos not that he will not die but that he will not die in Argos. In general, the experience of death seems to be a latent element in myths telling of abductions into a state of immortality: see Ch.10§§26-28. In its other attestations, anapsûkhein overtly means not "bring back to life" but simply "bring back to vigor" (see V 795, XIII 84, Hesiod W&D 608); this semantic restriction, however, is due to specialization of contexts. Compare the behavior of psûkhê in epic diction. Both swooning and dying can be conveyed by the theme of losing one's psûkhê, as at V 696 and XVI 856 respectively; in the case of a swoon as at V 696, revival is conveyed by the theme of regaining one's breath: note ampnunthê at V 697 (here it is the wind Boreas that restores the hero's breath: V 697-698). The actual word psûkhê, however, is not even used in contexts of reviving from a swoon--let alone reviving from death. Yet the psûkhê that is lost in the process of swooning is surely the same psûkhê that is regained in the process of reviving from the swoon. For the reading ampnunthê at V 697 and XIV 436 (instead of empnunthê), see Schnaufer 1970.199n540. My interpretation, however, differs from his. Finally,
consider the collocation of psûkhai (subject) and psûkhontai (verb) in the gold leaf of Hipponion (Zuntz 1976.133, line 4); note too the mention of psûkhron hudôr (ibid., line 7), flowing from the spring of Mnâmosunâ (ibid., lines 6 and 12). I propose to examine more closely the contexts of these words in another project. (See now Nagy 1990b.90-91.)
§29n1. W&D 169 has been renumbered as 173a and bracketed along with 173b-e in West's edition (1978.194-195). Even if 173b-e are indeed interpolated, it does not follow that the same goes for 169=173a. The instability of this line in the textual tradition may actually be due to a misunderstanding of the Kronos theme, which I interpret to be cyclic.
§30n1. In Celtic and Indic lore, the number 5 following the sequence 1-2-3-4 is a symbol of integration and centrality (see Rees and Rees 1961.118-204). I suspect that this symbolism is cognate with the traditions underlying the Hesiodic Myth of the Five Generations.
§30n2. The theme of being released after death from the cycle of man's existence is directly attested in the Thurian gold leaf A1 (Zuntz 1971.301 line 5), where the persona of the dead man declares:
kuklou d' exeptan barupentheos argaleoio.
I rushed out of the woeful kuklos of heavy penthos [grief].
Whether we translate kuklos abstractly as "circle" or concretely as "wheel," it clearly applies here to the human condition (Zuntz, pp. 320-322). Note that the Pythagorean word for "reincarnation" is anakuklôsis (p. 99.30DK; cf. Zuntz, p. 336). For another instance where kuklos designates the cyclic nature of man's existence, cf. Herodotus 1.207.2: if Cyrus recognizes that he is a mortal rather than an immortal, says Croesus, then he should accept the teaching "that there is a kuklos of human affairs" (ekeino prôton mathe hôs kuklos tôn anthrôpêiôn esti prêgmatôn). On a synchronic level, the immediate sense here is "wheel of fortune," but the ultimate context is still the predicament of mortality. Note that the persona of the dead man in the Thurian gold leaf A1 declares that he has become, after death, part of the olbion genos 'blessed breed' of immortals (Zuntz, p. 301, line 3; cf. also gold leaves A2 and A3) and that he will henceforth be addressed as olbie kai makariste 'holy and blessed' (line 8). Cf. olbioi hêrôes 'blessed heroes' (W&D 172), describing the immortalized fourth genos ('generation, breed') of mankind, who abide en makarôn nêsoisi 'on the Isles of the Blessed [makares]' (W&D 171). For more on the Thurian gold leaves, see Ch.10§20n5.
§31n1. For the inherited connections of the thrênos as a genre with the obsolescent institution of ancestor worship even in the classical period, see Ch.6§28: the cult of heroes in the polis evolved at least partly from the worship of ancestors in the genos 'clan'. Note that Simonides fr. 523P, which tells how the hêmitheoi (line 2) are destined not to have a bios 'lifespan' that is aphthitos'unfailing' (line 3), is an excerpt from a thrênos (Stobaeus 4.34.14). From the standpoint of the comparative method, the themes of the thrênos include elements archaic enough
to be of Indo-European pedigree (see Vian 1963.118).
§31n2. The passage is quoted by Plato Meno 81b to illustrate a traditional ideology preserved in social circles that he describes as well-versed in sacral lore. For a correlation of the ideology in this thrênos with the ideology of the Thurian gold leaves, cf. Zuntz 1971.313. I draw special attention to the words poinâ 'compensation' and penthos'grief' in the Pindaric fragment. The function of the latter word as a formal mark of lamentation has already been examined in detail (Ch.6); we have also seen it characterize the kuklos of life in the Thurian gold leaf A1: barupentheos 'of heavy penthos' (see §30n2). As for the former word, it figures prominently in the Thurian gold leaves A2 and A3 (Zuntz, pp. 303 and 305, line 4):
poinan d' antapeteis' ergôn henek' outi dikaiôn
and I paid compensation for unjust deeds [deeds without dikê]
We recall the absence and presence of dikê in Generations II/III and I/IV respectively (see §7).
§31n3. Cf. §4n5. In the Pharsalian gold leaf B1 (Zuntz, p. 359, line 11), the dead man is given the following promise for the afterlife:kai tot' epeit' a[lloisi meth'] hêrôessin anaxei[sand then you will be king along with the other hêrôes
§31n4. See Finley 1955.59: "nominally an epinikion, it [Olympian 2] is in fact a consolatory poem and a meditation on death." See also Bollack 1963 and Sinos 1975.136. Note that the thrênos itself as a genre is not restricted to the actual occasion of a funeral (Proclus Chrestomathy p. 247.16 ff. Westphal); see also Nilsson 1951 [= 1911] 98.
§31n5. The same theme recurs in a genuine thrênos by Pindar, fr. 129.5SM, where the description again concerns the Isles of the Blessed; cf. Sinos 1975.134-138.
§32n1. In the Proclus summary of the Aithiopis, the distinction between the thrênoi of the Muses and the gooi of Thetis and the Nereids is blurred (Thetis, with the Muses, thrênei ton paida 'mourns his son': Proclus p. 106.13-14 Allen). We may infer, however, that the actual narrative of the Aithiopis did maintain this distinction: cf. Odyssey xxiv 58-61 and the comments at Ch.
§33n2. For the limited time that Hektor is to be immune from death (see XVII 198-208), Zeus seals him in the armor of Achilles (XVII 209-212). Hektor had been able to kill Patroklos and despoil the armor of Achilles specifically because Apollo had first stripped away this armor in his attack on Patroklos (XVI 787-804). By the time that Hektor delivers the mortal blow, Patroklos has been denuded of the armor (XVI 815). See Thieme 1968 [= 1952] 120-121. When Hektor in turn wears this armor, he will be immune to everything except the ash spear of Achilles, with which he is mortally wounded (see XXII 319-330). Ironically, the immortal apparatus of Achilles
can thus be penetrated only by an emblem of mortality (see further at §12 above).
The Best of the Achaeans Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry Revised Edition
Gregory Nagy
Copyright © 1980, 1997 The Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved. First edition 1979. Revised edition 1999. This document may be used, with this notice included, for noncommercial purposes within a subscribed
institution. No copies of this work may be distributed electronically outside of the subscribed institution, in whole or in part, without written permission from the JHU Press.
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§1. Upon having their lifespan cut short by death, heroes receive as consolation the promise of immortality, but this state of immortality after death is located at the extremes of our universe, far removed from the realities of the here-and-now. We in this life have to keep reminding ourselves that the hero who died is still capable of pleasure, that he can still enjoy such real things as convivial feasts in the pleasant company of other youths like him. It is in this sort of spirit that the Banquet Song for Harmodios is composed, honoring the young man who had achieved the status of being worshiped as a hero by the Athenians for having died a tyrant killer:[1]
philtath' Harmodi', ou ti pou tethnêkas, nêsois d' en makarôn se phasin einai, hina per podôkês Achileus
Tudeïdên te phasi ton esthlon Diomêdea
Harmodios, most philos! Surely you are not at all dead, but they say that you are on the Isles of the Blessed,
the same place where swift-footed Achilles is,
and they say that the worthy Diomedes,[2] son of Tydeus, is there too.
Skolion 894P
The perfect tense of the verb ou ... tethnêkas 'you are not dead' leaves room for the reality of the hero's death: it is not that he did not die, but that he is not dead now. The fact of death, even for the hero, is painfully real and preoccupying. Consider this excerpt from a thrênos by Simonides:
oude gar hoi proteron pot' epelonto
theôn d' ex anaktôn egenonth' huies hêmitheoi, aponon oud' aphthiton oud' akindunon bion
Not even those who were before, once upon a time,
and who were born hêmitheoi as sons of the lord-gods,
not even they reached old age by bringing to a close a lifespan that is without toil, that is
aphthitos [unfailing], that is without danger.
Simonides fr. 523P Not even heroes, then, have a bios 'lifespan' that is aphthitos'unfailing'; they too have to die before the immortality that is promised by the thrênoi comes true.[4]
§2. Even in the Aithiopis, the immortality reached by Achilles is not an immediate but a remote state: after death, the hero is permanently removed from the here-and-now of the Achaeans who mourn him. For them, the immediacy of Achilles after death has to take the form of a funeral (Aithiopis/Proclus p. 106.12-16 Allen), which includes not only such things as the singing of thrênoi over his body (ibid. 12-13) but also--even after Achilles has already been transported to his immortal state--the actual building of a funeral mound and the holding of funeral games in his honor (ibid. 15-16). I conclude, then, that even in the Aithiopis the immortality of Achilles is predicated on his death, which is the occasion for the thrênoisung by the Muses as a consolation for his death. In the Iliad, the theme of immortality is similarly predicated on the death of Achilles, but here the focus of consolation is not on the hero's afterlife, but rather, on the eternal survival of the epic that glorifies him.
§3. As we now proceed to examine the diction in which this theme is expressed, we must keep in mind the words in the thrênos of Simonides (523P): even the heroes themselves fail to have a bios 'lifespan' that is aphthitos 'unfailing'. In the Iliad, Achilles himself says that he will have no kleos if he leaves Troy and goes home to live on into old age (IX 414-416)--but that he will indeed have a kleos that is aphthiton 'unfailing' (IX 413) if he stays to fight at Troy and dies young.[1] The same theme of the eternity achieved by the hero within epicrecurs in Pindar's Isthmian 8, and again it is expressed with the same root phthi- as in aphthito-; he will have a kleos that is everlasting (cf. xxiv 93-94):
ton men oude thanont' aoidai ti lipon
alla hoi para te puran taphon th' Helikôniai parthenoi stan, epi thrênon te poluphamon echean.
edox' ara kai athanatois,
esthlon ge phôta kai phthimenon humnois thean didomen
But when he [Achilles] died, the songs did not leave him,
but the Heliconian Maidens [Muses] stood by his funeral pyre and his funeral mound, and they poured forth a thrênos that is very renowned.
And so the gods decided
to hand over the worthy man, dead as he was [phthimenos], to the songs of the goddesses [Muses].[2]
Pindar I.8.62-66 The key word of the moment, phthi-menos, which I translate here in the conventional mode as "dead," is formed from a root that also carries with it the inherited metaphorical force of vegetal imagery: phthi- inherits the meaning "wilt," as in karpoûphthisin 'wilting of the crops' (Pindar Paean 9.14).[3] Through the comparative method, we can recover kindred vegetal imagery in another derivative of the root, the epithet a-phthi-ton as it applies to the kleos of Achilles at IX 413.[4]
§4. As in the Iliad, the contrast in this Pindaric passage concerns the mortality of Achilles and the immortality conferred by the songs of the Muses. More specifically, Pindar's words are also implying that the epic of Achilles amounts to an eternal outflow of the thrênos performed for Achilles by the Muses themselves. In this light, let us now consider again the Homeric evidence. In the Odyssey, the description of the funeral that the Achaeans hold for Achilles includes such details as the thrênos of the Muses (xxiv 60-61) and ends with the retrospective thought that "in this way" (hôs: xxiv 93) the hero kept his fame even after death and that he will have a kleos that is everlasting (xxiv 93-94). We get more evidence from the Iliad in the form of a correlation between theme and form. The forms are the actual names of Akhil(l)eus (from *Akhí-lâuos 'having a grieving lâos') and Patrokleês ('having the kleos of the ancestors'). As I have argued, [1] the figure of Patro-kleês is in the Iliad the thematic key to the kleos aphthiton of Achilles, while Akhi-l(l)eus is commensurately the key to the collective akhos 'grief' that the Achaeans have for Patroklos on the occasion of his funeral. Since this akhos takes the social form of lamentations even within the epic of the Iliad,[2] we can say that the theme we found in Pindar's Isthmian 8 is already active in the Homeric tradition; here too, lamentation extends into epic.
§5. Up to now, I have been stressing the remoteness inherent in the concept of immortality after death, as we find it pictured in the formal discourse of the thrênos and then transposed into the narrative traditions of epic. In contrast to the remoteness of this immortality stands the stark immediacy of death, conveyed forcefully within the same medium of the thrênos and beyond. We are again reminded of the excerpt from the thrênos of Simonides, which says that even the bios'lifespan' of the heroes themselves fails to be aphthitos (523P). The latent vegetal imagery in this theme--that the life of man "wilts" like a plant--brings us now to yet another important contrast in the poetic representations of immortality and death. Traditional Hellenic poetry makes the opposition immortality/ death not only remote/immediate but also artificial/natural. To put it another way: death and immortality are presented in terms of nature and culture respectively.[1]
§6. In Iliad VI, Diomedes is about to attack Glaukos, but first he asks his opponent whether he is a god, not wishing at this time to fight an immortal (VI 119-143; see the words for "mortal"/"immortal" at 123, 142/128, 140 respectively). In response, Glaukos begins by saying:
Tudeïdê megathume, tiê geneên ereeineis; hoiê per phullôn geneê, toiê de kai andrôn.
phulla ta men t' anemos chamadis cheei, alla de th' hulê têlethoôsa phuei, earos d' epigignetai hôrê.
hôs andrôn geneê hê men phuei hê d' apolêgei
Son of Tydeus, you with the great thûmos! Why do you ask about my geneê [lineage, line of birth]?[1]
The geneê of men is like the geneê of leaves. Some leaves are shed on the earth by the wind, while others are grown by the greening forest
--and the season of spring is at hand.
So also the geneê of men: one grows, another wilts.[2]
Here the life and death of mortals are being overtly compared to a natural process, the growing and wilting of leaves on trees.[3] In another such Homeric display of vegetal imagery, in this case spoken by the god Apollo himself as he talks about the human condition, this natural aspect of death is expressed specifically with the root phthi-:
ei dê soi ge brotôn heneka ptolemixô deilôn, hoi phulloisin eoikotes allote men te
zaphlegees telethousin, arourês karpon edontes, allote de phthinuthousin akêrioi
... if I should fight you on account of mortals,
the wretches, who are like leaves. At given times,
they come to their fullness, bursting forth in radiance,[4] eating the crops of the Earth, while at other times they wilt [phthi-nuthousin], victims of fate.
§7. Let us straightway contrast the immortalized heroes on the Isles of the Blessed, whose abode flourishes with golden plant life (Pindar O.2.72-74; Thrênos fr. 129.5SM). Also, let us contrast the First Generation of Mankind, whose very essence is gold (W&D 109). The immortality of the Golden Age is specifically correlated with the suspension of a vegetal cycle: in the Golden Age (W&D 117-118) as on the Isles of the Blessed (W&D 172-173), the earth bears crops without interruption. The description of Elysium supplements this picture: in the state of immortality, there is simply no winter, nor any bad weather at all (iv 566-568).
§8. In these images, we see gold as a general symbol for the artificial continuum of immortality, in opposition to the natural cycle of life and death as symbolized by the flourishing and wilting of
leaves on trees, where the theme of wilting is conventionally denoted with derivatives of the root phthi-. As we now set about to look for specific words that express this cultural negation of the vegetal cycle, we come back again to the negative epithet aphthito-. Let us begin with the skêptron'scepter' of Agamemnon (I 245-246), by which Achilles takes his mighty oath (I
234-244), and which is specifically described as "gold-studded" (chruseiois hêloisi peparmenon: I
246) and "golden" (chruseou: II 268). This skêptron, by which Agamemnon holds sway in Argos (II 108) and which an Achaean chieftain is bound by custom to hold in moments of solemn interchange (I 237-239, II 185-187), also qualifies specifically as aphthiton aiei'imperishable forever' (II 46, 186). It was made by the ultimate craftsman, Hephaistos (II 101), whose divine handicraft may be conventionally designated as both golden and aphthito- (e.g., XIV 238-239).[1] Significantly, this everlasting artifact of a skêptron provides the basis for the Oath of Achilles in form as well as in function:
all' ek toi ereô kai epi megan horkon omoumai:
nai ma tode skêptron, to men ou pote phulla kai ozous phusei, epei dê prôta tomên en oressi leloipen,
oud' anathêlêsei: peri gar rha he chalkos elepse phulla te kai phloion. nun aute min huies Achaiôn en palamêis phoreousi dikaspoloi
But I will say to you and swear a great oath:
I swear by this skêptron, which will no longer ever grow leaves and shoots, ever since it has left its place where it was cut down on the mountaintops-- and it will never bloom again, for Bronze has trimmed its leaves and bark.
But now the sons of the Achaeans hold it in their hands as they carry out dikai.
Achilles is here swearing not only by the skêptron but also in terms of what the skêptron is--a thing of nature that has been transformed into a thing of culture.[2] The Oath of Achilles is meant to be just as permanent and irreversible as the process of turning a shaft of living wood into a social artifact.[3] And just as the skêptron is imperishable 'aphthiton', so also the Oath of Achilles is eternally valid, in that Agamemnon and the Achaeans will permanently regret not having given the hero of the Iliad his due tîmê (I 240-244).
§9. For another Homeric instance featuring aphthito- as an epithet suitable for situations where the natural cycle of flourishing and wilting is negated, let us consider the Island of the Cyclopes. In Odyssey ix 116-141, this island and the mainland facing it are described in a manner that would suit the ideal Hellenic colony and its ideal peraiâ respectively,[1] if it were not for two special circumstances: the mainland is inhabited by Cyclopes, who are devoid of civilization (ix
106-115), while the island itself is populated by no one at all--neither by humans nor even by Cyclopes, since they cannot navigate (ix 123-125). At the very mention of navigation, there now follows a "what-if" narrative about the idealized place that the Island would become if it were colonized (ix 126-129).[2] If only there were ships (ix 126-127), and these ships reached the Island, there would be commerce (ix 127-129), and then there would also be agriculture, yielding limitless crops (ix 130-135). What is more, the grapevines produced by this ideal never-never
land would be aphthitoi 'unfailing' (ix 133). Thus if culture rather than nature prevailed on the Island of the Cyclopes, then its local wine would bear the mark of immortality. Again we see the epithet aphthito- denoting permanence in terms of culture imposed on nature.
§10. In fact, the epithet aphthito- functions as a mark of not only culture but even cult itself. In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the infant Demophon is destined by the goddess to have a tîmê'cult' that is aphthitos (H.Dem. 261, 263), and this boon is contrasted directly with the certainty that he is not to avoid death (H.Dem. 262).[1] As Demophon's substitute mother, Demeter had actually been preparing him for a life that is never to be interrupted by death (H.Dem. 242, 261-262), but the inadvertence of the infant's real mother had brought that plan to naught (H.Dem. 243-258). Still, Demophon is destined by the goddess to achieve immortality on the level of cult, so that her preparation of the infant was not in vain. We in fact catch a glimpse of the child's destiny as a hero of cult in the following description of how the goddess had been preparing him to be immortal:
etrephen en megarois: ho d' aexeto daimoni isos out' oun siton edôn, ou thêsamenos
...
chriesk' ambrosiêi hôs ei theou ekgegaôta, hêdu katapneiousa kai en kolpoisin echousa:[2] nuktas de krupteske puros menei êüte dalon
lathra philôn goneôn: tois de mega thaum' etetukto hôs prothalês teletheske, theoisi de anta eôikei
She nurtured him in the palace, and he grew up like a daimôn, not eating food, not sucking from the breast
...
She used to anoint him with ambrosia, as if he had been born of the goddess,[3] and she would breathe down her sweet breath on him as she held him at her bosom.
At nights she would conceal him within the menos of fire,[4] as if he were a smoldering log,[5] and his parents were kept unaware. But they marveled
at how full in bloom he came to be, and to look at him was like looking at the gods.
The underscored phrase at verse 235, meaning "and he grew up like a daimôn," contains a word that we have in fact already seen in the specific function of designating heroes on the level of cult (Hesiod W&D 122, Th. 991).[6]
§11. This same underscored phrase, as Sinos points out,[1] has an important formal parallel in the
ô moi egô deilê, ô moi dusaristotokeia,
hê t' epei ar tekon huion amumona te krateron te,
exochon hêrôôn: ho d' anedramen erneï isos
ton men egô threpsasa, phuton hôs gounôi alôês, nêusin epiproeêka korônisin Ilion eisô
Trôsi machêsomenon: ton d' ouch hupodexomai autis oikade nostêsanta domon Pêlêïon eisô.
Ah me, the wretch! Ah me, the mother--so sad it is--of the very best. I gave birth to a faultless and strong son,
the very best of heroes.[3] And he shot up like a seedling.[4]
I nurtured him[5] like a shoot in the choicest spot of the orchard,[6]
only to send him off on curved ships to fight at Troy. And I will never be welcoming him back home as returning warrior, back to the House of Peleus.
The context of these words is an actual lamentation (goos: XVIII 51), sung by the mother of Achilles himself over the death of her son[7] --a death that is presupposed by the narrative from the very moment that the death of the hero's surrogate Patroklos is announced to him.[8]
§12. It appears, then, that the mortality of a cult figure like Demophon is a theme that calls for the same sort of vegetal imagery as is appropriate to the mortality of Achilles. The examples can be multiplied: like the hero of the Iliad, who is likened to a young shoot with words like phuton (XVIII 57, 438) and ernos (XVIII 56,437),[1] the hero of the Hymn to Demeter is directly called a neon thalos'young sprout' (H.Dem. 66, 187).[2] Moreover, we have seen that this theme of mortality common to Demophon and Achilles is replete with the same sort of imagery that we find specifically in the genre of lamentation (consider again the goos of Thetis, XVIII 54-60).[3]
§13. In this light, let us reconsider the epithet aphthito-. We have already seen that it conveys the cultural negation of a natural process, the growing and the wilting of plants, and also, by extension, the life and the death of mortals. Now we must examine how this epithet conveys the theme of immortality in its application to Demophon and Achilles as heroes of cult and epic respectively. As compensation for the death that he cannot escape, Demophon gets a tîmê that is aphthitos (H.Dem. 261, 263); likewise, Achilles gets a kleos that is aphthiton (IX 413). Thus both heroes are destined for immortality in the form of a cultural institution that is predicated on the natural process of death. For Demophon, this predication is direct but implicit: by getting tîmê he is incorporated into hero cult, a general institution that is implicitly built around the basic principle that the hero must die.[1] For the Achilles of our Iliad, this same predication is explicit but indirect: by getting kleos he is incorporated into epic, which is presented by epic itself as an eternal extension of the lamentation sung by the Muses over the hero's death (xxiv 60-61, 93-94). [2] Thus the specific institution of lamentation, which is an aspect of hero-cult and which is implicit in the very name of Achilles, leads to the kleos of epic. For both heroes, the key to immortality is the permanence of the cultural institutions into which they are incorporated--cult for Demophon, epic for the Achilles of our Iliad. Both manifestations of both institutions qualify as aphthito-.
§14. For the Achilles of our Iliad, the kleos aphthiton of epic (IX 413) offers not only an apparatus of heroic immortality but also a paradox about the human condition of the hero. Achilles himself says that the way for him to achieve this kleos aphthiton is to die at Troy (IX
412-413), and that the way to lose kleos is to live life as a mortal, at home in Phthîê (IX
413-416). The overt Iliadic contrast of kleos aphthiton with the negation of kleos in the context of Phthîê is remarkable in view of the element phthi- contained by the place name. From the wording of Iliad IX 412-416, we are led to suspect that this element phthi- is either a genuine formant of Phthîêor is at least perceived as such in the process of Homeric composition. We see the actual correlation of the intransitive verb phthi- (middle endings) 'perish' with Phthîê at XIX 328-330, where Achilles is wishing that he alone had died at Troy and that his surrogate Patroklos had lived to come home. Again, coming home to Phthîê (XIX 330) is overtly contrasted with dying 'phthîsesthai' at Troy (XIX 329).[1] If indeed the name for the homeland of Achilles is motivated by the theme of vegetal death as conveyed by the root phthi-, then the traditional epithet reserved for the place is all the more remarkable: Phthîê is bôtianeira 'nourisher of men' (I 155). The combination seems to produce a coincidentia oppositorum,[2] in that the place name conveys the death of plants while its epithet conveys the life of plants--as it sustains the life of mortals. The element bôti- in this compound bôti-aneira stems from the verb system of boskô 'nourish', a word that specifically denotes the sustenance, by vegetation, of grazing animals, as at xiv 102, and of men, as at xi 365. In the latter instance, the object of the verb boskei 'nourishes' is anthrôpous 'men', and the subject is actually gaîa 'Earth'.[3] Thus the life and death of mortal men is based on the life and death of the plants that are grown for their nourishment: this is the message of the epithet bôtianeira in its application to the homeland of Achilles. Phthîê is the hero's local Earth, offering him the natural cycle of life and death as an alternative to his permanent existence within the cultural medium of epic.
§15. In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the foil for the permanence of cult as a cultural institution is also expressed by way of vegetal imagery: this time the image that we are considering is not the prolonged life but the prolonged death of plants, as denoted by the root phthi-. In contrast with the application of aphthito- to the tîmê of Demophon, let us consider the wording of the myth that tells how the permanence of all cult was endangered when the goddess Demeter prolonged indefinitely the failure of plant life:
epei mega mêdetai ergon
phthisai phul amenêna chamaigeneôn anthrôpôn
sperm' hupo gês kruptousa, kataphthinuthousa de timas athanatôn
For she [Demeter] is performing[1] a mighty deed,
to destroy [phthî-sai] the tribes of earth-born men, causing them to be witout menos,
by hiding the Seed underground--and she is destroying [kata-phthi-nuthousa] the tîmai of the immortal gods.
First, we are shown what the prolonged death of vegetation does to mortals, and we start with the adjective amenêna 'without menos' at verse 352, derived from the noun menos 'power.'[2] This epithet is proleptic, in that it anticipates what Demeter does to mortals by virtue of taking away the sustenance of vegetation: she thereby takes away their menos, and this action is here equated with the action of phthîsai at verse 352, meaning "destroy" or, from the metaphorical standpoint of human life as plant life, "cause [plants] to fail."[3] In Homeric diction, the intransitive uses of the
same verb phthi- can designate the failing of wine supplies (ix 163) and of food supplies (xii 329); when the food supplies fail, katephthito, the menea of men who eat them fail also (iv 363). Second, we are shown what the prolonged death of vegetation does to the immortal gods: again, the action of Demeter is designated with the verb phthi- (kataphthinuthousa, verse 353), but here the image of plant failure applies not to the gods directly but to their tîmai 'cults' instead. The impact of prolonged plant failure on cult is explicit:
kai nu ke pampan olesse genos meropôn anthrôpôn limou hup' argaleês, geraôn t' erikudea timên
kai thusiôn êmersen Olumpia dômat' echontas
She [Demeter] would have completely destroyed the genos of meropes men
with the painful famine, and she would have taken away from the gods who live in their Olympian abode
the tîmê of honorific portions and sacrifices.[4]
We see, then, that the indefinite perpetuation of vegetal death as expressed by phthi- is a natural image of cosmic disorder; it functions as a foil for the cultural image of cosmic order, as represented by the indefinite perpetuation of vegetal life and as expressed by aphthito-. We also see now more clearly the suitability of this epithet aphthito- for the function of defining not only cult in particular but also the eternal cosmic apparatus of the immortal gods in general.[5]
§16. The cosmic order of the Olympians is of course not only permanent but also sacred, and in fact both these qualities are conveyed by the same epithet aphthito-.[1] As we see from the Hesiodic tradition, nothing is more sacred or binding for the Olympians than taking an oath in the name of the Styx (Th. 793-805), and the river's waters in this particular context are specifically called aphthito- (Stugos aphthiton hudôr: Th. 805). If a god breaks such an oath, he has to endure the worst of punishments (Th. 793-805), which include the temporary withdrawal of divine sustenance, nectar and ambrosia (Th. 796-797).[2] The children of the Styx, Kratos and Biê (Th. 385), uphold the cosmic régime of Zeus (Th. 385-403), and in this context the river herself is called aphthito- (Stux aphthitos: Th. 389, 397). In the Homeric tradition as well (the Hymns included), to swear by the Styx is for any god the most sacrosanct of actions (XV 37-38, v 185-186, H.Apollo 85-86). When the goddess Demeter thus takes her oath in the name of the Styx (H.Dem. 259), what she swears is that the infant Demophon would have had a life uninterrupted by death (H.Dem. 260-261) and a tîmê that is aphthitos (H.Dem. 261). Demeter then says that the inadvertence of the infant's real mother has negated the first part of the Oath (H.Dem. 262), but the second part remains valid: Demophon will still have a tîmê that is aphthitos (H.Dem. 263). We now see that the epithet aphthito- in this context conveys not only the permanence of Demophon's cult, but also its intrinsic sacredness, as conferred by the essence of Demeter's Oath.[3]
§17. So also Achilles swears by the skêptron of King Agamemnon (I 234-239), affirming both that the Achaeans will one day yearn for him and that Agamemnon will then regret not having given "the best of the Achaeans" his due tîmê (I 240-244). Here we must keep in mind that the
skêptron itself is aphthiton(II 46, 186). Accordingly, the Oath of Achilles is not only permanent in its validity but also sacred. Moreover, the wish that the mother of Achilles conveys from the hero to Zeus is phrased from the standpoint of the Oath: let the Achaeans be hard pressed without the might of Achilles, and let their king regret not having given the hero his due tîmê (I 409-412). It is this wish that Thetis presents to Zeus (I 503-510), with special emphasis on the tîmê of Achilles (I 505, 507, 508, 510bis), and it is this wish that Zeus ratifies irrevocably (I 524-530). In this way, the Oath of Achilles is translated into the Will of Zeus, which, as we have seen, is the self-proclaimed plot of our Iliad.[1] The oath is sacred because it is founded on the skêptron, which is aphthiton; now we see that the epic validating the tîmê of Achilles is also sacred, for the very reason that it is founded on this Oath. Accordingly, the epithet aphthito- as it applies to the kleos of Achilles (IX 413) conveys not only the permanence of the hero's epic but also its intrinsic sacredness as conferred by the essence of the hero's Oath.
§18. The traditional application of aphthito- to both the cult of Demophon and the epic of Achilles serves as a key to what is for us a missing theme in the archaic story of Achilles. In the case of Demophon, we have seen how the hero gets a tîmê that is aphthitos because the goddess swears by the Styx, which is itself aphthitos. We have yet to follow through, however, on what such a combination of Stux and aphthitos implies: that the waters of the Styx are an elixir of life. [1] The lore about the cosmic stream Styx applies commensurately to the actual stream Styx in Arcadia,[2] and in fact the belief prevails to this day that whoever drinks of that stream's waters under the right conditions may gain immortality.[3] The point is that there survives for us a story telling how Thetis had immersed the infant Achilles into the waters of the Styx, in an unsuccessful attempt to exempt him from death (Statius Achilleid 1.269; Servius ad Virgil Aeneid 6.57; etc.). This failure of Thetis must be compared with the failure of Demeter in her attempt to make Demophon immortal. It would indeed be conventional for scholars to consider the story of Achilles in the Styx as a parallel to that of Demophon in the fire, if it were not for the fact that there is no attestation of such an Achilles story in archaic poetry.[4] This obstacle may now perhaps be overcome with the indirect testimony of the epithet aphthito-: for both Demophon and Achilles, this word marks a compensatory form of immortality, and the Stygian authority of this deathlessness is overt in the case of Demophon. In the case of Achilles, we may say that the authority of the skêptron is a worthy variation on the authority of the Stux, in that both skêptron and Stux are intrinsically aphthito-. From the standpoint of diction, either could ratify the kleos of Achilles as aphthiton.
§19. As our lengthy survey of the word aphthito- in Homeric and Hesiodic diction comes to an end, we conclude that this epithet can denote the permanent and sacred order of the Olympians,[1] into which the hero is incorporated after death through such cultural media as epic in particular and cult in general.
§20. It remains to ask a more important question: whether the theme of the hero immortalized in cult is compatible with the poetic visions of the hero immortalized by being transported to Elysium, to the Isles of the Blessed, or even to Olympus itself. Rohde, for one, thought that the concept of heroes being transported into a remote state of immortality is purely poetic and thus alien to the religious concept of heroes being venerated in cult.[1] From the actual evidence of cult, however, we see that the two concepts are not at all treated as if they were at odds with each other.[2] In fact, the forms Êlusion 'Elysium' and Makarôn nêsoi'Isles of the Blessed' are appropriate as names for actual cult sites. The proper noun Êlusion coincides with the common
noun en-êlusion, meaning 'place made sacred by virtue of being struck by the
thunderbolt' (Polemon fr. 5 Tresp); correspondingly, the adjective en-êlusios means 'made sacred by virtue of being struck by the thunderbolt' (Aeschylus fr. 17N = fr. 263M).[3] The form Êlusion itself is glossed in the Alexandrian lexicographical tradition (Hesychius) as kekeraunômenon chôrion ê pedion 'a place or field that has been struck by the thunderbolt', with this added remark: kaleitai de kai enêlusia 'and it is also called enêlusia'. As for Makarôn nêsos, there is a tradition that the name was actually applied to the old acropolis of Thebes, the Kadmeion; specifically, the name designated the sacred precinct where Semele, the mother of Dionysos, had been struck dead by the thunderbolt of Zeus (Parmenides ap. Suda and ap. Photius, s.v. Makarôn nêsos; Tzetzes ad Lycophron 1194, 1204).[4] We are immediately reminded of the poetic tradition that tells how Semele became immortalized as a direct result of dying from the thunderbolt of Zeus (see Pindar O.2.25, in conjunction with Hesiod Th. 942).[5]
§21. We are in fact now ready to examine the general evidence of poetic traditions, in order to test whether the medium of poetry distinguishes this concept of heroes (or heroines) being transported into a state of immortality from the concept of their being venerated in cult. As with the evidence of cult itself, we will find that poetic diction reveals no contradiction between these two concepts.
§22. Actually, there are poetic themes that tell of a hero's actual veneration in cult, and these themes are even combined with those that tell of his translation into immortality. Such combinations in fact form an integral picture of the heroic afterlife, as in the Hesiodic version of the Phaethon myth:[1]
autar toi Kephalôi phitusato phaidimon huion, iphthimon Phaethonta, theois epieikelon andra. ton rha neon teren anthos echont' erikudeos hêbês paid' atala phroneonta philommeidês Aphroditê ôrt' anereipsamenê, kai min zatheois eni nêois nêopolon muchion poiêsato, daimona dion
And she [Eos] sprouted for Kephalos an illustrious son, sturdy Phaethon, a man who looked like the gods.
When he was young and still had the tender bloom of glorious adolescence,
Aphrodite philommeidês[2] rushed up and snatched him away as he was thinking playful thoughts.
And she made him an underground temple attendant, a dîos daimôn, in her holy temple.
Hesiod Th. 986-991 Phaethon in the afterlife is overtly presented as a daimôn of cult (Th. 991) who functions within an undisturbed corner plot, mukhos, of Aphrodite's precinct (hence mukhios at Th. 991)[3] as the goddess's nêopolos 'temple attendant' (again Th. 991). The designation of Phaethon as daimôn also conveys the immortal aspect of the hero in his afterlife, since it puts him in the same category as the Golden Generation, who are themselves explicitly daimones (W&D 122).[4] As for the mortal aspect of Phaethon, we may observe the vegetal imagery surrounding his birth and adolescence. When he is about to be snatched away forever, he bears the anthos 'bloom' of
adolescence (Th. 988). Earlier, the verb that denotes his very birth from Eos is phîtûsato (Th. 986): the Dawn Goddess "sprouted" him as if he were some plant. We see here in the Theogony the only application of phîtûein 'sprout' to the act of reproduction, which is elsewhere conventionally denoted by tiktein and geinasthai.[5] The most immediate parallel is the birth of the Athenian hero Erekhtheus, who was directly sprouted by Earth herself:
threpse Dios thugatêr, teke de zeidôros aroura, kad d' en Athênêis heisen, heôi en pioni nêôi. entha de min tauroisi kai arneiois hilaontai kouroi Athênaiôn peritellomenôn eniautôn
Athena the daughter of Zeus once upon a time nurtured him, but grain-giving earth gave him birth,[6]
and she [Athena] established him in Athens, in her own rich temple, and there it is that the koûroi of the Athenians supplicate him, every year when the time comes, with bulls and lambs.
As with Phaethon, the immortal aspect of the hero Erekhtheus is conveyed by his permanent installation within the sacred precinct of a goddess.[7]
§23. We have yet to examine the actual process of Phaethon's translation into heroic immortality. [1] The key word is the participle anereipsamenê (Th. 990), describing Aphrodite at the moment that she snatches Phaethon away to be with her forever. The word recurs in the finite form anêreipsanto (XX 234), describing the gods as they abduct Ganymedes to be the cup bearer of Zeus for all time to come. In the next verse, we hear the motive for the divine action:
kalleos heineka hoio, hin' athanatoisi meteiê
on account of his beauty, so that he might be among the Immortals.
The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite elaborates on the same myth: it was Zeus himself who abducted Ganymedes (H.Aphr. 202-203). Here too, the motive is presented as the same:
hon dia kallos, hin' athanatoisi meteiê
on account of his beauty, so that he might be among the Immortals.
In this retelling as well as in all the others, Ganymedes becomes the cup bearer of Zeus; and as
such he abides in the gods' royal palace at Olympus (H.Aphr. 204-206). By virtue of gaining Olympian status, he is in fact described as an Immortal himself:
athanatos kai agêrôs isa theoisin
immortal and unaging, just as the gods are.[2]
As cup bearer and boy-love of Zeus, Ganymedes also qualifies as a daimôn:
paidophilein de ti terpnon, epei pote kai Ganumêdous êrato kai Kronidês athanatôn basileus,
harpaxas d' es Olumpon anêgage kai min ethêken daimona, paideiês anthos echont' eraton
Loving a boy is a pleasant thing. For even the Son of Kronos, king of the Immortals, loved Ganymedes.
He abducted him, took him up to Olympus,[3] and made him a daimôn, having the lovely bloom of boyhood.
Theognis 1345-1348
The parallelisms between this Theognidean passage about Ganymedes and the Hesiodic passage about Phaethon (Th. 986-991) are remarkable not just because of the convergences in detail (both heroes are described as daimôn, both have the anthos 'bloom' of youth, etc.). An even more remarkable fact about these parallelisms is that the processes of preservation on Olympus and preservation in cult function as equivalent poetic themes.
§24. The parallelisms between the myth of Ganymedes and that of Phaethon lead to our discovery of further details about the process of heroic preservation. When the gods abducted 'anêreipsanto' the young Ganymedes (XX 234), the specific instrument of the divine action was a gust of wind, an aella:
... hoppêi hoi philon huion anêrpase thespis aella
... to whatever place the wondrous aella abducted him
Actually, in every other Homeric attestation of anêreipsanto besides XX 234, the notion "gusts of wind" serves as subject of the verb.[1] When Penelope mourns the unknown fate of her absent son Telemachus, she says:
nun au paid' agapêton anêreipsanto thuellai
But now the thuellai have abducted my beloved son.
When Telemachus mourns the unknown fate of his absent father Odysseus, he says:[2]
nun de min akleiôs harpuiai anêreipsanto
But now the harpuiai have abducted him, without kleos.
§25. The meaning of thuella 'gust of wind' is certain (see the collocation of thuella with anemoio 'of wind' at VI 346, etc.). As for harpuia, a word that is also personified as "Harpy" (Th. 267), [1] the same meaning "gust of wind" is apparent from the only remaining Homeric attestation of the verb anêreipsanto 'abducted'. After Penelope wishes that Artemis smite her dead and take her thûmosimmediately, we hear her make an alternative wish:
ê epeita m' anarpaxasa thuella
oichoito propherousa kat' êeroenta keleutha, en prochoêis de baloi apsorroou Ôkeanoio
or later, may a thuella abduct me;
may it go off and take me away along misty ways,
and plunge me into the streams of Okeanos, which flows in a circle.
As precedent for being abducted by a gust of wind and cast down into the Okeanos, her words evoke the story about the daughters of Pandareos:
hôs d' hote Pandareou kouras anelonto thuellai
as when the thuellai took away the daughters of Pandareos
This mention of abduction is followed by a description of how the Pandareids were preserved by the Olympian goddesses (xx 67-72). The preservation of the girls is then interrupted by death, at the very moment that Aphrodite is arranging for them to be married (xx 73-74). Death comes in
the form of abduction:
tophra de tas kouras harpuiai anêreipsanto
then the harpuiai abducted the girls[2]
§26. Our survey has by now covered all the Homeric/Hesiodic attestations of anêreipsanto/ anereipsamenê, and we can reach several conclusions. Most important of all, we see that the divine abduction of mortals by gusts of wind (thuellai or harpuiai) entails not only preservation but also sex and death.[1] Of these last two experiences, we will leave the first in abeyance until we confront the second.
§27. In the imagery of passages featuring the forms anêreipsanto/ anereipsamenê, you experience death when the abducting winds plunge you into the earth-encircling river Okeanos. So we have seen from Penelope's death wish (xx 63-65). As we see further from Homeric diction, especially at xxiv 1-14, the Okeanos is one of the prime mythical boundaries that serve to delimit light from darkness, life from death, wakefulness from sleep, consciousness from unconsciousness.[1] The River Okeanos marks the cosmic extremities beyond Earth and Seas (cf. XIV 301-302). The Sun himself, Helios, plunges into it every sunset (VIII 485) and emerges from it every sunrise (VII 421-423, xix 433-434). As the Sun thus rises at Dawn from the Okeanos, he stirs the arourai 'fertile lands' (VII 421, xix 433),[2] and we are reminded by this action that the noun aroura itself traditionally attracts such epithets of fertility as zeidôros'grain- giving' (II 548, VIII 486, etc.).[3] Since plunging into the Okeanos overtly conveys death (xx
63-65), it follows that the notion of emerging from it conveys regeneration. For the Sun, we infer that regeneration through Okeanos is cosmic, bringing with it the fertility of Earth itself; in fact, Okeanos qualifies not only as theôn genesin 'genesis of gods' (XIV 201, 302) but even as genesis pantessi 'genesis for all things' (XIV 246).
§28. In this light, it becomes significant that the Okeanos is also a traditional landmark both for the Isles of the Blessed (W&D 171) and for Elysium itself (iv 567-568). What is more, the Okeanos in the context of Elysium has the specific function of reanimating mortals:[1]
all' aiei Zephuroio ligu pneiontos aêtas Ôkeanos aniêsin anapsuchein anthrôpous
but the Okeanos sends up the gusts of shrill-blowing Zephyros at all times, so as to reanimate men[2]
On the basis, then, of incidental references to the Sun and its movements in epic diction, we can
detect a solar model of death and regeneration--both through the Okeanos. Moreover, we see that this solar model applies to the general theme of the hero's return from death. As we now look for specific instances of this theme, we turn to the myths about the personification of sunrise, Eos. In doing so we also confront a third theme in the myths of abduction: having already noted death and preservation, we are ready to reckon with a theme of sex.
§29. There is an archaic tradition that features the Dawn Goddess Eos herself abducting young male mortals, and her motive is in part sexual.[1] In the Odyssey, the immortal nymph Kalypso cites the abduction of Orion by Eos as a precedent for her mating with Odysseus (v 121-124). Similarly, Aphrodite herself cites both the abduction of Ganymedes by Zeus and the abduction of Tithonos by Eos as precedents for her mating with Anchises (H.Aphr. 202-238). As for the abduction of Phaethon, again by Aphrodite, the precedent is built into the young hero's genealogy: his father Kephalos had been abducted by his mother Eos (Th. 986; Euripides Hippolytus 455).
§30. As with the myth of Aphrodite and Phaethon, the myths of Eos too are marked by the design of making the hero immortal. Thus when Eos abducts Kleitos, her motive is described in these words:
kalleos heineka hoio, hin' athanatoisi meteiê
on account of his beauty, so that he might be among the Immortals
The very same words, as we have seen, mark the immortalization of Ganymedes after his
abduction by Zeus (XX 235; cf. H.Aphr. 203).[1] The divine motive for abduction by Eos is thus both preservative and sexual.[2]
§31. In order to see at a closer range the operation of a solar model in the myths of divine abduction, let us return to the Hesiodic myth of Phaethon (Th. 986-991).[1] The form of his name in Homeric diction serves as an actual epithet of Hêlios the Sun (as at XI 735). What is more, his mother is Êôs the Dawn (Th. 986), while the goddess who abducted him embodies regeneration itself, Aphrodite (Th. 988-991).
§32. On the level of celestial dynamics, these associations imply the theme of a setting sun mating with the goddess of regeneration so that the rising sun may be reborn. Let us pursue this scheme-- so far hypothetical only--one step further: if the setting sun is the same as the rising sun, then the goddess of regeneration may be viewed as both mate and mother. Such an ambivalent relationship actually survives in the hymns of the Rig-Veda, where the goddess of solar regeneration, Us.as- 'Dawn', is the wife or bride of the sun god Sûrya- (RV 1.115.2, 7.75.5, etc.) as well as his mother (RV 7.63.3, 7.78.3). In the latter instance, the incestuous implications are attenuated by putting Us.as- into the plural, representing a succession of dawns. Similarly, Us.as- in the plural can designate the wives of Sûrya- (4.5.13). Yet even if each succeeding dawn is wife of the preceding dawn's son, the husband and son are always one and the same Sûrya- and the basic theme of incest remains.
§33. There is more than one reason for comparing these Indic traditions about Sûrya- 'Sun' and Us.as- 'Dawn' to such Greek traditions as we see in the myth of Phaethon. First and most obvious, the actual forms Sûrya- and Us.as- are cognate with Hêlios 'Sun' and Êôs 'Dawn'.[1] Second, there are instances in Homeric diction where the relationship of the forms Êôs and Phaethôn is directly parallel to the relationship of Rig-Vedic Us.as- and Sûrya- Besides being an epithet of Hêlios (XI 735, etc.), the form Phaethôn also functions as a name for one of the two horses of Êôs:
Lampon kai Phaethonth' hoi t' Êô pôloi agousi
Lampos and Phaethôn, who are the horses that pull Êôs
We may note that Lampos, the name of her other horse, is also associated with the notion of brightness. The Rig-Vedic parallel here is that Sûrya- the sun god is called the "bright horse," svetám ... ásvam, of the Dawn Goddess Us.as- (RV 7.77.3; cf. 7.78.4). There is also, within Homeric diction itself, an internal analogue to the combination of Phaethôn and Lampos at xxiii
246. The names for the daughters of Hêlios the sun god are Phaethousa and Lampetiê (xii 132), which are feminine equivalents of Phaethôn and Lampos.[2] The Rig-Vedic parallel here is that the name for the daughter of Sûrya- the sun god is Sûryâ (RV 1.116.17), a feminine equivalent of the masculine name. The comparative evidence of this contextual nexus suggests that the Horses of the Dawn at xxiii 246 had once been metaphorical aspects of the Sun. As in the Rig-Veda, the Sun could have been called the bright horse of the Dawn--by such names as Phae- thôn or Lampos. Once the metaphor is suspended, then the notion "Horse of the Dawn" becomes reorganized: if the Dawn has a horse, she will actually have not one but two for a chariot team, and the two kindred solar aspects Phaethôn 'bright' and Lampos'bright' will do nicely as names for two distinct horses. Yet the surviving function of Phaethousa and Lampetiê as daughters of Helios serves as testimony for the eroded personal connotations of the names Phaethôn and Lampos. By contrast, the metaphor is maintained in the Rig-Veda, where Sûrya- the sun god is both bridegroom and horse of the dawn goddess Us.as-. There is even a special word that conveys both functions of Sûrya- namely márya- (RV 1.115.2, 7.76.3). In fact, the metaphorical equation of horse and bridegroom is built into various rituals of Indic society, such as that of initiation, and a key to this equation is the same word márya- and its Iranian cognate.[3]
§34. Significantly, there is a corresponding Greek attestation of such a metaphorical equation, in the context of a wedding song:
Humên Humên:
tan Dios ouranian aeidomen,
tan erôtôn potnian, tan parthenois gamêlion Aphroditan.
potnia, soi tad' egô numphei' aeidô, Kupri theôn kallista,
pôlôi ton en aitheri krupteis, sôn gamôn gennan
Hymen, Hymen!
We sing the celestial daughter of Zeus,
the Mistress of Love, the one who gets maidens united in matrimony, Aphrodite. My Lady, I sing this wedding song to you,
O Kypris, most beautiful of gods!
--and also to your newly yoked
pôlos [horse], the one you hide in the aether, the offspring of your wedding.
Euripides Phaethon 227-235D The pôlos 'horse' of Aphrodite is Hymen himself,[1] and we note that the same word at xxiii 246 designates the horses of Eos, Phaethon and Lampos. We also note that Hymen's epithet neozugi 'newly yoked' (line 233) marks him as Aphrodite's bridegroom (compare the diction in Aeschylus Persians 541-542; Euripides Medea 804-805; also fr. 821N). As for the appositive sôn gamôn gennan 'offspring of your wedding' (line 235), it conveys that Hymen is also Aphrodite's son. We must at the same time appreciate that this entire wedding song to Aphrodite and Hymen is being sung in honor of Phaethôn, and that his bride-to-be is in all probability a daughter of the Sun.[2] Finally, we note that Aphrodite here functions as tan Dios ouranian 'the celestial daughter of
Zeus' (line 228). This characterization now brings us to a third important reason for comparing the Indic traditions about Sûrya-'Sun' and Us.as- 'Dawn' with the Greek traditions about Phaethôn and Êôs.
§35. The epithets of Us.as- 'Dawn' in the Rig-Veda prominently include divá(s) duhitár- and duhitár- divás 'Daughter of Sky'--exact formal cognates of the Homeric epithets Dios thugatêr and thugatêr Dios 'Daughter of Zeus'.[1] In the surviving traditions of Greek poetry, however, this epithet is assigned not to Eos herself but to Aphrodite and other goddesses.[2] When these goddesses qualify as Dios thugatêr/thugatêr Dios, they fulfill the inherited functions of Eos herself,[3] and nowhere is this more apparent than in the story of Aphrodite and Anchises. We have already seen that when Aphrodite seduces the young hero, she herself cites the abduction of Tithonos by Eos as precedent (H.Aphr. 218-238). Now we may add that throughout this seduction episode, Aphrodite is actually called Dios thugatêr (H.Aphr. 81, 107, 191).
§36. The replacement of Eos as Dios thugatêr/thugatêr Dios by Aphrodite and other goddesses leads to a fragmentation of her original functions. From the comparative evidence of the Rig-Veda, we might have expected Eos to be both the mother and the consort of a solar figure like Phaethon. Instead, the Hesiodic tradition assigns Aphrodite as consort of Phaethon, while Eos is only his mother (Th. 986-991). We may infer that the originally fused functions of mating with the consort and being reborn from the mother were split and divided between Aphrodite and Eos respectively. However, such a split leaves Phaethon as son of Eos simply by birth rather than by rebirth.
§37. For another instance of fragmentation in the functions of Eos, let us consider what happens to the originally fused functions of abduction, death, and preservation in the myth of Orion at v 121-124: here Eos abducts and preserves the young hero Orion, but then he is killed by Artemis.
I infer that the function of causing the death of Orion has been reassigned from Eos to Artemis. [1] In this same function of causing death, Artemis actually qualifies as thugater Dios (vocative) in Penelope's death wish (xx 61).[2] Eos, on the other hand, retains the function of abducting and preserving Orion. Accordingly, the Orion myth is marked by the sequence abduction/ preservation followed by death; this pattern is the inverse of abduction/death followed by preservation--the sequence that marks the myth of Phaethon.[3]
§38. In contrast to the solar myth of Phaethon, the inverse sequence that marks the myth of Orion results in a scheme that is astral. We may note that the figure of Orion is in fact already an astral image in Homeric diction (v 274, XVIII 488), and that the relation of Orion's celestial movements to the Dawn is the inverse of the Sun's movements. Like the Sun, the constellation Orion rises from the Okeanos and sets in it (v 275, XVIII 489). Unlike the Sun, it rises and sets at night, not in daytime. In the summer, at threshing time, Orion starts rising before Dawn (W&D 598-599). In the winter, at ploughing time, Orion starts setting before Dawn (W&D615-616). In summer days, the light of Dawn catches up with the rising Orion, and he can be her consort in the daytime.[1] In winter days, the light of Dawn arrives too late to keep Orion from setting into the Okeanos.
§39. One related star which does not set, however, is the Arktos 'Bear':
oiê d' ammoros esti loetrôn Ôkeanoio
She alone has no share in the baths of Okeanos.
Since the theme of plunging into the Okeanos conveys the process of death (see again xx 63-65), it follows that the exemption of Arktos from ever having to set into the Okeanos conveys her immortality. The Arktos "stalks Orion," Oô-rîôna dokeuei (v 274 = XVIII 488), and the verb dokeuei 'stalks' implies doom. In Homeric diction, it applies when marksmen or beasts take aim at their victims (XIII 545, XVI 313, VIII 340).[1] In the lore reported by Pausanias (8.35.6-7), the name Arktos applies also to Kallisto as mother of Arkas and hence progenitrix of the Arkades 'Arcadians'; she is represented as being turned into a bear and being killed by Artemis. The heroine Kallistô herself is the ritual antagonist of Artemis Kallistê, whose sanctuary is located on the "Mound of Kallisto" (Pausanias 8.35.8).[2] On the basis of such traditions, featuring an intimate nexus between Artemis and the concept of Arktos, we are encouraged to infer an actual identification in the astral scheme: an immortal Arktos stalks a mortal Orion at v 273-275 and XVIII 487-489, and the image implicitly retells the myth of Artemis killing Orion, explicit at v 121-124. As Odysseus is floating along on his nocturnal sea voyage, he contemplates this image of Arktos stalking Orion in the sky above (v 271-275), which Kalypso had marked out for him to fix the direction in which his raft is to sail (v 276-277). Since Kalypso herself had compared her seduction of Odysseus with the abduction of Orion by Eos (v 121), the connected theme of Orion's death from the shafts of Artemis (v 122-124) makes the image of Arktos stalking Orion at v 271-275 an ominous sign indeed for Odysseus. He is being guided away from the Island of Kalypso by a celestial sign that points to the fate awaiting him if he had stayed behind as bedmate of the immortal goddess.
§40. Such is the power of a myth that results ultimately from the fragmentation of the functions once encompassed by one figure, the pre-Olympian goddess Eos. It is through this figure that we can better appreciate the traditional nature not only of myths concerned with the immortalization of the hero but also of sundry other myths concerned with how this process can go wrong.
§41. Of course, it scarcely needs saying that we have so far managed to cover merely one type of myth concerning the immortalization of the hero. Besides this type, which centers on the theme of abduction by winds, there are doubtless other major types with other themes, other details. Here is my tentative list, surely incomplete, of alternative ways for the hero to achieve immortality:
Ideally, we could embark on a detailed survey of these additional types, but it will suffice for us now to draw inferences from the model featuring abduction by Eos or by the divine figures that replaced her functions. Even in the case of this model, however, I dare make no claim that we have seen the whole picture. Every additional attestation would serve to enhance and even alter our perception of Eos and how she confers immortality on the hero.[4]
§42. This much, in any case, can be said with some confidence: the functions of Eos that prevail in the Greek myths have been by and large restricted to beneficent ones, in that we find her consistently promoting the immortality of the hero. The functions associated with her inherited epithet, on the other hand, remain ambivalent. We have already noted that this epithet, Dios thugatêr/thugatêr Dios,[1] along with its thematic associations, has been reassigned to other goddesses, who are thereby endowed with maleficent as well as beneficent functions. The clearest example of the maleficent aspect in Homeric diction is the passage where Penelope prays to Artemis for death, invoking her in this context as thugater Dios (xx 61). As for the beneficent aspect, there are many examples available, and most of them are suited--no surprise--to the particular requirements of epic narrative. For instance, Athena qualifies as Dios thugatêr (IV
128) when she rescues Menelaos from certain death on the battlefield (IV 127-130); in this context, she is specifically compared to a mother fostering her child (IV 130-131). This function of the Dios thugatêr as a motherly goddess who preserves the hero from mortal harm is typical on the level of epic narrative.[2] On a more fundamental level, however, this function of the Dios thugatêr entails not only the temporary preservation of the hero in epic action but also his permanent preservation in the afterlife. There is actually an important attestation of this basic function in epic action. Even more important, the goddess in question is not some derivative Dios thugatêr but Eos herself. The only surviving attestation of her taking a direct part in epic action is the Aithiopis, where she translates her dead son Memnon into a state of immortality (Proclus p. 106.6-7 Allen).[3]
§43. The heroic figure Memnon, even within epic action, is ideally suited for this theme of immortalization, since tradition makes him not only son of Eos but also king of the Aithiopes (Hesiod Th. 985). The kingdom of the Aithiopes is situated on the banks of the Okeanos, and the Olympian gods themselves habitually go all the way to the Okeanos in order to receive sacrifice from them (I 423-424, XXIII 205-207, i 22-26).[1] And just as the world-encircling Okeanos flows in the extreme East and the extreme West, so also the kingdom of the Aithiopes is situated in the two extremities:
Aithiopas, toi dichtha dedaiatai, eschatoi andrôn hoi men dusomenou Huperionos, hoi d' aniontos
the Aithiopes, who are divided in two, the most remote of men: some where Hyperion [Helios] sets, others where he rises
§44. This instance of coincidentia oppositorum,[1] where identity consists of two opposites, has an interesting parallel involving Okeanos and Eos directly. Again we are about to see how two opposite places can add up to the same place. To begin, from the overall plot of the Odyssey, we know that Odysseus is wandering in the realms of the extreme West when he comes upon the island of Aiaia (x 135). It is from Aiaia, island of Circe, that Odysseus is sent on his way to the underworld by traveling beyond the sea until he and his men reach the cosmic river Okeanos (xi 21-22).[2] Later, on the way back from the underworld, the ship of Odysseus has to leave the Okeanos before returning to Aiaia, which is now described as situated not in the extreme West but in the extreme East.[3] In fact, Aiaia now turns out to be the abode of Eos and sunrise:
autar epei potamoio lipen rhoon Ôkeanoio nêus, apo d' hiketo kuma thalassês euruporoio nêson t' Aiaiên, hothi t' Êous êrigeneiês
oikia kai choroi eisi kai antolai Êelioio ...
But when the ship left the stream of the river Okeanos,
and reached the waves of the sea with its wide-flung paths,
and then the Island Aiaia--and there are the abode and the dancing places of early-born Eos, and the sunrises of Helios ...
In short, the Okeanos in the extreme East is a key to the emergence of Odysseus from his sojourn in the world of the dead--a sojourn that began when he reached the Okeanos in the extreme West.
§45. By being king of the realms along the banks of the Okeanos in the extreme East and West, the figure of Memnon is implicitly associated with a whole set of themes that center on the immortalization of the hero. We are reminded that Elysium itself is situated on the banks of the Okeanos, from which the wind Zephyros blows to reanimate mortals (iv 567-568). So too are the Isles of the Blessed (W&D 171), where heroes who fought and died in the Trojan War were translated through the ultimate agency of Zeus (W&D 168). We see the same agency at work in the Aithiopis, when Eos herself asks the permission of Zeus that she may give immortality to her fallen son Memnon (Proclus p. 106.6-7 Allen).[1] The Aithiopis also has an important parallel to the action of Eos: the immortal Thetis translates her own son Achilles from a state of death into a state of immortality on the Island of Leuke (Proclus p. 106.14-15). To my mind, it is useless to
argue, on the basis of such parallels, that the immortalization of Achilles was modeled on the immortalization of Memnon.[2] All that matters is that both are traditional themes that fit the essence of the hero in cult, and that both also fit the general pattern of the afterlife in store for the Fourth Generation of Mankind (W&D 167-173).
§46. Having returned to the Hesiodic Myth of the Five Generations of Mankind, we may conclude this chapter with the same theme that inaugurated the previous one. By now we see that the process of immortalization that comes after Generation IV is an essential link with the idyllic state of Generation I. Thus the picture of the hero in epic, as seen in Generations III/IV, can revert to the picture of the hero in cult, as seen in Generations I/II.[1] Even the most stylized hero of epic may get his due in cult, and in that spirit I close with two examples.
§47. For the first example, I choose a bit of lore from the Hellespont. As Pausanias surveys the paintings of Polygnotus in the Knidian Lesche at Delphi, his attention is suddenly riveted on a detail as he describes the picture of Memnon. On the hero's cloak are images of birds:
Memnonides tais ornisin estin onoma, kata de etos hoi Hellêspontioi phasin autas en eirêmenais hêmerais ienai te epi tou Memnonos ton taphon, kai hoposon tou mnêmatos dendrôn estin ê poas psilon, touto kai sairousin hai ornithes kai hugrois tois pterois tou Aisêpou tôi hudati rhainousi.
And Memnonides is the name of the birds. The people of the Hellespont say that every year on certain days these birds go to Memnon's grave, and where the grave is bare of trees or grass the birds sweep through it and sprinkle it with their wings, which are wet with the water of the Aisepos.[1]
Pausanias 10.31.6 From this information, however fragmentary it may be, we discover that even a hero who has been translated into a remote state of immortality is traditionally eligible to have not only a cult but even a grave or funeral mound.[2]
§48. Of course, myths about the immortalization of a hero imply that his body has been regenerated, as we see from the application of the word autos 'himself' to the immortalized Herakles who abides on Olympus (xi 602). In Homeric diction, autos designates the hero's body after death (as at I 4), in comparison to his psûkhê, which travels to Hades (as at I 3).[1] Accordingly, the hero's remains cannot be pictured as being in his grave once he is immortalized, and there seems at first glance to be a conflict here with the requirements of cult, the original basis for which is the belief that the hero's bones are buried in his grave.[2] Unlike others, however, I see no conflict so long as the promise of immortalization aims not at the here-and-now but rather at a fulfillment in the hero's future. If this condition holds, then the ultimate aspect of the afterlife, from the standpoint of both cult and myth, turns out to be not Hades but rather Elysium, the Isles of the Blessed, and all the other variations on the theme of immortalization. Hades, on the other hand, would be the transitional aspect of the afterlife, when the psûkhê is separated from the body. Then, in a place like Elysium, body and psûkhê can be reintegrated when the Zephyros blows from the Okeanos to reanimate men--the word for which is anapsûkhein (iv 568).[3]
§49. In fact, the traditional emphasis on the hero's bones in cult represents a formal commitment to the promise of immortalization. The discipline of anthropology can help us here, with its vast reservoir of experience about parallel social institutions, taken from actual field work. On the basis of innumerable typological parallels as surveyed by Karl Meuli and his followers,[1] we now know that the function of bones in Hellenic cult and myth is to symbolize the ultimate regeneration not only of sacrificial animals but also of mortal men themselves. One of the prime models for this process of regeneration by way of dismembered bones is the god Dionysos himself (Diodorus Siculus 3.62.6;[2] Philodemus De pietate, pp. 34-38 Henrichs).[3] It is beyond my scope to offer even the briefest survey here of the themes and the sources,[4] but I must still mention an important application of the Dionysiac model to the immortalization of Achilles himself.[5] This particular application can bring us to my second example showing how an immortalized hero, no matter how stylized he may have become in the medium of epic, may still be envisioned in a context that pertains to the medium of cult.
§50. From Stesichorus fr. 234P, we know of a tradition that Dionysos had given a golden amphora, made by Hephaistos, to the goddess Thetis, in compensation for her having preserved him after he fled from Lykourgos by plunging into the sea (cf. VI 130-140). It is into this same golden amphora that the bones of Achilles were placed, together with those of his surrogate Patroklos, on the occasion of his funeral (xxiv 72-76; cf. XXIII 91-92).[1] From what we know about the symbolic function of bones in general and about regeneration in particular, we may see in this formal token the promise of an ultimate immortality in store for the hero of the Iliad.[2]
Notes
§1n1. On the incorporation of Harmodios into the institutions of Athenian cult and myth, see Taylor 1975, esp. pp. 20-25, 47-70.
§1n2. 1039), see Quinn 1971.153. In Harpocration s.v. Kourotrophos, we read that the custom of sacrificing to Kourotrophos was "founded" by the Athenian hero Erekhtheus: he was the first to sacrifice to her, in gratitude to Gaia 'Earth' for having given him birth. In the Athenian myth of Erekhtheus, there eventually prevailed a distinction between one goddess (Athena) who nurtures the hero and another goddess (Earth) who gives him birth; see Iliad II 547-551. The relationship of Kourotrophos to Erekhtheus hints at a stage where Athena is not yet distinct from Mother Earth. For more on the subject of Kourotrophos, see Hadzisteliou Price 1978.
§1n3. Previous references to this thrênos: Ch.9§16n3, §31n1. Kegel 1962.47 argues that aphthiton at line 3 makes no sense and should therefore be considered corrupt; I offer the following discussion (§§1-18) as a counterargument.
§1n4. In the case of Ino, she apparently dies and then gets a biotos'lifespan' that is aphthitos: see Pindar O.2.29, as discussed at §41n2. On the affinities of Pindar's Olympian 2 with the poetic form of the thrênos, see again Ch.9§31.
§3n2. For the epithet esthlos 'worthy, good' describing Achilles here, cf. §1n2; also Ch.9§4n3. The collocation of esthlos and phthimenos as epithets of Achilles should be compared with the
collocation of esthlon and aphthiton as epithets of the kleosof Achilles, at Iliad IX 415 and 413 respectively. Compare also the repeated use of esthlos at Odyssey viii 582 and 585, describing the hypothetical relative or comrade who perished at Troy (the word for "perished" at viii 581 is actually apephthito!). The context for these occurrences is suggestive: Alkinoos is asking Odysseus why he wept over the epic song of Demodokos (viii 577-578), and his weeping is called an akhos at viii 541. For the contrast of lamentation and Epos in this passage, see Ch.
§3n3. Cf. also phthinokarpos 'having fruits that wilt' at Pindar P.4.265.
§3n4. See §§5-15 and Nagy 1974.231-255; also Schmitt 1967.61-69. Note that aphthito- in Homeric diction regularly refers to things made by Hephaistos (scholia V to XIV 238), and that the armor of Achilles is all made by Hephaistos--except for the hero's spear (see Ch.9§12).
§4n1. Ch.6§§22-23; see also Sinos 1975.99-125.
§5n1. For the validity of the distinction nature/culture from the vantage point of anthropology, see Redfield 1975.
§6n1. For the distinction made in Homeric diction between geneê 'long-range lineage, complete ancestry' and genos 'immediate ancestry', see Muellner 1976.77.
§6n2. The response continues until the conclusion at VI 211: "It is from this geneê and bloodline that I boast to be." Note the intervening use of genos at VI 209, in collocation with pateres in the sense of "ancestors" (paterôn: on which see Ch.6§12).
The Best of the Achaeans Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry Revised Edition
Gregory Nagy
Copyright © 1980, 1997 The Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved. First edition 1979. Revised edition 1999. This document may be used, with this notice included, for noncommercial purposes within a subscribed
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§1. We have by now seen that Memnon's realm, the land of the Aithiopes, has landmarks that are parallel to those of the Golden Age and the Isles of the Blessed. By virtue of this parallelism, the land of the Aithiopes in fact affords an ideal setting for the immortality in store for Memnon after he dies the hero's death.[1] In the overall myth of the Aithiopes, however, Memnon's final immortalization is not the only theme that serves as a contrast with the here-and-now of the human condition. The land of the Aithiopes is also the setting for another such contrasting theme: the communion of gods and men. This theme in turn will be a key to our understanding the social functions of praise and blame.
§2. The Olympian gods have a custom of traveling all the way to the ends of the Earth, to the banks of the Okeanos, for the purpose of feasting with the native Aithiopes (I 423-424, XXIII 205-207, i 22-26). In the spatial perspective, these Aithiopes are the eskhatoi andrôn (i 23), the most remote humans in the universe.[1] Moreover, the gods had once also feasted with the earliest humans--those most remote in the temporal perspective of mythopoeic thinking. The following story, designed as an ideal that contrasts with the human condition, emerges from two separate types of Hesiodic narrative.
§3. We begin with Hesiod fr. 1MW, the first part of a catalogue that accounts for heroes born of female mortals and male immortals. As such, it complements Hesiod Th. 965-1020, a catalogue that accounts for heroes born of female immortals and male mortals.[1] In both catalogues, the heroes born from the mating of mortals and immortals qualify as "children who look like the gods" (Th. 1020 and fr. 1.5 Merkelbach 1968.128§129).[2] Moreover, the catalogue of Hesiod fr. 1 presents its mortal mothers as parallel to such mortal fathers as we see in the catalogue of Th. 965-1020. The mortal males and females are formally correlated as aneres êde gunaikes 'men and women' at fr. 1.9, corresponding to the andrasin 'men' of Th. 967 and the gunaikôn 'women' of Th. 1021 = fr. 1.1 respectively.[3] These men and women are distinguished from mortals in the here-and-now not only by virtue of having mated with the gods but also by virtue of having feasted with them:
xunai gar tote daites esan, xunoi de thoôkoi athanatois te theoisi katathnêtois t' anthrôpois
For at that time they had feasts [dais plural] together and they sat together, the immortal gods and the mortal men.
Hesiod fr. 1.6-7MW
The adverb tote 'at that time' (verse 6) makes explicit the temporal remoteness of this state of affairs.
§4. There are further details about these primeval mortals: some lived for a long time (hoi men dêron ... : fr. 1.11), while others died suddenly (tous d' eith[ar] ... : fr.1.12).[1] This description is parallel to that of the Golden and Silver Generations in the Works and Days.[2] There members of the Silver Generation are set off from the Golden in that they died soon after reaching adolescence (W&D 132-133).[3] Whereas the Golden Generation "lived like gods" (hôste theoi d' ezôon: W&D 112), the men of the Silver Generation lost their heritage of a godlike existence. The
reason given is that they refused to perform the proper sacrifices to the gods (W&D 136-137). As we have already seen,[4] their refusal is also defined in the same narrative tradition as their failure to give the proper tîmaito the gods (W&D 138-139). Unfortunately for us, the parallel narrative of Hesiod fr. 1 (and beyond) is not complete enough to reveal explicitly how its mortals of yore came to lose their heritage of a godlike existence. There is an important clue, however, in a detail that we have already noted: these mortals used to have 'feasts' = dais [plural] with the gods (Hesiod fr. 1.6-7). Furthermore, this detail meshes with the story of Prometheus as it is told in the Theogony.
§5. Prometheus provokes Zeus in particular and the gods in general by tricking them into accepting as their portion the bones of a slaughtered ox and by reserving the edible meat for humanity (Hesiod Th. 536-557).[1] All this is presented as happening "at a time when the gods and mortal men were having a definitive settlement":[2]
... hot' ekrinonto theoi thnêtoi t' anthrôpoi
The preceding passage implies a combination that is explicit in the following parallel:[3]
autar epei rha ponon makares theoi exetelessan Titênessi de timaôn krinanto biêphi ...
But when the blessed gods completed their effort
and had a definitive settlement of tîmai, by way of biê [might], with the Titans ...
Hesiod Th. 881-882 The key word here is tîmai, the 'honors' of cult that the Olympian gods obtain by defeating the Titans, who are rival gods (theoi, as at Th. 630, 648, etc.).[4] The primary result of their definitive settlement is a permanentseparation, with the Olympians remaining in the sky (Th. 820) while the Titans are cast down and imprisoned forever underneath the earth (see especially Th. 729-733). Similarly, there is a definitive settlement of tîmai between the gods and men when Prometheus apportions the inedibles and edibles between them. Again, the primary result is a permanent separation, in that mankind is relegated to the human condition--a theme central to the entire Prometheus story (Th. 521-616).[5]
§6. We can now see an overall parallelism with the story of the Silver Generation (W&D
127-142). There the setting is a sacrifice (W&D136-137), and the mortals fail to give tîmai to the gods (W&D 138-139). What results is the negation of their godlike existence (W&D 132-133). As for the story of Prometheus, the setting here is a feast (see especially Th. 537, 544),[1] which becomes from that time onward the basis of all sacrifice to the gods (Th. 556-557). Prometheus as the agent of mortals cheats the gods out of the edible portions (Th. 538-541), and this settlement (implicitly, of tîmai: Th. 535) leads indirectly to the evils of the human condition (Th. 570-616). [2]
§7. The Aithiopes, then, exist in a condition that serves as a foil for the condition of ordinary mortals. For the Aithiopes, having feasts with the gods is not just a privilege: it is a sign that they are not subject to being separated permanently from the gods. Again, we recall that the landmarks of their abode are parallel to those of the Golden Age and the Isles of the Blessed.[1] By contrast, the mortals of the here-and-now have sacrifices to the gods, not feasts with them. Moreover, we have seen that the story of Prometheus in the Theogony derives this continuous institution of making sacrifice from the single event of a feast shared by gods and men. Of course, this feast is not the same thing as a first sacrifice. Granted, it constitutes the definitive settlement whereby the mortals and immortals get the edible meat and the inedible bones respectively. Nevertheless, this feast is only the basis of sacrifice, whereas the act of sacrifice itself entails more. Men are to have at their disposal the distribution of edible portions not only for themselves butalso for the gods. Every city-state has its own traditions for determining what portions of the edible meat--in addition to the bones and fat--are assigned to the gods.[2] In return, the gods have at their disposal the function of alleviating in their manifold ways the manifold evils of the human condition. Of course, the gods may even grant the ultimate alleviation, immortality after death; the inedible bones that are at their disposal are in fact the very emblem of life after death.[3]
§8. There is, then, a fundamental difference between feasting with the gods and sacrificing to them. The Hesiodic story about the Silver Generation actually anticipates the human condition of these figures by describing them as men who owe sacrifice to the gods (W&D135-137). Nevertheless, the nature of their offense against the gods is parallel to the offense of Prometheus. In both instances, the afflictions of the human condition are brought about by the withholding of tîmai from the gods. In the context of a single event, a feast, Prometheus as the agent of humanity withholds tîmai from the gods;[1] in the context of a continuous institution, sacrifice, men keep restoring tîmai to them. When the Silver Generation refuses to sacrifice, the offense is the same as the primordial offense of Prometheus: the withholding of tîmai from the gods.[2]
§9. In this connection, we must reexamine the evidence of diction: the vocabulary of archaic hexameter poetry does not distinguish between the feasting of men and gods together on the one hand and the sacrificing of men to gods on the other. Both the feasting and the sacrificing qualify as a dais. For example, Zeus calls the portions sacrificed to him on the altar his dais (IV 48, XXIV 69). The very event of a sacrifice may in fact be called simply dais (iii 33), without such qualifiers as theoû 'of the god' (as at iii 420, where dais refers to the same event as at iii 33).[1] Conversely, when the gods come to feast with the Aithiopes, their mutual dais (as at I 424, i 26) has the trappings of a sacrifice: hekatombai 'hecatombs' (XXIII 206; cf. i 25) and hîra 'sacred rites' (XXIII 207).[2] This ambivalence in the meaning of dais is of course due directly to the derivation of the noun from the verb daiomai 'divide, apportion, allot'.[3] A dais, then, is a 'division' not only of meat portions (a feast) but also of the tîmai that go with them (a sacrifice).
§10. We are now ready to consider the wording that designates the primordial offense of Prometheus. In the process of cheating the gods out of tîmai that correspond to meat portions, Prometheus caused eris 'strife' and made Zeus angry. This theme of eris introduces the entire story about the deceit of Prometheus--a story that begins with the following explanation for the anger of Zeus:
hounek' erizeto boulas hupermeneï Kroniôni
because he [Prometheus] had a conflict of wills with the mighty son of Kronos.[1]
§11. Here at Th. 534, both the verb erizeto 'had eris [strife, conflict]' and the noun boulas [boulê
= 'will, design, plan'] designate essential themes in the story. For a better understanding, we must compare the beginning of the Cypria, where the Trojan War is motivated by the boulê 'Will' of Zeus (fr. 1.7 Allen), who wants to depopulate Earth (fr. 1.1-7); significantly, the entire war is in fact designated as eris 'strife' (fr. 1.5).
§12. Moreover, the beginning of the Cypria tells how the war actually began with the appearance of Eris 'Strife' personified (Proclus summary p. 102.14 Allen). She came to a feast shared by gods and men, the Wedding of Peleus and Thetis (Cypria/Proclus p. 102.14-15), and there she caused a neîkos 'quarrel, fight' (p.102.15) involving the goddesses Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite (p. 102.15-16). The eris 'strife' and neîkos 'quarrel' then extend to the human dimension, as Paris is asked to judge which of the three goddesses is supreme (p. 102.16-17). Paris of course chooses Aphrodite and wins Helen, whose abduction causes the Trojan War; it too is directly called eris in the Cypria (fr. 1.5 Allen). The reference by Menelaos to Helen's aduction in the Iliad motivates the Trojan War in this way: heinek' emês eridos 'on account of my eris' (III 100). So also when the doomed Hektor is about to be killed by Achilles, he calls the abduction of Helen neikeos archê 'the beginning of the neîkos' (XXII 116).[1]
§13. So far, we have merely noted a parallelism in theme and diction between the entire story of the Trojan War on the one hand and, on the other, a single-verse introduction to the story of Prometheus (Hesiod Th. 534). In the latter instance, the eris 'strife' between Zeus and Prometheus concerns their respective boulai 'wills, designs' affecting humanity. In the former instance, we have seen that the boulê 'Will' of Zeus is that men should have eris 'strife' and neîkos 'quarreling', which is to result in the depopulation of Earth in the form of the Trojan War. Now we are ready to observe Hesiod fr. 204.95-123MW, a text that presents an actual convergence between the main themes in the overall story of the Trojan War and those in the story of Prometheus.
§14. At line 95 of Hesiod fr. 204MW, there is a compressed mention of a traditional theme that we find developed throughout the Iliad: the division of the Olympian gods into pro-Achaean and pro-Trojan factions during the Trojan War.[1] At line 96, we are told the ultimate source of this division: ex eridos 'ever since the eris'. The reference here is to the strife in the traditional story about the Judgment of Paris; then at lines 96-123, there follows a fragmentary passage that tells about the Will of Zeus and how it had caused the Trojan War.[2] This theme is more comprehensive here than at Cypria fr. 1 Allen, where the Will of Zeus entails the deaths of heroes in the Trojan War.[3] The gaps in the text leave many important questions without answers, but one additional detail is clear: besides entailing the death of heroes in the Trojan War (see especially lines 118-119),[4] the Will of Zeus also entails thepermanent separation of gods and men. The crucial lines read as follows:
all?' o?hi m[e]n mak?a]r?es? k?[. . . . . . . ]n? hô?s? t?o? paros per chôr?is ap' an[th]r?ôpôn? [bioton ka]i? êthe' echôsin
but so that the blessed gods ... , as before,
may have their way of life and their accustomed places apart from men
Hesiod fr. 204.102-103MW This detail shows that the eris willed by Zeus causes not only the Trojan War in particular but the human condition in general.[5]
§15. Returning to the expression erizeto boulas 'had a conflict [eris] of wills [boulai]' at Hesiod Th. 534, we now see that the story of Prometheus here is a mythological variant of the story of Troy as told in Hesiod fr. 204MW, in that both stories are designed to explain the human condition in terms of eris 'strife, conflict'. In the story of the Trojan War, the boulê 'will' of Zeus causes eris for the gods and then for men, who had feasted with the gods. In the story of Prometheus, there is a primordial eris between the boulê of Zeus and the boulê of the deceitful Titan acting on behalf of men, men who had feasted with the gods. In both stories, eris disrupts the communication of men with gods, bringing about the human condition.
§16. Having observed the fundamental nature of eris 'strife' in these mythological visions of mankind's essence, we are ready to consider the social implications of the word itself. Our starting point will be another key word, neîkos 'quarrel, fight'. In the story about the Judgment of Paris, we have seen that the personified figure Eris had brought about a neîkos involving the goddesses Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, and that Paris is then asked to judge which of the three is supreme (Cypria/Proclus p. 102.14-19).[1] From the Iliadic allusion to the story, we now see that Paris in effect rejected Hera and Athena by virtue of choosing Aphrodite and further that this rejection is presented as a neîkos against these two goddesses:
hos neikesse theas, hote hoi messaulon hikonto, tên d' êinês' hê hoi pore machlosunên alegeinên
[Paris] who blamed [made neîkos against] the goddesses [Hera and Athena], when they came to his courtyard,
but he praised her [Aphrodite] who gave him the baneful pleasure of sex.
My task now is to show that the verb neikeô (which I translate as 'blame', from the noun neîkos) [2] and the verb aineô ('praise', from the noun aînos)[3] reflect two antithetical social functions expressed in two formal modes of discourse.
Notes
§1n1. Memnon's immortalization is actually unique, to the extent that the realm in which he lived before his death as a hero is also appropriate as the setting for his afterlife. For Memnon, the afterlife is by implication a homecoming. In the diction of archaic Greek poetry, the appropriate words for this theme are those containing the root *nes-; see Frame 1978.
§3n1. In fact, the text of our Theogony ends with the same two verses (Th. 1021-1022) that begin Hesiod fr. 1 (1-2). For a helpful discussion of the complementary relationship between fr. 1 and the Theogony as we have it, see Merkelbach 1968.
§3n2. Among these heroes are Memnon (Th. 984) and Achilles (Th. 1007).
§3n3. This correlation within the text of fr. 1 leads me to disagree with Merkelbach's suggestion (1968.132-133) that Hesiod Th. 965-1020 is a passage that had been inserted between Th. 964 and Th. 1021 (= fr. 1.1MW) after the verses of fr. 1MW had already been composed. The aneres of aneres êde gunaikes at fr. 1.9 presupposes the contents of Th. 965-1020.
§4n1. The text is fragmentary beyond the words quoted, but the sense seems clear; see Merkelbach's collection of restorations (1968). I should add that the antithesis hoi men dêron ... tous d' eith[ar] `some for a long time ... others suddenly ... ' (Hesiod fr. 1.11-12) is set up with the phrase oud' ara isaiônes ... `they [were] not with equal spans of life ... ' (Hesiod fr. 1.8).
§4n2. Cf. Merkelbach 1968.126, who notes a parallelism with the Golden Age. There is no mention, however, of the antithesis discussed at n1 above.
§4n3. On the prodigiously long lifespan of the Golden Generation, cf. Hesiod fr. 356MW.
§5n1. The wording that denotes the division of meat by Prometheus is dassamenos (Th. 537) and diedassao moirâs (Th. 544). The verb here is daiomai 'divide, apportion, allot', the derivative of which is dais 'feast'; see Ch.7§14.
§5n2. For the translation, cf. West 1966.317.
§5n3. The significance of this parallel was pointed out by Rudhardt 1970.6.
§5n4. For the notion of tîmê as the `honor' conferred by cult, see Ch.7§1n2, §19nn1 and 3; Ch. 9§3.
§5n5. For an illuminating commentary: Vernant 1974.177-194 (cf. also Vernant 1977).
§6n1. For the key words in these verses, see §5n1.
§6n2. For the parallelism of Th. 570-616 with the myth of Pandora (W&D 53-105), see Vernant 1974.192-194.
§7n2. See Puttkammer 1912.35. This fact has been generally overlooked until the appearance of an important article by Gill (1974), who documents the practice of depositing choice portions of meat on a given god's trapeza, `table', which coexists with the practice of burning the other portions (notably the bones and fat) on the god's altar. In view of the general absence in Homeric poetry of references to setting aside choice cuts of meat for the god who receives sacrifice, Gill and others infer that the practice of depositing meat on a trapeza was originally distinct from the practice of burning meat on an altar. I would argue, however, that the Homeric silence on this aspect of sacrifice is for different reasons: Homeric Epos is Panhellenic, and as such it will tend to avoid any references to localized aspects of any Hellenic institution (cf. Intro.§14). To repeat: the choice of meat portions deposited on the god's trapeza actually varied from polis to polis (Gill, p. 125; cf. also Ch.7§19n3 above). Such localized variation would make this aspect of sacrifice unsuitable for Homeric presentation. One exception to the Homeric silence on the deposition of meat seems to be Odyssey xiv 418-438 (Gill, p. 134); even here, the description is so stylized that it is difficult to imagine what, if any, regional characteristics may be revealed. On the trapeza of the Sun in the land of the Aithiopes (Herodotus 3.17-26), see Vernant 1972.
§9n2. Cf. also Ch.7§16n1.
§9n3. See again Ch.7§14.
§10n1. On the omission of Prometheus' name at the start of this narrative: West 1966.317.
§12n1. Note the epithet of Helen in the anonymous lyric fragment 1014 Page: poluneikês. Note too the usage of archê: whereas the theme of Helen is neikeos archê 'the beginning of the neîkos', the theme of Achilles is pêmatos archê 'the beginning of the pêma [pain]' (viii 81; cf. Ch.4§6 and
§14n1. Cf. Stiewe 1963.5.
§14n2. Cf. Stiewe, pp. 4-6. I should add that there is no need to assume that the text of Hesiod fr. 204MW is based on one or several other texts; it is enough to say that the text is based on various traditions that occur also in the Cypria and in the Iliad.
§14n3. The Will of Zeus at the beginning of the Cypria is in turn more comprehensive than at the beginning of the Iliad (I 1-7), where it entails the deaths of heroes only in that portion of the Trojan War which begins with the mênis 'anger' of Achilles. See Ch.5§25 (esp. n2), Ch.7§17, Ch.10§17.
§14n4. Note the close parallelism in diction between Iliad I 3-4 and these lines 118-119 of Hesiod fr. 204MW.
§14n5. Note the extended metaphor at Hesiod fr. 204.123 ff.MW, which immediately follows the passage about the Will of Zeus: men die much as leaves fall from trees. On this theme of mortality, see Ch.10§6.
§16n2. The translation "blame," like all other translations, is only partially adequate. In his suggestive discussion of the verb neikeô/neikeiô, Adkins (1960.59n17) weighs such translations as "upbraid" and "chide," finally deciding on "abuse" in order to emphasize that "in a society which does not distinguish between moral error and mistake, it is impossible to distinguish mockery, abuse, and rebuke. There is only one situation: unpleasant words directed at a man who has in fact fallen short of the expectations of society."
§16n3. I postpone any definition of aînos until later.
The Best of the Achaeans Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry Revised Edition
Gregory Nagy
Copyright © 1980, 1997 The Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved. First edition 1979. Revised edition 1999. This document may be used, with this notice included, for noncommercial purposes within a subscribed
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§1. As we see from Georges Dumézil's comparative study Servius et la Fortune, Indo-European society operated on the principle of counterbalancing praise and blame, primarily through the medium of poetry.[1] This state of affairs is most overtly preserved in the evidence of Indic and Old Irish,[2] but we must now also include Greek. Thanks to the brilliant synthesis of Marcel Detienne, we are in a position to see the opposition of praise and blame as a fundamental principle in the archaic Greek community.[3]
§2. It is convenient to start by looking at such conservative Dorian societies as that of Sparta. The
clearest evidence comes from Plutarch's Lycurgus: in Sparta, the law was based on two fundamental principles, namely epainos 'praise' and psogos 'blame'.[1] The social function of this antithesis can be seen from the objects of praise and blame respectively: kalôn epainos 'praise of the noble' compared to aiskhrôn psogos 'blame of the base' (Plutarch Lycurgus 8.2, 21.1, 25.2; also 14.3, 26.3). Furthermore, the prime medium of praise and blame was poetry (14.5, 26.6).[2]
§3. In the traditional Dorian praise poetry of Pindar and Bacchylides, we find the most striking and most appealing sort of confirmation about the poetic function of praise and blame. Not only is praise poetry programmatically called epainos or aînos (verb epaineô or aineô) by the praise poetry itself but its opposite is specified as psogos (verb psegô),[1] as in the following words of Pindar:
xeinos eimi: skoteinon apechôn psogon, hudatos hôte rhoas philon es andr' agôn kleos etêtumon ainesô
I am a guest-stranger. Keeping away dark blame [psogos]
and bringing genuine kleos, like streams of water, to a man who is philos, I will praise [verb aineô] him.
In other words, the actual antithesis between aînos/epainos and psogos is in itself a poetic tradition. Besides the programmatic words aînos/epainos and aineô/epaineô, there are other elements in the diction of praise poetry that serve to designate its own function, the most important of which is kleos (as in the passage quoted, Pindar N.7.62).[2] The traditional diction of the praise poetry composed by Pindar and Bacchylides also has inherited, besides psogos, several other words that serve to mark blame as a foil for praise:[3]
vs. aineô 'praise' aineôn "
neîkos 'quarrel, fight' neikei Pi.N.8.25
~ erizô 'have eris' erizei .22
~ phthoneroi 'those who have phthonos' phthoneroisin .21
~ oneidos 'blame, reproach'[4] oneidos .33
oneidos " "
vs. aineô 'praise' aineôn ainêta .39
vs. kleos 'glory' kleos .36
mômos 'blame, reproach' mômos Ba.13.202
vs. aineô 'praise'[5] aineitô .201
phthonos 'envy, greed' phthonos Ba.13.200
vs. aineô | aineitô | |
phthonos | phthonos | |
~ mômos | ||
phthonos | phthonon | |
I draw special attention to the first two entries in the list, eris and neîkos. In Homeric and
Hesiodic poetry, we have seen that these words are appropriate for motivating the Trojan War in particular and the human condition in general. Now we see in the diction of praise poetry that eris and neîkos also can have a far more specific function: designating the opposite of praise poetry.
§4. Of course, blame is inimical to praise in praise poetry only if it is the blame of the noble, since the conceit of praise poetry is that it praises the noble only, not the base. For an illustration, let us isolate the word phthonos 'envy, greed' and examine its use as a foil for praise poetry within such poetry. In Bacchylides 5.188 and 13.199-201, we have just seen phthonos being directly contrasted with aineô 'praise' (ainein and aineitô respectively).[1] He who praises (eu legein 'speak well': Ba.3.67) is described as hostis mê phthonôi piainetai 'one who does not fatten himself on phthonos' (Ba.3.67-68).[2] I draw attention to this combination in view of the following expression in Pindaric praise poetry:
psogeron Archilochon barulogois echthesin piainomenon ...
Archilochus, having psogos, fattening himself on heavy-worded hatreds ...
We see here a programmatic description of blame poetry (witness the epithet psogeros 'having psogos') as the opposite of praise poetry, in the specific context of rejecting blame within a poem of praise:
eme de chreôn
pheugein dakos adinon kakagorian ...
but I must avoid
the relentless bite of speaking ill ...
§5. Where the language of blame is unjustified, it is specifically correlated with imagery that dwells on the devouring of meat. As we have just observed, blaming is made parallel to biting; also, the blamer is said to fatten himself on phthonos or on the hatreds of psogos. As we look
for further development of this imagery, we come upon the following passage:[1]
opson de logoi phthoneroisin,
haptetai d' eslôn aei, cheironessi d' ouk erizei. keinos kai Telamônos dapsen huion, phasganôi amphikulisais.
ê tin' aglôsson men, êtor d' alkimon, latha katechei en lugrôi neikei: megiston d' aiolôi pseu-
dei geras antetatai
Words are a morsel for those who have phthonos.[2]
He [one who has phthonos][3] grabs at the noble rather than have eris with the inferior.
That one [Odysseus][4] even devoured the son of Telamon [Ajax], skewering him on the sword.
One who is unversed in speech but stout at heart is held down by Neglect[6] on the occasion of a baneful neîkos.
And the biggest honorific portion is handed over to intricate Deceit.
Pindar N.8.21-25 At line 21, we see that phthonos is the food of the blamer only in a figurative sense: the language of phthonos is his means for getting a meal, not the meal itself.[7] But then, we also see at lines 22-23 of Pindar's praise poem a ghastly extension of the same theme: not only does the man of phthonos get a meal, but the meal may actually turn out to be his victim! The verb haptomai at line 22 (haptetai) connotes not only 'grab at food', as at Odyssey iv 60 and x 379, but even 'grab at a victim with the teeth', as at Iliad VIII 339, where the subject of the verb is kuôn 'dog'. Similarly with dapsen 'devoured' at line 23 of Pindar's poem: in Homeric diction, the same verb daptô can be applied in contexts where corpses are 'devoured' by dogs rather than by the fire of cremation (XXIII 183; cf. XXII 339). So also with piainô 'fatten' in the expression phthonôi piainetai 'fattens himself on phthonos' at Bacchylides 3.68 and barulogois echthesin / piainomenon 'fattening himself on heavy-worded hatreds' at Pindar P.2.55-56: in Homeric diction, dogs devour specifically the fat of uncremated corpses (VIII 379-380, XI 818, XIII 831-832).[8] In effect, then, the language of praise poetry presents the language of unjustified blame as parallel to the eating of heroes' corpses by dogs.
§6. Significantly, the language of epic itself quotes the language of blame within the framework of narrating quarrels,[1] and a prominent word of insult within such direct quotations is kuôn 'dog' and its derivatives.[2] For example, Achilles insults Agamemnon by calling him kunôpa 'having the looks of a dog' (I 159) and kunos ommat' ekhôn 'having the eyes of a dog' (I 225)[3] in the context of their quarrel, which is designated by eris and its derivative erizô (I 6, 8, 177, 210, 277, 319; II 376), as well as by neîkos (II 376).[4] The actual words of blame spoken by Achilles to Agamemnon are designated as oneidos 'blame, reproach' by the victim himself (oneidea: I 291; cf. I 211).[5] Similarly, in Pindar's praise poem, the quarrel between Ajax and Odysseus qualifies as an eris (erizei: N.8.22) and as a neîkos(neikei: N.8.25). In addition, the unjustified blame of Ajax by Odysseus qualifies as oneidos (oneidos: N.8.33). But here the praise poem itself insults Odysseus--not by calling him kuôn 'dog' but rather by describing his actions as those of a dog
feeding on human flesh. Whereas the righteous indignation of Achilles is formalized in his words of justified blame against Agamemnon,[6] the corresponding indignation of Ajax is taken up by the praise poem itself. But the words of justified blame in Pindar's Nemean 8 are intended not so much against Odysseus but against the unjustified blame in the quarrel that led to the besting of the heroic Ajax by his deceitful adversary.
§7. After concluding its retrospective on the quarrel between Ajax and Odysseus, Pindar's praise poem has this to say about the language of blame:
echthra d' ara parphasis ên kai palai, haimulôn muthôn homophoi-
tos, dolophradês, kakopoion oneidos
Hateful misrepresentation has existed for a long time, companion of wily words, deviser of deceit, maleficent oneidos.
These words serve as a foil for the words that later conclude Pindar's Nemean 8, where praise poetry itself gets the ultimate praise:[1]
ên ge man epikômios humnos dê palai kai prin genesthai
tan Adrastou tan te Kadmeiôn erin
The encomium[2] has existed for a long time
--even before the eris between Adrastos and the Thebans ever happened.[3]
Thus praise poetry recognizes its own deeply traditional nature by describing itself as a primordial institution. The ideal opposite of oneidos (N.8.34) is presented as kleos (N.8.36), which the righteous man wishes to leave behind for his children when he dies (N.8. 36-37). In the same connection, the praise poem presents the function of the righteous man as the function of the praise poet himself:
aineôn ainêta, momphan d' epispeirôn alitrois
praising what is to be praised, sowing blame upon what is unrighteous[4]
§8. We may round out our survey of the word phthonos 'envy, greed' as a foil for praise poetry by considering a particularly suggestive occurrence at the beginning of Odyssey xviii. Here we see the beggar Iros making neîkos against Odysseus (neikeiôn: xviii 9), who is himself disguised as a beggar; in his quoted neîkos (xviii 10-13), Iros commands Odysseus to get out of his way, threatening that the present eris between the two of them (eris: xviii 13) may escalate from verbal to physical violence (cf. xviii 38-39).[1] The disguised master of the household refuses to budge from the doorway, answering Iros with these words:
daimoni', oute ti se rhezô kakon out' agoreuô, oute tina phthoneô domenai kai poll' anelonta.
oudos d' amphoterous hode cheisetai, oude ti se chrê allotriôn phthoneein: dokeeis de moi einai alêtês
hôs per egôn, olbon de theoi mellousin opazein
You daimonios![2] I am harming you by neither deed nor word.
And I do not begrudge [I have no phthonos] that someone should be a giver, after having been a taker in great quantities.
But this threshold will accommodate both of us, and you should not
have phthonos about the property of others. You seem to be a beggar like me, and it is the gods who are likely to grant olbos[prosperity].
xviii 15-19 The collocation of olbos and phthonos here is striking in view of a traditional theme found time and again in the actual words of praise poetry: that olbos comes from the gods to the righteous and that it attracts the phthonos of the unrighteous (see especially Pindar N.11.29). Ironically, the olbos of Odysseus himself is now being threatened by the suitors, whose "messenger" Iros has so much phthonos as to hinder our hero from even entering his own household.[3] Without having to identify himself as the owner, however, Odysseus warns Iros not "to have phthonos about the property of others" (allotriôn phthoneein: xviii 18).
§9. Such excessive phthonos on the part of Iros is directly comparable to phthonos in its function as a traditional negative foil of praise poetry within praise poetry. As we have seen, gluttony is a prime characteristic of phthonos in the diction of praise poetry;[1] hence the saying "words are a morsel for those who have phthonos" (Pindar N.8.21).[2] In fact, we now see from the Homeric description of Iros that his phthonos is manifested in precisely this sort of gluttony; the key word is margos 'gluttonous, wanton':
êlthe d' epi ptôchos pandêmios, hos kata astu ptôcheuesk' Ithakês, meta d' eprepe gasteri margêi azêches phagemen kai piemen: oude hoi ên is oude biê, eidos de mala megas ên horaasthai
And there came a beggar,[3] belonging to all the district [dêmos],
who used to go begging throughout the town of Ithaca; he was renowned for his endless eating and drinking with his margê belly.
And he had no îs [force], nor biê [might], but in appearance he was big to look at.[4]
xviii 1-4 In the language of praise poetry, the same word margos characterizes those whose words are inimical to the institution of praise:
epi toi
Akraganti tanusais
audasomai enorkion logon alathei noôi tekein mê tin' hekaton ge eteôn polin philois andra mallon
euergetan prapisin aphthonesteron te chera Thêrônos. all' ainon epeba koros
ou dikai sunantomenos alla margôn hup' andrôn, to lalagêsai thelon
kruphon tithemen eslôn kalois ergois.
Aiming my arrow at Akragas,
I will proclaim under oath, with unerring intent,
that no city in these last hundred years has produced a man more beneficent in disposition to philoi
and more ungrudging [from a-phthonos = having no phthonos] in hand than Theron. But satiety[5] attacks praise [aînos].
It [satiety] is accompanied not by justice but by margoi men.
It is idle talk, which wishes to put concealment upon the fine deeds of the worthy.
In short, a man who is margos is a man who has the mouth of Eris personified:
Eridos pote margon echôn stoma
... having the margon mouth of Eris
§10. From the evidence of such traditional wording, I propose that the story of Iros in effect ridicules the stereotype of an unrighteous blame poet. Like the unrighteous blamers who are righteously blamed by praise poetry, Iros has eris 'strife' with a good man (xviii 13, 38-39) and makes neîkos 'quarreling' against him (xviii 9). Like the blamers, he is margos 'gluttonous' (cf.
xviii 2) and has phthonos 'greed' for the olbos 'prosperity' that the good man gets from the gods (cf. xviii 17-19).[1] Moreover, we have seen that the good man who is praised by a praise poem must be a paragon of generosity (hence a-phthonos 'without phthonos', as in Pindar O.2.94). Now we also see that Odysseus himself is generous even with the provocative Iros (ou ... phthoneô 'I have no phthonos': xviii 16). In fact, this theme of generosity turns out to be crucial for our understanding of the Iros story, as we are about to see from the comparative evidence of ancient Irish tales. One of the most interesting Irish parallels comes from the Second Battle of Mag Tured: it is a story about the Dagdae, a prodigiously generous heroic figure, and Cridenbél, a prodigiously greedy blame poet.[2] Cridenbél was so gluttonous that his mouth grew out from his chest, not from his face. This poet made it his habit to demand from the Dagdae, under the threat of blame, the three best portions of each of the hero's meals. Noblesse oblige, and the Dagdae's generosity would never allow him to refuse the blame poet's demands. As a result, he became ill from malnutrition. At this point, the Dagdae resorts to deceit: he conceals three gold pieces in the three portions demanded by Cridenbél, and the blame poet unwittingly gluts himself to death on gold--ironically an emblem of ultimate prosperity.
§11. Like the story of Iros in the Odyssey, this story from ancient Irish tradition ridicules the function of the blame poet in society. Such ridicule is of course intensified in the Odyssey by way of presenting Iros as a beggar. But the actual function of the beggar in society is in fact vitally serious in the overall narrative of the Odyssey, as we see from the figure that serves as a positive foil for the beggar Iros, namely Odysseus himself in beggar's disguise. Odysseus plans specifically to beg for his meals--and the word for "meal" here is dais (xvii 11, 19); moreover, he plans to beg from the suitors! A stranger in his own house, the disguised Odysseus is received properly by Telemachus, who gives him food and encourages him to beg from the suitors (xvii 336-352); Odysseus responds by praying that Zeus grant olbos 'prosperity' to Telemachus (olbion einai: xvii 354). Odysseus proceeds to beg from the suitors, but the chief suitor Antinoos raises objections to the beggar's presence (xvii 360-395). Telemachus rebukes Antinoos: "you want to eat much, instead of giving to the other man" (xvii 404). "I myself," says Telemachus, "have no phthonos" (ou toi phthoneô: xvii 400). The climactic moment comes when Odysseus begs from the suitor Antinoos. He addresses him as philos (xvii 415), says that the young man seems like the "best of the Achaeans" (xvii 415-416), and promises to make kleos for him in return for generosity (xvii 418). Noblesse oblige, but Antinoos refuses.[1] In fact, his refusal not only disqualifies Antinoos himself but also undermines the position of all the other suitors. There is no generosity, says Antinoos, in giving away things that are not one's own (xvii 449-452). By contrast, Odysseus shows the ultimate generosity when he tells the "messenger" of the suitors:1. that he [Odysseus] feels no phthonos if one gives away things that are not one's own (xviii 16)2. that he [Iros] is entitled to feel no phthonos about things that are not his own (xviii 17-18).[2] The suitors merit their death--and Iros, his beating--not for eating the food of Odysseus but for actually denying it to him. Odysseus himself formally blames Antinoos for withholding abundant food that belongs to someone else (xvii 454-457), and his words of blame are called oneidos by Antinoos (oneidea: xvii 461).
§12. To make matters worse, Antinoos is so angered by these words of oneidos 'blame' that his violence is escalated from the verbal to the physical: he throws a footstool at Odysseus and injures him (xvii 462-463). Penelope decries this act as a moral outrage (xvii 499-504), in that she considers the beggar to be a xenos'guest-stranger' in the house of Odysseus (Homeric xeînos:
xvii 501). As we examine the implications of this word xenos, it is appropriate to cite here the formulation devised by Émile Benveniste:[1]
We must envisage the situation of a xénos, of a "guest," who is visiting a country where, as a stranger, he is deprived of all rights, of all protection, of all means of existence. He finds no welcome, no lodging and no guarantee except in the house of the man with whom he is connected by philótês. ... The pact concluded in the name of philótês makes the contracting parties phíloi: they are henceforth committed to a reciprocity of services which constitute "hospitality."
Anyone, then, who would consider even a mere beggar as his or her xenos displays the maximum of generosity, since a beggar stands to offer the minimum in reciprocal services. Thus Telemachus in effect reveals the nobility of his royal family by receiving Odysseus in beggar's disguise as a xenos (xvii 342-355; hence xeinôi/xeine at 345/350). Antinoos, by contrast, proves himself ignoble by his failure to act likewise, and his bad behavior is compounded when he addresses the injured Odysseus sarcastically as a xenos (xeine: xvii 478). Ironically, the father of Antinoos had been treated as a xenos by Odysseus himself (xvi 424-432); it is thus appropriate that Odysseus should address Antinoos as philos at the very moment that he tests him by begging for food (xvii 415).
§13. Different xenoi have different capacities to reciprocate the generosity of their host, and the swineherd Eumaios perceives that the disguised Odysseus is much more than a mere beggar. In other words, the stranger's capacity to reciprocate is much higher than that of a mere beggar. Thus when Antinoos reproaches Eumaios for inviting "another beggar" to the house of Odysseus (xvii 375-379), the swineherd replies as follows:
Antino', ou men kala kai esthlos eôn agoreueis: tis gar dê xeinon kalei allothen autos epelthôn allon g', ei mê tôn hoi dêmioergoi easi,
mantin ê iêtêra kakôn ê tektona dourôn,
ê kai thespin aoidon, ho ken terpêisin aeidôn; houtoi gar klêtoi ge brotôn ep' apeirona gaian: ptôchon d' ouk an tis kaleoi truxonta he auton
Antinoos! Though you are noble, you do not speak properly. What man who is from somewhere else himself[1]
will invite yet another xenos [guest-stranger], unless he [the xenos] is one of those who are workers of the dêmos,[2]
such as a seer, or a healer of illnesses, or a carpenter who works on wood, or even an inspired singer who can give delight with his singing?[3]
For such men are apt to be invited anywhere in the world.
But one would not invite a beggar; such a man would feed on his host.
xvii 381-387 For Antinoos, these words are meant to convey that Eumaios, being a stranger himself, would not invite a low-ranking stranger, such as a beggar; if the stranger is a beggar, then he did not invite
him. For Odysseus, these same words mean that Eumaios considers him a high-ranking stranger, such as a seer, physician, carpenter, or poet; if the stranger is one of these, then he did invite him. The sequence of enumerating the four occupations is arranged in a crescendo of detail, starting with a single word to designate the seer (mantin: xvii 384) and ending with a whole verse to designate the poet (xvii 385). Thus the formal presentation of alternatives implies that the stranger is most likely to be a poet.
§14. Later on, Eumaios tells Penelope explicitly that the stranger indeed has the powers of a poet:
hoi' ho ge mutheitai, thelgoito ke toi philon êtor.
...
hôs d' hot' aoidon anêr potiderketai, hos te theôn ex aeidêi dedaôs epe' himeroenta brotoisi,
tou d' amoton memaasin akouemen, hoppot' aeidêi: hôs eme keinos ethelge parêmenos en megaroisi
The kind of things he tells about--it would put your heart in a trance....
As when a man is looking at[1] a singer who has learned his words from the gods--and the words give pleasure to mortals,
who yearn to hear him without pause when he sings--
so also that one was putting a trance on me as he sat in my house.
xvii 514, 518-521 The disguised Odysseus merits such a compliment from Eumaios not only when he tells the first- person odyssey of the Cretan adventurer, at xiv 192-359,[2] but also later when he employs a particular form of discourse in asking for an overnight cloak, at xiv 462-506. In these verses, the disguised Odysseus is narrating to Eumaios and his friends a story about the Trojan War: it happened on a cold night, during an ambush, that a man was tricked out of his cloak by Odysseus himself, who gave it to his own friend and equal, the narrator![3] As Leonard Muellner points out, the telling of this story to Eumaios has a parallel purpose: to get a cloak for the disguised Odysseus.[4] "The story is--in more ways than one--proud talk that raises its speaker's prestige (and almost gives away his identity),[5] but in the Odyssey it receives a moral interpretation ... by which Odysseus obtains proper treatment as a guest in the form of ... a symbolic mantle."[6] Significantly, these words of Odysseus constitute a form of discourse that Eumaios himself compliments as an aînos (ainos: xiv 508). And it is this same word aînos that designates praise poetry within the traditional diction of epinician praise poetry!
§15. From the evidence of Homeric diction alone, the meaning of aînos may be analyzed further:
In particular, aînos designates a discourse that aims at praising and honoring someone or something or at being ingratiating toward a person. Accidental or not, in Homer the word always defines a polite, edifying speech that is in direct or indirect connection with a gift or a prize. In Il.
23.795 aînos means "praise," as is made evident by the verb kûdaínô ("to give honor") of line 793. Achilles repays this aînos with a gift. In the same book, Nestor's speech--in which he recalls his past deeds and thanks Achilles for his generous gift--is termed an aînos (Il. 23.652). In both poems we find polúainos as an epithet for Odysseus: in at least one passage the word is connected with Odysseus's cunning (Il. 11.430), and in Od. 14.508-9 Odysseus's speech--termed aînos--is explicitly defined as a discourse that will not "miss a reward." In Od. 21.110 Telemachos turns to the suitors, who are ready to compete for Penelope's hand, and says rhetorically that she does not need any praise (aînos). Yet Telemachos has in fact praised Penelope and enhanced her unique qualities (106-9): he therefore increases the suitors' willingness to compete for the prize, i.e., for Penelope.
The aînos told by Odysseus to Eumaios is parallel to the epinician praise poetry of the classical period both in name and in details of convention. Consider, for example, the elaborate excuse that introduces the story of the cloak as told by Odysseus:
kekluthi nun, Eumaie kai alloi pantes hetairoi, euxamenos ti epos ereô: oinos gar anôgei êleos, hos t' epheêke poluphrona per mal' aeisai
kai th' hapalon gelasai, kai t' orchêsasthai anêke, kai ti epos proeêken hoper t' arrêton ameinon. all' epei oun to prôton anekragon, ouk epikeusô
Listen to me now, Eumaios and all you other hetaîroi [companions]! Speaking proudly,[2] I will tell you an epos [poetic utterance].[3] The wine, which sets me loose, is telling me to do so.
Wine impels even the thinking man to sing
and to laugh softly. And it urges him on to dance.
It even prompts an epos that may be better left unsaid.
But now that I have shouted out loud, I will not suppress it.
In the epinician praise poetry of the classical period, we find similar formalistic excuses:
ea me: nikônti ge charin, ei ti peran aertheis anekragon, ou trachus eimi katathemen
Your indulgence, please! If I--to reciprocate the victor-- shouted something out loud as I soared too far up, I am not unversed in bringing it back down.[4]
Moreover, the festive mood that calls for "singing, laughter, and dancing" (xiv 464-465) is reminiscent of the formal setting for the epinician praise poetry of Pindar and Bacchylides: a song-and-dance composition performed in an atmosphere of euphrosunâ 'mirth' (e.g, Pindar N.
§16. In the aînos told by Odysseus, the actual disposition of the audience constitutes a theme that rounds out the composition; the story of the cloak is concluded with an appeal to the host's sense of philotês 'being a philos' (philotêti: xiv 505). In other words, Eumaios the host should be philos to Odysseus the xenos 'guest-stranger'. So also in the praise poetry of Pindar, the poet may conventionally present himself as the xenos of the patron, who is his philos:
xeinos eimi: skoteinon apechôn psogon, hudatos hôte rhoas philon es andr' agôn kleos etêtumon ainesô
I am a xenos [guest-stranger]. Keeping away dark blame [psogos]
and bringing genuine kleos, like streams of water, to a man who is philos, I will praise [aineô] him.
In light of these patterns in traditional diction, we may now see another dimension in the words employed by the disguised Odysseus in his attempt to beg from Antinoos. Speaking as a xenos, however lowly, the beggar addresses the suitor as philos (xvii 415) and promises him kleos in return for any largesse (xvii 418). Antinoos refuses to give anything, and in return he gets oneidos 'blame' from Odysseus (oneidea: xvii 461).[1] Generosity and its opposite deserve praise and blame respectively from this poetlike figure.
§17. We have seen, then, from the evidence of Homeric diction that the word aînos designates a mode of poetic discourse appropriate for purposes that go far beyond simply praising a patron. Although aînos becomes the primary word for designating praise poetry even within such poetry, it is also appropriate for designating, more broadly, "an allusive tale containing an ulterior purpose."[1] In the case of the aînos at xiv 508,[2] we see how a tale about a cloak--with the Trojan War as the setting--has won a temporary cloak for the teller as a pledge of the host's disposition as philos to his guest. As we compare the epinician praise poetry of Pindar and Bacchylides, which is also traditionally designated by the word aînos, we find that the poetic occasion is of course far more grandiose; nevertheless, the poetic form is essentially parallel. Here too, the central element is the deployment of tales taken from Myth--and the Trojan War serves frequently as the setting;[3] these tales, moreover, are arranged to convey an ad hoc message of praise and edification to the victor and his family, who are accordingly obligated as philoi to the poet. A derivative of aînos even conveys the moralizing tone so characteristic of epinician poetry: the compound par-aineô 'advise, instruct' applies to the edifying instructions given by the Centaur, Cheiron, to the youthful Achilles and also by the poet himself to his young patron (Pindar P.6.23).[4] This derivative word paraineô also applies to the didactic function of the Hesiodic tradition in general, and the application is actually attested in the diction of epinician praise poetry:
Lampôn de meletan ergois opazôn Hêsio- dou mala timai tout' epos,
xunon astei kosmon heôi prosagôn: kai xenôn euergesiais agapatai
And Lampon [the patron, father of the victorious athlete],
who adds preparedness to action, honors this epos [poetic utterance] of Hesiod. He instructs [par-aineô] his sons by telling it to them,
thus bringing communal embellishment to his city. And he is loved for treating well his xenoi.
Such a poetic utterance or epos ('Add preparedness to action!'), which serves as an instructive legacy for the sons of Lampon, is actually attested in the Hesiodic tradition:
meletê de toi ergon ophellei
Preparedness aids action.
§18. In the sense of 'an allusive tale containing an ulterior purpose',[1] the word aînos applies not only to the specific genre of praise poetry but also to the general narrative device of animal fables. In the poetry of Archilochus, for example, we find aînos designating the fable about the fox and the eagle (fr. 174.1W), as well as the fable about the ape and the fox (fr. 185.1W). The word is likewise appropriate for designating the animal fables belonging to the tradition of Aesop.[2] In order to understand the formal connection between fable and praise poetry, we may now turn to the aînos about the hawk and the nightingale in Hesiod W&D 203-212.[3] I call special attention to the fable's introductory description of the intended audience:
nun d' ainon basileusin ereô phroneousi kai autois
Now I will tell an aînos for kings, aware as they are.
Using the language of Prague School linguistics,[4] we may say that the code of this aînos has a message for kings--but only if they are "aware" (phroneontes, at verse 202). Such a built-in ideology of exclusiveness also pervades the form of aînos that we know as epinician praise poetry. Consider the following programmatic declarations about this genre of poetry by the poetry
itself:
phroneonti suneta garuô
I proclaim things that can be understood to the man who is aware [phroneôn].
... phônaenta sunetoisin ...
... having a sound for those who can understand ...
... epaineonti sunetoi
... those who can understand give praise
Praise poetry is "understandable" (suneta) only for the man who is "aware" (phroneôn). Only "those who can understand" (the sunetoi) can deliver or hear the message of praise.[5] Epic also recognizes this ideology of praise poetry, but it finds expression only in terms of quotations presented before an audience of Achaeans. Consider these words addressed by Odysseus to Diomedes:
Tudeïdê, mêt' ar me mal' ainee mête ti neikei: eidosi gar toi tauta met' Argeiois agoreueis
Son of Tydeus! Do not give me too much praise [aineô, from aînos] nor too much blame [neikeô, from neîkos].
You are saying these things in the presence of Argives who know.[6]
§19. The aînos, then, is a code bearing one message to its intended audience; aside from those exclusive listeners "who can understand," it is apt to be misunderstood, garbled.[1] With this ideology in mind, we will find it easier to understand the semantics of other attested words
derived from aînos. I cite in particular a by-form of aineô 'praise', ainizomai/ainissomai: this verb means either 'praise' (as in viii 487) or 'utter an oracular response' (as in Pindar P.8.40). It can even mean 'speak riddles' (as in Herodotus 5.56)-- hence the derivative noun ainigma 'riddle' (as in Sophocles Oedipus Rex 393, 1525). We may also find it easier now to understand
the semantics of the verb from which the noun aînos is derived: the negative form is an-ainomai 'say no', and the unattested positive counterpart *aínomai must have meant something like 'say [in a special way]'.[2]
§20. What, then, is the bond of communication that determines who can and who cannot understand the exclusive message of praise poetry? It is, I submit, the same principle that we find in the Homeric ideology of philotês--the ties that bind the philoi hetaîroi together.[1] In the Homeric tradition, as Dale Sinos has demonstrated in detail, the dimensions of philotês are determined by the social base of the Achaean lâos.[2] In the epinician praise poetry of the classical period, on the other hand, the social base for the community of philoi is the kômos 'revel, celebration, celebrating group of singers/dancers'.[3] The kômos is not only the context for celebrating the victor with praise (cf. Pindar N.3.5, I.8.4, etc.).[4] It is also, in a larger sense, a formal affirmation of the philotês that flourishes among hetaîroi 'comrades' in society. This social function of the kômos is evident even in the diction of epinician praise poetry, as the following examples show:
philophrosunais ... kômon ...
with the disposition of a philos ... kômos ...
kômazonti philois ... sun hetairois ...
having a kômos with the philoi hetaîroi ...
par' andri philôi ... kômazonti ...
in the presence of a man who is philos ... having a kômos ...
§21. The recipient of praise is of course philos both to his hetaîroi in the kômos and to the poet
himself (as in Pindar N.7.61-63).[1] Moreover, the poet's function is reciprocal negatively as well as positively. Pindar's own words reveal that the traditional function of the poet is to be not only philos to the philos but also ekhthros'hateful, hostile' to the ekhthros:
poti d' echthron hat' echthros eôn lukoio dikan hupotheusomai,
all' allote pateôn hodois skoliais
Let it happen that I be philos to [philein] the philos.
But I will be like an ekhthros to the ekhthros,[2] heading him off in the manner of a wolf, making different steps at different times, in twisting directions.
Pindar P.2.83-85 We have here a complete picture of reciprocity between the poet on the one hand and the man who gets the poet's praise or blame on the other.[3] It is also important to observe that the foil for being philos, being ekhthros, is described in words that amount to a periphrasis of the notion inherent in the name Luk-ambês, which has been traditionally interpreted as 'having the steps of a wolf'. [4] Pindar's words apparently connote the stylized movements of a dance that represents the steps of a wolf. So too with the name Luk-ambês: the second half of this compound, like that of i- ambos, seems to indicate an actual dance step.[5]
Notes
§1n1. Dumézil 1943; updated in Dumézil 1969.
§1n2. For a convenient collection and correlation of facts, with bibliography, see Caerwyn Williams 1972 and Ward 1973. Cf. also Watkins 1976.
§1n3. Detienne 1973.18-27.
§2n1. For details, see Detienne 1973.19.
§2n2. See also Detienne, pp. 18-20.
§3n1. For a survey of passages, see Detienne 1973.21. For the programmatic character of aînos/ epainos and aineô/epaineô as designating the poetic medium of praise, I cite in particular Pindar
O.6.12 and Bacchylides 5.16; see also the discussion of praise poetry by Bundy 1962.35.
§3n2. See Maehler 1963.85. As we have seen, the word kleos within the genre of epic denotes the glory conferred upon the hero by epic; see Ch.1§2. Note too the word etêtumon 'true, genuine' applied to kleos here in Pindar N.7.63; the significance of this epithet will be discussed at Ch.14§12n3.
§3n3. The list I give here is of course incomplete. Moreover, the traditional diction of epic poetry
has inherited its corresponding set of words indicating blame, as the discussion that follows will reveal (see esp. Ch.14§14). Of course, I do not mean to suggest that all the words in this list intrinsically indicate the concept of blame. In the case of a word like phthonos, for example, I will argue only that it indicates blame when it is being contrasted explicitly or implicitly with praise.
§3n4. On the Pindaric passage in which all these words occur, see Köhnken 1971.24-34.
§3n5. Cf. a parallel contrast of mômoms and (ep)aneô 'praise' in Theognis 169 (mômeumenos and ainei), 875-876 (mômêsaito and eainêsai), and 1079-1080 (mômêsomai and ainêsô); also in Alcman 1.43-44P (mômêsthai and epainên).
§3n6. Cf. aphthonêtos ainos 'praise [aînos] without phthonos' at Pindar O.11.7.
§4n1. The concept of mômos 'blame, reproach' is associated with the phthoneontes 'those who have phthonos' in Pindar O.6.74.
§4n2. Cf. also Köhnken 1971.34-36.
§5n1. Cf. Köhnken 1971.30-32.
§5n2. I.e., the language of phthonos is like eating.
§5n3. My translation veers from the generally accepted interpretation, according to which the subject of haptetai and erizei at line 22 is to be supplied as phthonos, implied by phthoneroisin at line 21 (for bibliography, see Köhnken 1971.30n38 and 33n57). The reasons for my interpretation will emerge from the discussion that follows. I should point out, however, that the main thesis of this discussion, that phthonos entails the "devouring" of a good hero, will not depend on whether or not my interpretation here is accepted. See further in Nagy 1996b.143n130.
§5n4. I posit that the thematic development is from the general to the specific: from "one who has
phthonos" to "Odysseus." See again Nagy 1996b.143n130.
§5n5. I.e., Odysseus caused Ajax to kill himself with his own sword. Cf. Pindar I.4.37, where the subject of tamôn 'cutting' is Ajax himself.
§5n6. Nonremembrance is the opposite of being remembered by poetry; on this traditional theme, see Detienne 1973.21-27. Cf. also Ch.1§3 above.
§5n7. We see a clear instance of this theme in Odyssey xviii 1-19, on which see further at §9.
§5n8. At Pindar N.9.23, the verb piainô is applied in a context where the corpses of the Seven against Thebes "fatten" the smoke of cremation; at line 24, the funeral pyres "feasted
on" (daisanto) the heroes. (Only Amphiaraos is exempt: lines 24-26.)
§6n2. See Faust 1970; also Faust 1969.109-125.
§6n5. From the standpoint of Agamemnon, the blame is of course unjustified.
§6n6. Significantly, Achilles himself is not called a kuôn 'dog' (or any of its variants) by any of his adversaries in the Iliad (see the survey by Faust 1970.10-19, column D). When Achilles is blamed for his savagery, the primary image is that of a lion (see Ch.7§22), not a dog; this observation may serve as a supplement to the interesting discussion by Faust 1970.24. I concede that the verb helkô, which denotes the dragging of Hektor's body by Achilles (XXII 401, XXIV 52; cf. XXIV 21), also denotes the dragging of corpses by dogs (see especially XXII 335-336). Nevertheless, the verb that denotes the dragging of victims by lions is also helkô (XI 239, XVIII 581).
§7n1. Cf. Köhnken 1971.34-35; also Carey 1976.37.
§7n2. For the function of the praise poem as a "song [humnos] of the kômos" (adjective
epikômios; or enkômios, as at Pindar N.1.7, O.2.47, etc.), see §20.
§7n3. On the function of the Nemean Games as a ritual extension of "the eris between Adrastos and the Thebans," cf. Köhnken 1971.35. On the theme of the strife between Eteokles and Polyneikes, see Ch.14§12n3. The strife is caused by the curse of Oedipus, to whom his sons had given the wrong moîra of meat (see Ch.7§16n3); by doing so, Eteokles and Polyneikes were in effect making oneidos against their father (oneideiontes: Thebais fr. 3.2 Allen).
§7n4. For momphâ as `blame' cf. also the corresponding verb memphomai as at Pindar N.1.24
(memphomenois).
§8n1. Note that the verbal eris/neîkos at the Wedding of Peleus and Thetis escalates into the physical eris/neîkos of the Trojan War; see Ch.11§12. To put it another way: the words eris/ neîkos apply not only to the language of blame but also to the action of physical combat.
§8n2. On the use of this vocative: Brunius-Nilsson 1955.
§8n3. Iros is said to get his name for being messenger of the suitors (xviii 6-7); thus the function of Îros is presented as parallel to that of Îris, messenger of the Olympian gods in the Iliad. I see no internal evidence that would justify our dismissing this theme as a haphazard contrivance based on the formal parallelism of Îros and Îris. Indeed, Iros may well have functioned as the figure who quotes actual messages of the suitors in more expanded versions of the story.
§9n3. As Calvert Watkins points out to me, the syntax in the beginning of this narrative is
strikingly parallel to the syntax in what is thought to be the beginning of the comic poem known as the Margites (fr. 1W). Note that the subject of the introductory sentence in xviii 1 is ptôkhos 'beggar', whereas the corresponding subject in the Margites (fr. 1.1W) is aoidos 'singer, poet'.
§9n4. xviii~f1 Appearances are deceiving, however. The action of the narrative will reveal that Iros indeed has no îs or biê (on the use of biê as synonym of îs: Ch.5§37), since he is bested by his "rival" Odysseus when their eris 'strife' escalates from verbal to physical combat (on which see §8n1). Accordingly, those who witness the combat call him A-îros (xviii 73), which may be reconstructed as *[[circumflex]]-uîros and glossed etymologically as "he who has no force =
*uîs." This form serves as a comic correction for what now emerges as the ironically misapplied meaning of Îros as *uîros "he who has force = *uîs." Thus the form Îros seems to be a play on an unattested Greek word *uîros, cognate with Latin uir 'man', etc. My reasoning here is based on the article of Bader 1976. I must add, however, that Bader's presentation does not account for the primary connection of Îros with Îris in the narrative (on which see §8n3). The apparent connection of Îros with *uîros `he who has *uîs' has to be considered secondary from the standpoint of the narrative (see again xviii 6-7). Still, the name Îris itself may well be derived from the same root *uî- as in îs: see Ch.20§9n6.
§9n5. For koros 'satiety', cf. also Pindar O.1.55-57: the sin of Tantalos is called his koros in that he could not "digest" (katapepsai) his vast olbos 'prosperity'.
§10n1. Cf. Theognis 581-582.
§10n2. See Stokes 1891.64-67 for text and translation. The translation is also conveniently available in Cross and Slover 1936.31-32.
§11n2. See §8. When Telemachus urges Antinoos to give food to the disguised Odysseus, the expression dos hoi helôn 'take and give to him' at xvii 400 corresponds to domenai kai poll' anelonta 'take much and give' at xviii 16. In both verses, these expressions are in collocation with ou ... phthoneô 'I do not have phthonos', applying to Telemachus and Odysseus respectively.
§12n1. Benveniste 1969 I 341 = 1973.278.
§13n1. E.g., the speaker himself! For the story, see xv 403-484.
§13n2. On the formation of dêmiourgos, see Bader 1965.133-141. The prime concept inherent in the word seems to be social mobility: a dêmiourgos is affiliated with the whole dêmos 'district', not with any one household. Note that Ithaca counts as one dêmos (see, e.g., i 103, xiv 126, etc.). For more on the semantics of dêmos, see Ch.19§3n5.
§13n3. On the parallelism of artisans and poets, which is presented here as a social reality within the context of the dêmos, see also Ch.17§§10-13.
§14n1. For the visual implications of the verb thelgô 'put into a trance' (used here at lines 514 and 521), see Householder/Nagy 1972.769-770.
§14n2. On which see Ch.7§26. Note that dinner time is the context for the performance of this entertaining narrative (xiv 192-198).
§14n3. See Muellner 1976.96.
§14n4. Muellner, p. 97.
§14n5. The key word is eukhomai (euxamenos 'saying proudly': xiv 463), on which see Muellner, pp. 96-97. Note also the use of eukhomai 'I say proudly' (xiv 199) at the beginning of the first-person narrative about the Cretan adventurer.
§14n6. Muellner, p. 97.
§15n1. Pucci 1977.76. Cf. also Meuli 1975 [= 1954] 739-742 and 751-753.
§15n3. On the use of epos to mean not just `utterance, word(s)' but also `poetic utterance' as quoted by the poetry itself, see Koller 1972, esp. p. 17 on Tyrtaeus fr. 4.2W. Cf. also Ch.15§7 on XX 203-205 and Ch.17§12 on Theognis 15-18.
§15n4. My translation emphasizes the up/down motion conveyed by aertheis/ katathesthai. I should add, however, that the combination of katathesthai with charin conveys yet another theme, that of fulfilled reciprocity.
§15n5. On the programmatic connotations of euphrosunâ as `victory revel' in epinician poetry, see Bundy 1962.2. In H.Hermes 481-482, the lyre is said to be a means of euphrosunê 'mirth' at the kômos; on the kômos, see §20.
§16n1. See again §11.
§17n1. For the wording of this definition, see Verdenius 1962.389, who actually cites xiv 508.
§17n2. Verdenius (ibid.) also cites an interesting parallel use of the word aînos in Sophocles
§17n3. For a sound discussion of the mythological paradigm and its function in Pindaric poetry, I cite Köhnken 1971.
§17n4. Surely the words that Phoinix intends for Achilles in Iliad IX, spoken in the presence of an audience of philoi (IX 528), qualify for designation by the word parainesis (abstract noun derived from verb paraineô). See Maehler 1963.47.
§18n1. See again §17.
§18n2. In Aristophanes Birds 651-653, the fable known as "The Fox and the Eagle" is actually attributed not to Archilochus (cf. fr. 174W) but to Aesop (cf. Fable 1 Perry). For more on the Aesopic aînos and its applications in Attic comedy, see Fraenkel 1920. On the classification of
the Aesopic fable as aînos, see Quintilian 5.11.19-21 (Aesop Testimonium 98 Perry) and Aelius Theon Progymnasmata 3 (Rhetores Graeci II 72 ff. Spengel; Aesop Testimonium 103 Perry). Aelius Theon (ibid.) also observes that the designation aînos is appropriate because the fables of Aesop have the function of parainesis (on this word see §17, esp. n4). It seems significant in this connection that the adopted son of Aesop is called Aînos in the Life of Aesop tradition (Vita W 103-110 Perry), and that Aesop aims at him what may surely be classified as a parainesis (Vita W 109-110). The story of Aesop and Ainos is apparently built on themes derived from the traditional story of Achiqar and Nadan (on which see Perry 1952.5-10), but its arrangement of these themes seems to suit the meaning of the word aînos in particular and the social function of the figure Aesop in general. After the adopted son's treachery against his father has been foiled, Aesop gives a "parainesis" to Aînos, whereas Achiqar gives both a scourging and a speech of blame to Nadan (see Perry 1952.9). In both versions, the son dies, but his death in the version of the Life of Aesop tradition is idiosyncratic: Ainos is so "scourged" (mastigôtheis) by the words of Aesop that he kills himself by jumping off a cliff (Vita W 110). In Vita G 142, Aesop himself dies by jumping off a cliff--instead of being pushed off by the Delphians as in Vita W 142. Finally, we may note that the king of Babylon in the story of Aesop and Ainos is called Lukoûrgos (both Vitae G and W). For more on the name Lukoûrgos (from Luko-orgos), see Ch.13§7.
§18n3. On which see Puelma 1972 and Pucci 1977.61-62, 76.
§18n4. For the terms code and message, see Jakobson 1960.
§18n5. For the parallel use of sophos 'well-versed' to express this ideology of exclusiveness in praise poetry, cf. Maehler 1963.93-95; cf. also Nisetich 1975. For a variation on this theme, where being sophos is described as not an adequate criterion for distinguishing the agathos 'good' listener from the kakos 'bad', see Theognis 681-682. Even here, though, the intended audience is the agathoi 'good'.
§18n6. For more on the context: Ch.2§9.
§19n1. As for the words of instruction spoken by Phoinix to Achilles in Iliad IX (see §17n4), the code seems to bear one message from the speaker and another message to the listener; see Ch. 6§16. Note too the argument of Meuli (1975 [= 1954] 742-743n2) that the epithet poluainos of Odysseus (e.g., xii 184) means `having many aînoi = fables'. I would rephrase: Odysseus is poluainos in that he can speak about many things in code (witness his "Cretan lies"). Compare the discussion of poluphêmos at Ch.1§4n1.
§19n2. See Chantraine I 35-36.
§20n2. Sinos 1975.65-79.
§20n3. See also §15n5.
§20n4. Cf. also the verb kômazô, as at Pindar N.9.1, P.9.89, etc., and the adjective enkômios, as
at Pindar N.1.7, O.2.47, etc. (cf. §7n2).
§21n1. See again §16.
§21n2. Note the striking parallelism of lines 83-84 with Archilochus fr. 23.14-15W. We now see that being ekhthros equals `to blame' just as being philos equals `to praise'. The adjective ekhthros belongs to the same family as the noun ekhthos, which we have observed in the following Pindaric characterization: psogeron Archilochon barulogois echthesin / piainomenon 'Archilochus, having psogos, fattening himself on heavy-worded hatreds [ekhthos
plural]' (Pythian 2.55-56). Discussion at §4. Note too the Pindaric characterization of blame poetry as, by its very origin, echthra ... parphasis 'misrepresentation that is hateful [has ekhthos]' (Nemean 8.32). Discussion at §7.
§21n3. Compare the reciprocity of kleos in Ibycus fr. 282P: at line 48 the word applies to the poet and at line 47 it applies to the patron. See Nagy 1974.250-251 and Watkins 1975.17; cf. also Watkins 1976. For a supplemented text of Ibycus fr. 282P, see now Page 1974 S 151-165.
§21n4. Pickard-Cambridge 1927.15: "wolf's gait." On the Indo-European motif of the wolf as a figure who is outside of society: Gernet 1936. I owe this reference to O. M. Davidson.
§21n5. On the formal connections between Luk-ambês and i-ambos: West 1974. 26-27.
The Best of the Achaeans Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry Revised Edition
Gregory Nagy
Copyright © 1980, 1997 The Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved. First edition 1979. Revised edition 1999. This document may be used, with this notice included, for noncommercial purposes within a subscribed
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§1. With the mention of Lukambês, we may now turn to the iamboi of Archilochus.[1] Of
course, we are dealing here not so much with a metrical category but rather with a genre of composition:[2] "iambic metre got its name from being particularly characteristic of iamboi, not vice versa."[3] The word i-ambos, as K. J. Dover observes, seems to have referred originally to
the type of occasion for which this genre was appropriate;[4] so also with the word dithur- ambos.[5] The point is, Luk-ambês figures as a prime ekhthros 'hateful one, enemy' of Archilochus.
§2. By virtue of being singled out, even within epinician praise poetry, as "a man of
psogos" (psogeron Archilochon: Pindar P.2.55), the figure of Archilochus surely qualifies as a master of blame poetry.[1] Thus the iamboi composed against Lykambes qualify the poet as an ekhthros to his victim.[2] Yet even an ekhthros may have to deliver his poetry in the context of a receptive audience--who would have to be, by contrast, philoi to him. In fact, Aristotle specifically identifies the audience of Archilochus as his philoi:
pros gar tous sunêtheis kai philous ho thumos airetai mallon ê pros tous agnôtas, oligôreisthai nomisas. dio kai Archilochos prosêkontôs tois philois enkalôn dialegetai pros ton thumon:
su gar dê para philôn apancheai
For the thûmos, when it feels neglected, is stirred more towards acquaintances and philoi than towards those who are unknown. Accordingly, it is appropriate that Archilochus should address the following words to his thûmos, as he is reproaching his philoi:
For you [the thûmos] are being choked off from the philoi.
Aristotle Politics 1328a quoting Archilochus (fr.129W)
The audience of philoi is also apparent in the Archilochean epode that begins as follows:
Erasmonidê Charilae,
ereô, polu philtath' hetairôn, terpseai d' akouôn
Kharilaos, son of Erasmon!
will tell you something laughable, you most philos of hetaîroi!
And you will get pleasure hearing it.
Archilochus fr. 168W
In this particular instance, the target of reproach may have been the Khari-lâos figure himself, whose very name suggests the notion of "mirth for the lâos."[3] Nevertheless, Kharilaos remains the "most philos of hetaîroi," presumably in the company of other philoi hetaîroi.
§3. Even if one of the philoi hetaîroi were to be singled out for attack, the poetry of blame would not have to go far enough to rupture the philotês. In the fragment concerning Kharilaos, we may infer as much from the promise terpseai d' akouôn 'you will have pleasure hearing it' (Archilochus fr. 168.4W).[1] Furthermore, in another fragment from the same composition, we actually see a reaffirmation of philotês:
to be philos to him even when he is hostile ...
Archilochus fr. 171.1W
In societies where blame poetry was an inherited institution, there must have been clearly defined traditional limits for degrees of insult. Consider the following description of the Spartan sussitia 'communal meals':[2]
autoi te paizein eithizonto kai skôptein aneu bômolochias, kai skôptomenoi mê duscherainein: sphodra gar edokei kai touto Lakônikon einai, skômmatos anechesthai: mê pheronta d' exên paraiteisthai, kai ho skôptôn epepauto.
They had the custom of engaging in playful mockery, without bômolokhiâ.[3] And when they were mocked themselves, they would not take offense, because putting up with mockery was the Laconian way to behave. And whenever someone could not bear it [the mockery], it was possible for him to be excused, and the one who was mocking him would stop then and there.[4]
Plutarch Lycurgus 12.6 We may also compare the Homeric Hymn to Hermes (55-58), where playful ridicule at banquets is associated with the theme of "philotêsbefitting hetaîroi" (hetaireiêi philotêti: verse 58).[5] At fr. 295d in his edition of archaic iamboi, Martin West gives a catalogue of fragments where various specific "amici" [philoi] may have been targets of reproach by Archilochus; perhaps it is significant that there is only one "inimicus" [ekhthros] attested, Lukambês himself!
§4. As we look further at the figure of Lukambês, we must also consider more closely the poetic conventions of the iambos. Clearly, the primary function of the Archilochean Iambos was blame poetry, and the primary target of this poetry was Lykambes and his daughters. On this point, the testimony of the ancient world is unambiguous, and I need cite only the most familiar reference, Horace Epist. 1.19.23-25.[1] With the appearance of the Cologne Epode (Pap.Colon. 7511),[2] we now have, for the first time, an extensive text about this family, made so infamous by the invectives of Archilochus.[3] The rest of the direct textual evidence about Lykambes and the Lykambides is so deficient that we have the greatest difficulties in reconstructing the overall structure of any other Archilochean composition from any of the attested fragments and excerpts. Even so, the bits and pieces at our disposal have led us to certain expectations, and the Cologne Epode now leaves us perhaps surprised at the nature of its blame poetry. Instead of railing at the family of Lykambes directly, the poem places them inside a narrative. The immediate victim of the
narrative is a daughter of Lykambes,[4] who herself is not addressed directly but in quotations within the narrative. Within the overall structure of this composition, direct address happens only in quotations from the daughter and from the narrator. These in turn are not only opened but also closed with expressions inherited for precisely the function of framing dialogue:
tosaut' ephônei ... line 6, after the quote
... tên d' egô antamei[bomên] line 6, before the quote [tos]aut' ephôneon ... line 28, before the quote
In this connection, I refer to Führer's monograph about the mechanics of direct quotation in
"lyric" (in the sense of "non-epic"), with its ample documentation on the traditional nature of such framing expressions and on their strict interrelation with the quotations.[5]
§5. Moreover, the inherited mechanics of direct quotation in epic are structurally parallel to those of lyric, the Iambos included.[1] They are in fact stricter, in that overt quote frames for dialogues (type prosephê, prosephônee, etc.) and for speeches (type metephê, metephônee, etc.) are de rigueur in Epos.[2] Conversely, the quote frames in a genre like the Iambos are only optional--a point to which we will have to return presently. But the point now is simply that the quote frames are indeed present in the Cologne Epode, so that the dialogue between the persona of the seducer and that of Lykambes' daughter--as we see it in this particular example of the Iambos--meets the strictest formal requirements of epic quotation. The essential difference between Epos and Iambos here can be seen from the standpoint of narration: whereas the epic narrative that frames dialogues is in the third person, the framing narrative of the Cologne Epode is in the first person--which coincides with the persona of the seducer.
§6. Shall we say, then, that this persona is Archilochus, whose actions determined the narrative of this iambic composition? Or rather, shall we say that the function of the composition determined the narrative, which in turn determined the persona that acts and speaks within?[1] If we choose the second alternative, then the function of blame poetry is a cause; if we choose the first, then it is merely an effect. There are also other consequences that accompany our choice. The first alternative leads us to approach Archilochean poems as biographical documents, and we then find ourselves taking the same attitude as most of the ancient commentaries that have survived. The second alternative leads us to ask whether the details and essentials about the persona of the composer are to be derived from his role as composer of blame poetry. For example, those ancient commentators who took a biographical approach to Archilochean poetry were upset to read in the poet's own words that his mother was a slave-woman, called Enîpô (Critias fr. 88 B 44DK, Aelian VH 10.13; see Archilochus fr. 295W). And yet, this very detail reflects on the function of Archilochean poetry, in that Enîpô is derived from a word used in Epos to designate 'blame', enîpê (as at xx 266).[2]
§7. In this connection, I return to the argument that even the prime target of Archilochean blame poetry, Lukambês himself, is a stock character whose name is connected with the very notion of iambos.[1] Moreover, if indeed one of the original contexts of the i-ambos was Dionysiac in nature,[2] we may compare West's collection of thematic evidence about Luk-ambês with the tradition that Dionysus was persecuted by Luko-orgos, wielder of the bouplêx 'cattle prod' (VI 130-140).[3] Be that as it may, the traditional form of iambic blame poetry--as we can see from the fragments of Hipponax and Semonides beside those of Archilochus--is replete with a great
variety of stock situations and stock characters.[4]
§8. Further, K. J. Dover raises the possibility that the poet can even assume the persona of a stock figure like Charon the carpenter (Archilochus fr. 19W) or the father reproaching his daughter (Archilochus fr. 122W).[1] In these two cases, however, we may not have to go that far. Although lyric in general allows the occasional assumption by the composer of a persona that is overtly distinct from his own self (e.g., Alcaeus fr. 10LP),[2] the specific genre of Iambos may perhaps be more strict. At least, the Archilochean poems about Charon and about the father-to- daughter reproach are inconclusive, since their endings have not survived. They may both have ended with a quote frame even though they began without one. The effect may have been an amusing surprise.[3] The suppression of the quoting mechanism till the very end of the composition is a comic device well known to us from Horace Epode2.[4]
§9. The point remains, then, that Archilochean blame poetry against Lykambes and his daughters is a stylized poetic form, with strict formal regulation of narrative and of dialogue quoted within the narrative; also, that the personification of the composer and that of his targets is similarly stylized within the narrative and dialogue. As Aristotle says in the Rhetoric (1418b23-31), such personifications as in Archilochus frr. 19 and 122W (both of which he actually cites)[1] are an example of how the poet composed blame poetry: kai hôs Archilochos psegei 'and as Archilochus reproaches [makes psogos]'. The evidence of the Cologne Epode serves as an invaluable confirmation for what we can also infer from the other fragments: the Archilochean iamboi against Lukambês and family, with their stylized themes and characters, are as universal in content as they are ad hoc.
§10. We are left with the more fundamental problem of examining the traditional function of this Hellenic form of blame poetry, the Iambos. Looking forward in time, beyond Archilochus, we see a medium kindred to Archilochean iamboi in the complex poetic form of the Athenian kômôidiâ 'comedy', which in turn must be compared with its less sophisticated counterparts in other city- states. I leave the details of exposition to Martin West and others,[1] confining myself here to stressing what Pickard-Cambridge had proved long ago--that the traditional notion of kômôidiâ was derived from kômos 'revel, celebration, celebrating group of singers/dancers'.[2] In the kômos we see the social origins of comedy, a medium of blame poetry that has the capacity of being applied on the universal or ad hoc level.[3] In other words, the blame poetry that we may find in kômôidiâ is by origin an extension of a social function that is associated with the kômos. This connection helps explain an aetiological story about sixth-century Naxos, as reported in Aristotle's Constitution of the Naxians (fr. 558 Rose, as directly quoted by Athenaeus 348b-c). On that island, which is hours away from Paros, the traditional home of Archilochus, a group of young men made a kômos to the house of an eminent citizen after a drinking party; they insulted him and his two marriageable daughters, and the ensuing riot led to the emergence of the tyrant Lygdamis.[4] We have here a theme where the kômos actually affects the social order, in a context that connotes blame poetry.
§11. Looking backwards in time beyond Archilochus, we see from the comparative evidence of other Indo-European civilizations that the blame poetry of the Archilochean Iambos has an inherited converse in the institution of praise poetry.[1] From the standpoint of their heritage, the psogoi 'reproaches' of an Archilochus are thematically the converse of the epainoi 'praises' of a
Pindar. Actually, in Pindar's own words, praise and blame are two sides of the same thing:
... ho gar ex oikou poti mômon epainos kirnatai
... for praise [epainos] is by nature mixed with blame [mômos][2]
Pindar fr. 181SM
Even on the level of form, we may observe in general that the dactylo-epitrites of epinician praise poetry are comprised of metrical elements that are cognate with those used to build the epodes of Archilochean iamboi.[3] Most important of all, both blame and praise poetry have a common social context in the institution of the kômos. This convergence can be instantly and most dramatically illustrated by simply citing the formation of two words: kômôidiâ 'comedy'[4] and enkômion 'encomium'.[5]
§12. In the very language of epinician praise poetry, it is the "Dorian" kômos (as it is called in Pindar P.8.20) that serves as the context for celebrating the victor with aînos 'praise'.[1] Conversely, in the blame poetry of Archilochus, the same word aînosdesignates the use of animal fables (frr. 174.1, 185.1W),[2] the basic themes of which would have been appropriate for performance by a khoros 'song/ dance group' comprised of "animals" in some formal analogue of kômôidiâ.[3]
§13. In short, the iamboi of Archilochus against Lukambês and his daughters are a special case of blame poetry. The insults are against an ekhthros, not a philos. Nevertheless, they are in all likelihood framed for a general audience of receptive philoi, whose social outlook may well have resembled that of the famous Naxian kômos mentioned by Aristotle. At least, the transmission of Archilochean poetry at Paros suggests that his blame poetry was not against the social outlook of the local state that helped preserve this poetry.[1] Whether we view the audience of Archilochus as the immediate philoi or, teleologically, as the social order that helped preserve and propagate Archilochean iamboi, the point remains that such poetry is an affirmation of philotês in the community. If indeed these iamboi are intended for the philoi as audience, then a direct approach to Lykambes is poetically unnecessary. If the insults aimed at Lykambes are for the entertainment of the philoi, then the device of a first-person narrative about Lykambes and his daughters is appropriate and effective.
§14. As a discourse that has the capacity of telling about its subjects without necessarily speaking to them, the blame poetry of Archilochus is farther from the praise poetry of Pindar and closer to the epic poetry of Homer. As a correlate to this distinction, we may note that the subjects of Archilochean blame seem to be stock characters,[1] whereas the immediate subjects of Pindaric praise are of course historical figures. Moreover, we have seen that there is a narrative frame for the direct speeches of blame in the poetry of Archilochus, which in this respect too is farther away from a Pindaric and closer to a Homeric model. In the poetry of Pindar, there is no narrative frame for the poet's direct speech of praise. On the other hand, the Cologne Papyrus has revealed that the direct speeches of Archilochean poetry can be framed within a first-person narrative. In this respect, Archilochus is farther away from epic and closer to comedy. In terms of comedy, the equivalent of the first-person narrator would be a character interacting with other characters; most
appropriately, this character would be assumed by the first actor, who was originally the poet himself.[2]
Notes
§1n1. This chapter is a reworking of an earlier article (Nagy 1976).
§1n2. The word iamboi is an appropriate designation for the following meters of Archilochus: iambic trimeters (18-87W) and tetrameters (88-167W); also epodes (168-204W), including the Cologne Epode (see §4).
§1n3. West 1974.22; see Aristotle Poetics 1448b31. Of course, the generalization of a meter for one genre does not preclude the use of the same meter for other genres.
§1n4. Dover 1964.189; cf. West 1974.23 and Richardson 1974.213-217.
§1n5. See West 1974.23-25.
§3n2. See also West 1974.16-17 on the playful insults and retorts in the poetry of Theognis (577-578, 1115, 1123, 1211).
§3n3. The word bômolokhos 'he who ambushes at the altar' and its derivatives refer to a particularly offensive sort of discourse; cf. Aristophanes Frogs 358, Knights 902, Peace 748, etc. The verb bômo-lokheô can mean "beg" (Pollux 3.111). In Pherecrates fr. 141 Kock, we see that a bômolokhos is one who literally 'ambushes' the sacrificer at the altar by asking for meat under the threat of verbal abuse. For the theme of verbal strife at a sacrifice, compare the myth of Prometheus (Ch.11§§10, 15, etc.). For the semantics of bômo-lokhos, compare perhaps Arkhi- lokhos.
§3n4. The word for 'mock, ridicule' here is skôptô, on which see further at Ch.16§10 and n7; also Ch.18§3 and n4.
§3n5. There are textual difficulties at the beginning of verse 58. I prefer the readings hôs over hon andêrizeskon over ôrizeskon. My interpretation: Zeus and Maia had eris in a spirit of philotês. (From the standpoint of, say, an Alexandrian exegete, this concept would have seemed contradictory.) When young men at the banquet table engage in playful ridicule (kertomeousin: verse 56), they sing of the eris that once took place between Zeus and Maia (verses 57-58). According to this interpretation, the young men are in effect reenacting this primal eris. For more on the verb kertomeô in the sense of 'reproach, ridicule' as in verse 56, see Ch.14§§11 (n6), 14.
§4n1. For details, see West 1974.22, 25-28.
§4n2. For a convenient introduction and the text itself, see Van Sickle 1975(b).
§4n3. The figure of Neoboule, daughter of Lykambes, is mentioned at line 16. Throughout the poem, she is treated as a negative point of contrast--a veritable foil--to the other girl, who in turn gets seduced in the narrative. The poem has this other girl unwittingly introduce the subject of Neoboule for verbal abuse, when she volunteers her as a fitting substitute for the desires of the seducer (lines 3 ff.). Since the girl refers to Neoboule as "a maiden in our house who ... " (lines 3-4), we may reasonably infer that she too, like Neoboule, is a daughter of Lykambes. Compare also fr. 38 and fr. 54W and the discussions by West 1974b.482 and Koenen 1974.499. I find myself in sympathy with the proposal that Dioscorides Epigr. 17 (Anthologia Palatina 7.351), a poem about the daughters of Lykambes, was at least partly "inspired" by the poem of Pap.Colon. 7511; see Koenen 1974.499, West 1974b.482 and 1975.218.
§4n4. See again n3.
§4n5. Führer 1967. Cf. Gentili 1965.382 and 1972.69n82.
§5n1. Führer 1967.1-4, 66-67. See now also Stoessl 1976.
§5n2. Cf. Nagy 1974.84-94.
§6n1. As Pietro Pucci points out (per litteras 1/10/1976), the term persona must be understood as "the role which is traditional for a poet to assume in a specific genre."
§6n2. On Enîpô, see Treu 1959.157 (following earlier proposals that the name is a personification misunderstood by Critias); see also Van Sickle 1975b.151, whose discussion supplements that of West 1974.28.
§7n1. Cf. Ch.12§21. See also West 1974.25-28. For a discussion of Kharilâos as a stock figure, see §2 and Ch.5§39. As for Lykambes' daughter Neoboulê, I cite Van Sickle's observation that the name "suits the kind of girl who changes her marriage plans" (1975b.152).
§7n2. See West 1974.23-25. Another context, as Albert Henrichs points out to me, would have been the cult of Demeter. Consider the function of Iambê in H.Dem. 192-205. For further discussion, see West, ibid. and Richardson 1974.213-217.
§7n3. Note that Lukoorgos "had eris" against Dionysos (erizen: VI 131); on eris see Ch. 11§§10-16, Ch. 12§3. The eris of the god's persecutor is in this story punished by blindness (VI 139)--a theme that I propose to examine in detail elsewhere.
§7n4. See Dover 1964.205-212 and West 1974.28-33.
§8n1. Dover 1964.206-208.
§8n2. For a survey, see Führer 1967.5-7.
§8n3. See Führer 1967; cf. also the comments of M. Treu following the presentation of Dover, 1964.218-219.
§8n4. See Fraenkel 1957.60.
§10n1. West 1974.33-39, with bibliography.
§10n2. Pickard-Cambridge 1927.225-253.
§10n3. Of course, comedy is more than blame poetry: it is a combination of artistic forms, including several types of poetry/song and dance.
§10n4. See West 1974.27-28.
§11n1. See Ch.12§§1-3.
§11n2. On mômos 'blame, reproach', cf. Ch.12§3.
§11n3. Cf. Nagy 1974.167-168, 173-174, 297-302.
§12n2. See Ch.12§18. Moreover, Archilochus fr. 174W is from a poem against Lykambes and family (172-181W).
§12n3. Cf. the theme of "wolf steps," as discussed at Ch.12§21. On the purely technical (as compared to theoretical) notion of mimêsis as 'performance' of song/dance (in reenactment of myth), see Koller 1954.11. For parallels to the aînoi of Archilochus, cf. Stesichorus fr. 281P.
§13n1. An essential factor, I submit, is the archaic cult of Archilochus at Paros (see Ch.18§1, esp. n1); this factor also accounts for the Life of Archilochus tradition, which I view as a development parallel to the transmission of the poetry itself (see Ch.18§4). In other words, I reject the notion that the Life of Archilochus tradition is merely the result of otiose exercises in fabricating stories on the basis of the attested poetic text. Cf. Brelich 1958.321-322 on the Life of Hesiod tradition, which follows traditional narrative patterns associated with cult heroes. In this connection, I will also adduce the Life of Aesop tradition (Ch.12§18n2 and Ch.16). See now my further comments in Foreword §7n5.
§14n1. See §§6-7; also Ch.12§21.
§14n2. The word exarkhô, used by Aristotle to designate the function of first actor (participle exarkhôn: Poetics 1449a11) is also found in Archilochus fr. 120 and fr. 121W designating the poet's leading off a choral performance (dithyramb and paean respectively). See Pickard-
Cambridge 1927.123 and Lucas 1968.80-83.
The Best of the Achaeans Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry Revised Edition
Gregory Nagy
Copyright © 1980, 1997 The Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved. First edition 1979. Revised edition 1999. This document may be used, with this notice included, for noncommercial purposes within a subscribed
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§1. The resemblances in poetic form between the Archilochean Iambos and the Homeric Epos suggest that blame poetry may have evolved away from an old (and unattested) form corresponding to that of praise poetry (as still attested in Pindar and Bacchylides) into its newer form resembling comedy. The key here to formulating the evolution of blame poetry is the evolution of epic poetry itself into a superbly versatile medium equally capable of dialogue and narrative. In fact, Aristotle singles out Homeric Epos as an ideal medium of dialogue (Poetics 1448a20-24, 1460a7), with as much dramatic potential as he finds in Aristophanic comedy or Sophoclean tragedy (Poetics1448a25-28).[1]
§2. Aristotle actually reconstructs a primordial form of blame poetry, which he designates as psogoi, and a coexisting proto-form of praise poetry, which he designates as enkômia or humnoi (Poetics 1448b27). He traces the blame and praise poetry forward in time to the attested forms of Iambos and Epos respectively (iamboi vs. hêroika: Poetics 1448b32-34), adding that comedy and tragedy respectively are the ultimate successors if not descendants of these poetic forms (1449a2-6). This formulation provides us with an attractive set of parallelisms. We see the direct address of blame and praise poetry becoming framed within the narratives of Iambos and Epos. We can also imagine that interchanges of direct address within the narrative can evolve into dialogue, which in turn corresponds to the dialogue of comedy and tragedy. Despite its advantages, however, Aristotle's formulation seems too restrictive, especially in its treatment of Epos as a direct descendant of praise poetry. We may expect, granted, that Epos can quote direct speeches of praise[1] just as Iambos can quote direct speeches of blame. But Epos is in fact more inclusive: we have already seen, for instance, that it also can quote direct speeches of blame--as in
the context of narrating a quarrel.[2]
§3. Another difficulty with Aristotle's scheme is that his definition of primordial praise and blame poetry is itself overly restrictive. These poetic forms are said to have their beginnings when the spoudaîoi 'noble' praised the noble and the phaûloi 'base' blamed the base (Poetics 1448b24-27 in conjunction with 1448a1-2).[1] For Aristotle, spoudaîoi and phaûloi "indicate the two ends of the ordinary, aristocratically based, Greek scale of values".[2] In fact, he uses these same words at Nicomachean Ethics 1145b9 as synonyms for "praiseworthy" (spoudaîos kai epainetos) and "blameworthy" (phaûlos kai psektos).[3] From our own examination of what traditional praise poetry actually says about itself, however, we have already seen that blaming the noble and praising the base are also presented as poetic functions--which are of course themselves blamed as base by praise poetry, with its avowed functions of both praising the noble and blaming the base. [4] Moreover, the program of praise poetry entails not only that the noble praise the noble but also that the noble blame the base--a function omitted in Aristotle's formulation. In fact, we hear nothing from Aristotle about the enkômia of Pindar and Bacchylides--the evolution of which should surely be traced from the proto-enkômiathat he himself has posited (see again Poetics 1448b27).
§4. It may well be by way of retrojecting his scheme of current poetic forms that Aristotle conceives of proto-psogoi as blame of the base by the base only and proto-enkômia as praise of the noble by the noble only. This restrictive formulation actually fits the Aristotelian view of attested comedy and tragedy respectively. There is an important adjustment, however: for these attested poetic forms, the actual elements of blame and praise are left out of the formulation. Comedy is seen simply as a base medium representing the actions of the base and tragedy as a noble medium representing the actions of the noble (cf. especially Poetics 1449a32-39). By analogy, then, Aristotle sees proto-psogoi as a base medium representing the actions of the base by way of blame, and likewise proto-enkômia as a noble medium representing the actions of the noble by way of praise(see again Poetics 1448b24-27). There is a clear recognition here that blame and praise had been functional elements "at first" (prôton: 1448b27), in the poetic forms of psogoi and enkômia. There also is a clear implication that they are no longer directly functional in comedy and tragedy. In fact, Aristotle explicitly says so in the case of comedy. He specifies that this poetic form has the dramatic function not of psogos 'blame' but simply of to geloîon
'laughter' (Poetics 1448b37-38).
§5. Since laughter is recognized as the obvious function of comedy also in English usage, we may henceforth approximate Aristotle's to geloîon with 'the comic element' as well as 'laughter' while we proceed to examine further the relationship of blame poetry with Iambos and comedy. Aristotle remarks that comedy represents the actions of the base because to geloîon 'the comic element' is an aspect of to aiskhron 'baseness' (Poetics 1449a32-34) and further, that the laughter of comedy--to geloîon--is intrinsic to aîskhos 'baseness', so long as it is not too painful or destructive (1449a34-37). If indeed the comic element is intrinsic to what is aiskhro- 'base' and aîskhos 'baseness', it is significant that the diction of Homeric Epos itself associates these same words with the overall concept of blame poetry. For example, aîskhos is used as a synonym of oneidos 'blame, reproach' at III 242.[1] Moreover, we see that Melantho enenîpe 'reproached' the disguised Odysseus aiskhrôs 'in a base manner', at xviii 321. Five verses later, the same action is restated: at xviii 326, she enenîpe'reproached' Odysseus oneideiois epeessi 'with words of oneidos'. Finally, Hektor neikessen 'reproached [made neîkos against]' Paris aiskhroîs epeessi
'with base words', at both III 38 and VI 325. The last example is particularly instructive: Hektor's words of blame against Paris are aiskhra 'base' not because Hektor himself is base but because Paris is so. In other words, the subject of blame is base, and so too are the words that describe him, but the blamer himself can remain noble. Such a situation cannot be accommodated by Aristotle's scheme of blame poetry, where the blamer too would have to be base.[2] Moreover, Hektor's words of blame are hardly comic, any more than the words of Achilles when he blamed Agamemnon.[3] Here it is useful to consider again Aristotle's observation that laughter is intrinsic to aîskhos 'baseness' (Poetics 1449a32-37). We may now wish to restate: baseness has merely a potential for the comic element. Having noted that epic diction itself equates aîskhos 'baseness' with the substance of blame, we can now appreciate Aristotle's observation that to geloîon 'laughter' rather than psogos 'blame' is the function of comedy (Poetics 1448b37-38). Again we may restate: blame poetry has a potential for the comic element, and comedy formalizes this element of blame poetry. But blame poetry itself is more inclusive and thus cannot be equated with comedy. Blame poetry can be serious as well as comic; it can condemn as well as ridicule.
§6. Still, the nonserious side of blame poetry is also formally indicated in Homeric diction, and the key word is hepsiaomai'play, get amusement'.[1] The only Homeric attestation of the simplex verb occurs in a particularly suggestive context:
... hepsiaasthai
molpêi kai phormingi: ta gar t' anathêmata daitos
... to get amusement
with singing and the lyre: for these are the things that go on at a feast [dais][2]
Whereas we see the simplex verb hepsiaomai reflecting the element of poetry, the compound kath-epsiaomai reflects a complementary element, that of blame by way of ridicule. We begin at xix 372, where the disloyal handmaidens kathepsioôntai 'ridicule' the disguised Odysseus. This action of the women is then designated in the next verse as a lôbê 'outrage, disgrace' and as aiskhea 'acts of baseness [aîskhos]' (xix 373). In other words, the ridicule committed by the women is an act of blame.[3] As the blamers of Odysseus, the women are themselves counterblamed by being called kunes 'dogs' at xix 372.[4] The equivalent of kathepsioôntai 'ridicule' at xix 372 is in turn ephepsioonto 'ridiculed' at xix 370, likewise designating the action of the disrespectful handmaidens. This other compound eph-epsiaomai now leads us to another attestation, in one of the most revealing Homeric passages on blame as a foil for praise:
hos men apênês autos eêi kai apênea eidêi, tôi de katarôntai pantes brotoi alge' opissô zôôi, atar tethneôti g' ephepsioôntai hapantes.
hos d' an amumôn autos eêi kai amumona eidêi, tou men te kleos euru dia xeinoi phoreousi
pantas ep' anthrôpous, polloi te min esthlon eeipon
If a man is harsh himself and thinks harsh thoughts, all men pray that pains should befall him hereafter
while he is alive. And when he is dead, all men ephepsioôntai[ridicule] him. But if a man is blameless[5] himself and thinks blameless thoughts,
the guest-strangers he has entertained carry his kleos far and wide
to all mankind, and many are they who call him esthlos [worthy].[6]
§7. Of course, the nonserious aspect of blame poetry depends on personal noninvolvement. Blame may be a kharma 'thing of mirth' to others while at the same time being an elenkheiê 'disgrace' to the one who is to experience it (as at XXIII 342).[1] As a particularly striking instance, let us consider these words warning about the ridicule of blame that every husband is meant to fear:
hêtis de toi malista sôphronein dokei, hautê megista tunchanei lôbômenê: kechênotos gar andros, hoi de geitones chairous' horôntes kai ton, hôs hamartanei. tên hên d' hekastos ainesei memnêmenos gunaika, tên de touterou mômêsetai.
isên d' echontes moiran ou gignôskomen
And she [the wife] who seems to have the most even disposition happens to be the very one who commits the greatest disgrace.[2]
Her husband has his mouth agape, and the neighbors make merry at seeing how he too has gone wrong.[3]
Every man will keep it in mind to praise his own wife and will blame the wife of the other man.
And we do not recognize that we all have the same lot.
Semonides 7.108-114W In such a situation, the ridicule of blame formalizes the disgrace of the involved and the laughter of the uninvolved.[4]
§8. Since Homeric Epos is of course serious in content (cf. Aristotle Poetics 1448b34-35), it is hardly suited to reflect the comic aspect of blame poetry. By contrast, the Iambos is ideal for this purpose; in fact, the poem of Archilochus that is addressed to Khari-lâos 'whose lâos has mirth' specifically promises khrêma ... geloîon 'a thing of laughter' (fr. 168.2W).[1] We may speculate that there might have been a quality of timelessness in such laughter if indeed the subjects of blame in the Iambos were stock characters.[2] Be that as it may, however, we may surmise from the attested evidence that Iambos was more concerned with laughter than with blame for the sake of blame. In this connection, we come back to Aristotle's useful formulation about comedy: its
function is laughter, not blame (Poetics 1448b37-38).
§9. Although Homeric Epos is not intrinsically suited for the comic element, Aristotle does find an attested poetic form, within the Homeric tradition,[1] that has a function parallel to that of comedy. The form in question is represented by the Homeric Margites, which shares with comedy the prime function of to geloîon (Poetics 1448b28-38).[2] From both Aristotle's brief account (ibid.) and the few fragments that have survived (most notably fr. 1W), we know that the Margites even combines the meters of both Epos and Iambos. It consists of dactylic hexameters interspersed with iambic trimeters. From the fragments and the overall testimonia (pp. 69-76 West 1972),[3] we also know that the contents of the Margites resemble those of the Iambos: both the story and its characters are base and ridiculous. Finally, we may note that the very name Margîtêsis built from the adjective margos 'gluttonous, wanton'--a word that serves to designate a base exponent of blame poetry.[4]
§10. In fact, the name Margîtês has a strikingly close formal parallel in Thersîtês, the name of a figure described in the Iliad itself as the most base of all the Achaeans who came to Troy. The actual word here for 'most base' is aiskhistos (II 216), belonging to the family of the same noun aîskhos that conventionally designates the baseness of blame poetry. This man who is the worst of the Achaeans (cf. also II 248-249) is also described as ekhthistos'most hateful' to Achilles and Odysseus specifically (II 220), who happen to be the best of the Achaeans in the Iliad and Odysseyrespectively--and thereby the two preeminent figures of Panhellenic Epos.[1] In this respect also, the word ekhthistos is significant. It belongs to the family of the same noun ekhthos 'hatred' that conventionally designates the nature of blame poetry compared to that of praise poetry: "being ekhthros" as against "being philos."[2] Moreover, Thersites is said to be ekhthistos 'most hateful' in particular to Achilles and Odysseus (II 220) for the following reason:
... tô gar neikeieske
... because he made neîkos against these two
Thersites is the most inimical figure to the two prime characters of Homeric Epos precisely
because it is his function to blame them. Epos is here actually presenting itself as parallel to praise poetry by being an institutional opposite of blame poetry. This passage, then, even supports Aristotle's formulation of Epos as a descendant of enkômia 'praise poetry' (Poetics 1448b24-38). [3] We should add the qualification, however, that Epos is more likely a partial and maybe even an indirect descendant.[4] Nevertheless, it implicitly recognizes its own affinity to praise poetry.
§11. The name of Thersîtês connotes blame poetry not only by way of its parallelism with the formation Margîtês.[1] The boldness conveyed by the element thersi- is not the same as a warrior's thersos/tharsos 'boldness'.[2] Rather, it is akin to the thersos/tharsos 'boldness' of the blame poet. Consider the expression thersi-epês phthonos 'bold-worded envy' at Bacchylides 13.199, which serves as a foil for aineitô 'let him praise' at line 201.[3] Or again, we may note that Antinoos calls Odysseus tharsaleos 'bold' (xvii 449) after hearing a speech directed at him by the would-be beggar, who is asking him for food (xvii 415-444). When the base suitor
refuses, he is reproached by Odysseus (xvii 454-457), whose words are actually acknowledged as oneidos [plural] 'blame' by Antinoos.[4] Finally, consider the collocation Polutherseidê philokertome at xxii 287, applied in derision to Ktesippos, another of the base suitors, at the moment of his death by the man who killed him, the loyal Philoitios. The lôbê 'outrage' of Ktesippos against the disguised Odysseus (xx 285)[5] had been verbal as well as physical: while sarcastically advocating that the apparent beggar be treated as a xenos (xx 292-298), Ktesippos had thrown a foot of beef at him (xx 299-300). Having now avenged this insult, Philoitios ridicules the slain Ktesippos by calling him Polu-therseidês and philo-kertomos (xxii 287) in the context of reproaching him specifically for improper speech at the time of his physical attack on Odysseus (xxii 287-289). The mock patronymic Polu-therseidês 'son of Bold-in-many-ways' reinforces the epithet philo-kertomos 'lover of reproaches'.[6] In sum, a man who had reproached Odysseus is now getting a taste of his own medicine.
§12. Similarly, Thersites in the Iliad gets blame for having given blame. He dares to reproach Agamemnon (II 225-242), and the narrative introduces his words with neikee 'made neîkos' (II 224), then concludes them with phato neikeiôn 'spoke making neîkos' (II 243). Thersites is in turn reproached by Odysseus himself (II 246-264), whose own words of blame are introduced with ênîpape 'reproached' (II 245)[1] and concluded with his actually beating Thersites (II
265-268). Significantly, this combined physical and verbal abuse of Thersites results in pain and tears for the victim (II 269) but laughter for the rest of the Achaeans (II 270).[2] Here again, we see a theme of reversal, since the function of Thersites himself was "to make eris against
kings" (erizemenai basileusin: II 214)[3] -- in accordance not with the established order of things
[4] but rather with whatever he thought would make the Achaeans laugh(II 214-215).
§13. We may note that the word here for 'laughable' is actually geloiion (II 215), corresponding to Aristotle's term for the function of comedy, to geloîon (Poetics 1448b37, 1449a32-37). We may note also that Aristotle's concept of aîskhos 'baseness', to which the concept of to geloîon 'laughter' is intrinsic (Poetics 1449a32-37), corresponds to the characterization of Thersites as the aiskhistos 'most base' of all the Achaeans who came to Troy (II 216). I infer, then, that Homeric Epos can indeed reflect the comic aspect of blame poetry, but that it does so at the expense of the blame poet. In the Thersites episode of the Iliad, it is Epos that gets the last laugh on the blame poet, rather than the other way around. Not only the maltreatment of Thersites by Odysseus but even his physical description by the narrative makes him an object of ridicule. Epos dwells on his deformities in repulsive detail (II 217-219), thus compounding the laughter elicited by his baseness. He is aiskhistos 'most base' not only for what he says and does (or for what is said and done to him by Odysseus!) but also for his very ugliness. And surely the base appearance of Thersites serves to mirror in form the content of his blame poetry. The content, in fact, is a striking illustration of what is called in Pindaric praise poetry ekhthrâ ... parphasis 'hateful misrepresentation' (N.8.32)--the negative essence of blame poetry.[1] In the words that Thersites is quoted as saying, we actually find such a misrepresentation: the anger of Achilles, he says, is nonexistent, since such a superior hero would surely have killed Agamemnon if he had really been angry (II 241-242). Since the mênis 'anger' of Achilles is the self-proclaimed subject of the Iliad (I 1), these words of Thersites amount to an actual misrepresentation of epic traditions about Achilles.[2] As a blamer of the Iliad, Thersites is deservedly described at II 220 as ekhthistos 'most hateful' to the prime hero of our epic.
§14. From what we have seen up to now, the story of Thersites in the Iliad surely stands out as
the one epic passage with by far the most overt representation of blame poetry. And we have yet to add the cumulative evidence from the overall diction in this passage, with its striking concentration of words indicating blame as a foil for Epos:[1]
eris 'strife'
Thersites makes eris against kings (erizemenai basileusin: II 214, 247).
neîkos 'quarrel, fight'
Thersites makes neîkos against kings in general (neikeiein: II 277) and Agamemnon in particular (neikee: II 224, 243); also against Achilles and Odysseus (neikeieske: II 221), who are also kings (cf. I 331 and IX 346 respectively).
oneidos 'blame, reproach'
Thersites speaks "with words of oneidos" (oneideiois epeessin: II 277), equated with "making neîkos" against kings (neikeiein: same verse), on which see the previous entry in our list. The plural of oneidos designates his words against kings in general and Agamemnon in particular (oneidea at II 251 and 222 respectively). He is "making oneidos" against Agamemnon (oneidizôn: II 255).
kertomeô 'reproach [verb]'[2]
The participle (kertomeôn: II 256) is equated with the participle of oneidizô 'make
oneidos' (oneidizôn: II 255). The subject is Thersites. For the ridiculing aspect in the semantics of
kertomeô, see §11n6.
elenkhos 'reproach, disgrace'
Thersites reproaches all the Achaeans by addressing them with the plural of this neuter noun, described as kaka 'base' (kak' elenchea: II 235).[3] For more on elenkhos, see §7, especially n1; also §11n4.
lôbêtêr 'man of lôbê [outrage]'[4]
This epithet is applied to Thersites by Odysseus (II 275). For more on lôbê, see §§5(n1), 6, 11.
aiskhistos 'most base' See again §§10, 13. ekhthistos 'most hateful' See again §10
Finally, we may append a set of negative epithets applied to Thersites that serve to reproach not only the poetic form of his discourse but also its very style:
a-metro-epês
'whose words [epos plural] have no moderation' (II 212)
a-krito-mûthos
'whose words [mûthos plural] cannot be sorted out' (II 246)
epes-bolos
'who throws his words [epos plural]' (II 275).[5]
Notes
§1n1. Cf. Plato Republic 392d-394d. From Plato Ion 535c, we see that a rhapsode of epic uses its dialogues to show off his full powers of dramatic performance (mimêsis); cf. also Ion 536a. Else (1965.69) summarizes: "The rhapsodes did not merely recite Homer, they acted him, and from this quasi-impersonation of Homeric characters it was only a step to full impersonation, from the rhapsode who momentarily spoke in the person of Achilles or Odysseus to the 'actor' who
presented himself as Achilles or Odysseus."
§2n1. A worthy example is the praise of Odysseus by Agamemnon at xxiv 192-202 (discussion at Ch.2§13). Compare also Semonides 7.30-31W, where the praise of a woman by a xenos 'guest-stranger' is quoted directly. The quotation itself is introduced with the word epainesei 'will praise' (7.29).
§3n1. See Lucas 1968.75 on 1448b25-26; also p. 63 on 1448a2.
§3n2. Lucas, p. 63.
§3n3. For a discussion of the words epaineô 'praise' and psegô 'blame', see again Ch.12§§2-3.
§3n4. See esp. Ch.12§4.
§5n1. On the word oneidos, see Ch.12§§3, 7 (usage in praise poetry) and Ch.12§§6, 11 (usage in Epos). Also, aîskhos is used as a synonym of lôbê 'outrage, disgrace' at XIII 622, xviii 225, xix 373. Finally, note that Clytemnestra is said at xi 433 to have made aîskhos not only for herself but also for all womankind in the future by way of betraying Agamemnon. At xxiv 200, this same betrayal turns the very concept of Clytemnestra into a stugerê ... aoidê 'hateful song' that will survive into the future (xxiv 201) and will bring a bad name to all womankind (xxiv
201-202). We have here one of the clearest instances of blame as blame poetry. For more on xxiv 192-202, see Ch.2§13.
§5n2. See again §3.
§5n3. See Ch.12§6. Consider also the aoidê 'song' of blame directed at Clytemnestra in particular and women in general (xxiv 199-202), as discussed at n1. This aoidê blaming Clytemnestra serves as a serious foil for the aoidê praising Penelope (xxiv 196-198). For the typology of praising/blaming the wives of others and one's own, cf. Semonides 7.112-113W, on which there is more at §7.
§6n1. For the semantics, see Chantraine II 394.
§6n2. Whereas the conventional 'amusement' denoted by this word is nonserious, the actual 'amusement' intended by Odysseus for the suitors is of course dead serious.
§6n3. On lôbê and aîskhos as indicators of blame, see §5n1.
§6n4. On the traditional use of kuôn 'dog' and its derivatives in the language of blame: Ch.12§6.
§6n5. On the etymology of amûmôn 'blameless', see Chantraine I 79. The word is probably related to mômos 'blame, reproach' (on which see Ch.12§3). In Hesychius, the related noun mûmar is glossed as aîskhos and psogos; also, the verb mûmarizei is glossed as geloiazei 'jests'.
§6n6. Whereas the harsh man gets the ridicule of blame poetry, the blameless man gets the kleos
of praise poetry. As such, the blameless man qualifies as esthlos 'worthy'. The collocation of
kleos with this epithet esthlos is suggestive: see Ch.10§3n2.
§7n1. The words elenkhos/elenkheiê designate the shame and disgrace that result from blame (cf. XI 314). The derivative adjective elenkhês 'worthy of reproach' is specifically applied to the person who is being blamed (as at IV 242, where the quoted words of blame are introduced by neikeieske 'made neîkos' at verse 241). Note too the use of elenkhos in Pindar N.8.21, introducing the theme of blame poetry at lines 21-25 (on which see Ch.12§5).
§7n2. For more on lôbê 'outrage, disgrace': §5n1.
§7n3. Cf. Hesiod W&D 701, warning men not to choose a bad wife--the source of kharmata 'merriment' for the neighbors. Cf. also Theognis 1107-1108 = 1318a-b W, where one man's misfortunes are described as a katakharma 'thing of merriment' to one's ekhthroi 'enemies' and a ponos 'pain' to one's philoi 'friends'. For more on the semantics of root *khar- as in khairô and kharis, see Ch.5§39.
§7n4. At XXI 389-390, Zeus "laughed" (egelasse) in his heart with "mirth" (gêthosunêi) when he saw the other Olympians confronting each other in eris (eridi). Compare the epithet kakokhartos 'made happy by evil/misfortune' as applied to Eris personified in Hesiod W&D 28; compare also the image of Eris as she "made merry" (khaîre) over the fighting of the Achaeans and Trojans, at XI 73. For more on the theme of blame as grief for the one who is blamed and laughter for the ones who hear the blame, see §11n6 below.
§8n2. Cf. Ch.12§21, Ch.13§§2, 6, 7.
§9n1. I note again--as I have done throughout--that in matters of archaic Greek poetry our concern should be more with questions of poetic tradition than with questions of poetic authorship.
§9n2. Aristotle specifically attributes the Margites to "Homer" (ibid.). My own formulation is that the poem is within the Homeric tradition (n1). Aristotle's attribution is nevertheless valuable because it implies an affinity of the Margites with Homeric composition that cannot be matched by the Cycle, which Aristotle does not even attribute to "Homer" (Poetics 1459b1). For more on the Margites as archaic poetry in the Homeric tradition, see Forderer 1960.
§9n3. For an interesting supplement: West 1974.190.
§10n1. See Ch.2; cf. also Puelma 1972.105n74.
§10n2. See Ch.12§21n2.
§10n3. In this connection, we may note again the interesting expression used by the rhapsidoi
'rhapsodes' to designate "recite Homer": Homêron epaineîn (discussion at Ch.6§6n4).
Moreover, the word kleos designates both praise poetry (Ch.12§3) and Epos (Ch.1§2).
§11n1. On the forms, see Chantraine 1963.21.
§11n2. See Chantraine, p. 20, for attestations of historical figures in Thessaly named Thersîtâs, where indeed the naming must have been inspired by the concept of a warrior's thersos (Aeolic for tharsos).
§11n3. On this instance of phthonos, see also Ch.12§4.
§11n4. See Ch.12§11. Compare also xviii 390, where the suitor Eurymakhos tells the disguised Odysseus that he has spoken tharsaleôs'boldly'. The would-be beggar has just spoken words of counter-reproach to the suitor (xviii 366-386), who had reproached Odysseus for being a glutton (xviii 357-364). Note that Eurymakhos specifically reproaches Odysseus for having an insatiable gastêr 'belly' (xviii 364), and that Odysseus refers to this in his counter-reproach when he speaks to Eurymakhos as one who is "reproaching my belly," tên gaster' oneidizôn (xviii 380). In this connection, we should observe the insulting of the poet by the Muses in Hesiod Th. 26: shepherds are gasteres oîon 'mere bellies'. For the appositive kak' elenkhea 'base objects of reproach' (again, Th. 26), see the brief discussion of elenkhos at §7n1; cf. §14. For a brilliant exercise in correlating Th. 26 with Odyssey xiv 124-125, see Svenbro 1976.50-59: the gastêr is an emblem of the poet's readiness to adjust his themes in accordance with what his immediate audience wants to hear.
§11n5. For the implications of lôbê: §5n1.
§11n6. The word kertomiai 'reproaches' at xx 263 is equated with thûmos enîpês 'spirit of blame' at xx 266. (For more on the noun enîpê 'blame, reproach' and the corresponding verb enenîpe 'blamed, reproached [aorist]', see §5 and Ch.13§6.) Note too the use of the verb kertomeô 'reproach' at xviii 350: the suitor Eurymakhos is kertomeôn 'reproaching' Odysseus, and his words of blame are said to cause akhos 'grief' for Odysseus (xviii 348) and gelôs 'laughter' for the other suitors (xviii 350).
§12n1. On the family of enîpê 'blame, reproach' (with expressively reduplicated aorists enenîpe
and ênîpape), see Chantraine II 349. Cf. §§5, 11(n6); also Ch.13§6.
§12n3. Since the function of Thersites as blame poet is described as the making of eris against kings and since the kleos of praise poetry is traditionally described as etêtumon 'true, genuine' (see Ch.12§3n2), we may compare the epic antithesis of Eteo-kleês ('whose kleos is genuine') as king and Polu-neikês ('whose reproaches are many') as potential usurper. Cf.
Reinhardt 1951.339 en passant; also Burkert 1972b.83. For more on the strife between Eteokles and Polyneikes, see Ch.7§16n3 and Ch.12§7n3. For more on neîkos 'quarrel, fight' as a word marking blame as a foil for praise, see above at Ch.12§3. Finally, compare the semantics of Thersîtês with the name given to the son of Polu-neikês, Thers-andros (Pindar O.2.43). On the
convention of naming heroes after the father's prime characteristic, see further at Ch.8§9n2.
§12n4. The expression kata kosmon 'according to the established order of things' (II 214) implies that blame poetry, when justified, has a positive social function. Cf. Ch.2§13n5.
§13n2. Note too that Thersites here fails to use the word mênis for 'anger', resorting instead to the unmarked kholos (II 241). Cf. Ch.5§8n2.
§14n1. Compare this list with the original list at Ch.12§3, comprised of words indicating blame as a foil for praise poetry.
§14n2. Cf. also kertomeîn at Archilochus fr. 134W.
§14n3. Cf. also the reproach of the poet by the Muses in Hesiod Th. 26: shepherds are kak' elenkhea 'base objects of reproach'; see §11n4. We may note that the Judgment of Paris took place in his messaulos 'courtyard [for animals]' (XXIV 29), where he blamed Hera and Athena but praised Aphrodite (see Ch.11§16). On the pastoral background of the Paris figure: scholia
§14n4. Cf. also lôbêt[... at Archilochus fr. 54.9W (the same fragment also contains the name of Lykambes!).
§14n5. For the formation of this word, cf. the interesting collocation epesin ... êde bolêisin at xxiv 161, referring to the way in which the suitors had reproached Odysseus (enissomen, same verse).
The Best of the Achaeans Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry Revised Edition
Gregory Nagy
Copyright © 1980, 1997 The Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved. First edition 1979. Revised edition 1999. This document may be used, with this notice included, for noncommercial purposes within a subscribed
institution. No copies of this work may be distributed electronically outside of the subscribed institution, in whole or in part, without written permission from the JHU Press.
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§1. Having finished with the diction surrounding the Thersites figure, we may now turn to another Iliadic passage, XX 246-256, which rivals the passage about Thersites in its wealth of information relating to the poetry of blame. For a proper understanding, however, we must begin with an Iliadic passage found earlier on in the action.
§2. In the heat of battle, the Trojan hero Deiphobos suddenly finds that he needs help from his ally Aeneas, and he goes to look for him:
... ton d' hustaton heuren homilou hestaot': aiei gar Priamôi epemênie diôi,
hounek' ar' esthlon eonta met' andrasin ou ti tiesken
And he found him standing hindmost in the battle,
for he had mênis [anger] always against brilliant Priam,
because he [Priam] did not honor him [Aeneas], worthy that he was among heroes.
There is a striking thematic parallelism here between Aeneas and Achilles, who likewise had withdrawn from battle because he had mênis against Agamemnon (I 1, etc.). The king had not given the hero tîmê 'honor'--even though Achilles is not just "worthy among heroes" but actually the "best of the Achaeans" (I 244, etc.).[1] These themes of mênis/withdrawal/tîmê/excellence are not only present in the Iliad; they are in fact central to it, permeating the composition in its monumental dimensions.[2] It is the expansion of these central themes in the Iliad that makes us so aware of their compression in the mention of Aeneas at XIII 459-461. Moreover, this Iliadic mention contains a unique attribution of mênis to Aeneas. With the exception of XIII 460, the word mênis (and its derivatives) always applies to the reciprocal anger of Achilles as the individual warrior against Agamemnon as king of the collective Achaeans. This anger is the prime theme of the Iliad, and no other anger on the part of any other hero ever qualifies as mênis in the entire epic[3] --with the exception of XIII 460. Thus the microcosm of XIII 459-461 shares a distinctive pattern with the macrocosm of the Iliad. In short, the nature of the themes attributed to Aeneas in this passage suggests that they are central to another epic tradition--this one featuring Aeneas rather than Achilles as its prime hero.
§3. Let us reconsider the words describing the withdrawal of Aeneas:
ton d' hustaton heuren homilou hestaot':
And he found him standing hindmost in the battle
This stance of the hero is in sharp contrast with his later involvement in the fighting:
Aineia, ti su tosson homilou pollon epelthôn estês;
Aeneas! Why are you standing so far up front in the battle?[1]
The speaker here is none other than Achilles himself, who has just been confronted in battle by this hero whose epic tradition is parallel in its themes to his own.[2] After this question alluding to the specific theme of a withdrawal by Aeneas, Achilles continues with another taunting question:
ê se ge thumos emoi machesasthai anôgei elpomenon Trôessin anaxein hippodamoisi timês tês Priamou; atar ei ken em' exenarixêis, ou toi touneka ge Priamos geras en cheri thêsei:
eisin gar hoi paides, ho d' empedos oud' aesiphrôn
Does your thûmos urge you to fight against me
because you hope to be king of the horse-taming Trojans, which is the tîmê of Priam?[3] But even if you kill me,
Priam will not place the geras [honorific portion] in your hand on that account.[4] He has children,[5] and he is sound and not unstable.[6]
There is a conflict going on here between Achilles and Aeneas as warriors in battle and also between the epic traditions about each of the two heroes. Moreover, the Iliad here is actually allowing part of the Aeneas tradition to assert itself at the expense of the Achilles tradition. We have just seen Achilles taunt Aeneas by predicting that he will never replace Priam as king of Troy. And yet, the god Poseidon himself then prophesies the exact opposite:
êdê gar Priamou geneên êchthêre Kroniôn: nun de dê Aineiao biê Trôessin anaxei
kai paidôn paides, toi ken metopisthe genôntai
For the son of Kronos has already abominated the line of Priam. And presently the might of Aeneas will be king of the Trojans and his children's children, who are to be born hereafter.
This destiny prophesied by Poseidon is part of a poetic tradition glorifying the Aeneadae, as we see from the independent evidence of the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite.[7] There we find
Aphrodite making a parallel prophecy to the father of Aeneas:
soi d' estai philos huios hos en Trôessin anaxei kai paides paidessi diamperes ekgegaontai
You will have a philos son who will be king of the Trojans, and children will be born to his children, and so on forever.[8]
Moreover, Poseidon rescues Aeneas in the middle of his battle with Achilles precisely because, as the god himself says, "it is destined" (morimon: XX 302) that Aeneas must not die at this point. In this way, the line of Aeneas will not die out, and he will have descendants (XX 302-305)--as compared to the doomed line of Priam (XX 306). At XX 336, Poseidon personally tells Aeneas that his death at this point in the narrative would have been huper moîran 'beyond destiny'. In effect, then, it would be untraditional for the narrative to let Achilles kill Aeneas in Iliad XX, since there is a poetic tradition that tells how Aeneas later became king of Troy; accordingly, Poseidon intervenes in the narrative and keeps Aeneas alive for further narratives about his future. [9]
§4. One of the most obvious traces of a variant epic tradition about Aeneas in Iliad XX is this surprising rescue of a pro-Trojan hero by a decidedly pro-Achaean god, Poseidon himself. This is not to say, however, that the narrative about the rescue is out of joint with the overall composition of the Iliad. True, we may have expected Apollo rather than Poseidon to rescue Aeneas. And yet, if this pro-Trojan god had attempted such a rescue, then the timing of the other gods' respective interventions would have been thrown off, as the narrative itself says (XX 138-141). In other words, the Theomachia would have begun prematurely.[1] Whereas a rescue by Apollo would have been simply a pro-Trojan act, the rescue by Poseidon puts the act above taking sides; the figure of Aeneas thus transcends the war of the Trojans and Achaeans.[2] In this sense, Aeneas is beyond the scope of the Trojan War tradition in general, reflecting other themes and perhaps even other concerns of other times. The favorable relationship of Poseidon with Aeneas may in fact reveal a special cult affinity between the god and a dynasty of Aeneadae;[3] during the times that the Iliad and the Hymn to Aphrodite traditions were separately evolving into their ultimate forms, the current importance of such a dynasty could be retrojected into the Heroic Age by such poetic devices as the prophecy to Aeneas that his descendants, not Priam's, will be the ones who are to hold sway in the Troad (Iliad XX 302-308, H.Aphr. 196-197).[4] I avoid saying, however, that the Hymn to Aphrodite--let alone the Iliad--was expressly composed for an audience of Aeneadae.[5] Even when we take into account the observation by Reinhardt that Aeneas is the only attested Iliadic hero who is mentioned as having descendants in the present,[6] it does not necessarily follow that such descendants are the key figures in the poet's audience, nor that the "poet of the Iliad" had made an ad hoc reference to the presence of this audience by virtue of narrating a self-fulfilling prophecy.[7] Rather, we see from the evidence of Iliad XX and the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite that the perpetuity of the line of Aeneadae was itself a traditional poetic theme.[8] The Iliad does not invent something, even if it is historically true, just to please a given group. Of course, it can still please those in any given group by repeating something
§5. Our Iliad, then, invalidates not only the prediction made by Achilles when he taunts Aeneas but also the actual combat between the two heroes. The divine intervention of Poseidon is a clear sign even to Achilles that Aeneas had not "boasted in vain" about his heroic identity (maps autôs euchetaasthai: XX 348).[1] Such an assertion of the Aeneas tradition at the expense of the Achilles tradition can only go so far, however. The heroic momentum of Achilles in the Iliad may be temporarily stalled but never deflected. Within the Iliad, the tempo of events after the death of Patroklos preordains that Achilles will win in any duel with any challenger. Within a composition from some other tradition, however, the outcome of a duel involving Achilles may not be inevitable.
§6. Ironically, Achilles himself conjures up the presence of other traditions when he tries to intimidate Aeneas by reminding him[1] of an incident that happened when Achilles was capturing the cities of Lyrnessos and Pedasos (XX 187-198). As Achilles tells it, Aeneas was handily routed by him (ibid.).[2] Moreover, Aeneas himself had earlier told Apollo that he was indeed intimidated at the prospect of facing Achilles in combat; the reason for his fear, he says, is that he remembers how Achilles had routed him when the Achaean hero captured Lyrnessos and Pedasos (XX 89-98). But now a curious thing happens: as he is being reminded of the same incident by Achilles, Aeneas is suddenly no longer intimidated. He replies to Achilles:
Pêleïdê, mê dê epeessi me nêpution hôs elpeo deidixesthai, epei sapha oida kai autos êmen kertomias êd' aisula muthêsasthai
Son of Peleus! Do not hope to intimidate me with words [epos plural] as if I were some child. For I myself know clearly how to tell
reproaches [kertomiai] and unseemly things.[3]
Aeneas is saying that he too can narrate kertomiai and aisula-- words that indicate the poetry of blame.[4] By implication, the words [epos plural] that Achilles had just narrated about the Capture of Lyrnessos and Pedasos--words that make Aeneas the object of blame--are not the only possible narration. It seems that Aeneas now has in mind other words [epos plural], words that Aeneas could in turn relate about Achilles--words that make Achilles the object of blame.
§7. The very word epos [plural] at XX 200 (also recapped at XX 256) indicates not just "words" in general but "poetic words" in particular,[1] as we can see from the lines that immediately follow XX 200-202:
idmen d' allêlôn geneên, idmen de tokêas proklut' akouontes epea thnêtôn anthrôpôn:
opsei d' out' ar pô su emous ides out' ar' egô sous
We know each other's lineage, we know each other's parentage, hearing the famed[2] words [epos plural] of mortal men.
But by sight you have never yet seen my parents, nor I yours.
The words of Aeneas to Achilles here reveal the traditional conceit of the aoidos 'singer, poet', who knows nothing but hears the kleos 'fame' = 'that which is heard' from the Muses, who in turn know everything.[3] As the poet declares at the beginning of the Catalogue:
humeis gar theai este, pareste te, iste te panta, hêmeis de kleos oion akouomen oude ti idmen
For you [the Muses] are goddesses; you are always present, and you know everything; but we [poets] only hear the kleos and know nothing.[4]
When a poet starts his performance by asking his Muse to tell him the subject (cf. I 1, i 1), the composition is in fact being presented to his audience as something that he hears from the very custodians of all stages of reality. The poet's inherited conceit, then, is that he has access to both the content and the actual form of what his eyewitnesses, the Muses, speak as they describe the realities of remote generations. I should emphasize that this conceit is linked with the poet's inherited role as an individual performer, and that "only in performance can the formula exist and have clear definition."[5] The formulas are the selfsame words spoken by the Muses themselves: they are recordings of the Muses who were always present when anything happened. In fact, the frame in which these formulas are contained, the dactylic hexameter, was traditionally called epos by the poetry itself.[6] Since the dactylic hexameter, as well as all verses, has an inherited tendency to be syntactically self-contained,[7] the epos is truly an epic utterance, an epic sentence, from the standpoint of the Muses or of any character quoted by the Muses. The word introducing Homeric quotations is in fact regularly epos. There are even some subtle grammatical distinctions, in traditions of phraseology, between the epos the Muses quote and the epos they simply narrate. [8] In a medium that carries with it such inherited conceits about accuracy and even reality, we can easily imagine generations after generations of audiences conditioned to expect from the performer the most extreme degrees of fixity in content, fixity in form. In sum, the words of Aeneas to Achilles imply that they both have complete poetic access to each other's heroic lineage and, by extension, to each other's heroic essence.[9]
§8. It remains to be seen what sort of epos [plural] Aeneas had threatened to relate about Achilles at XX 200-202. The key is the epos [plural] related by Achilles about Aeneas--words that made the Trojan ally an object of blame. As we have already observed, these words [epos plural] of Achilles concerned the Capture of Lyrnessos and Pedasos. Significantly, this story comes from an epic tradition that is different from that of the Iliad. Whereas the Homeric Iliad is Panhellenic in scope, the Capture of Lyrnessos and Pedasos tradition is decidedly local. Its orientation is that of ktisis poetry, which is distinguished by its adaptability to the ever-shifting character of whatever local community it happens to glorify.[1] From place to place, the heroic themes of
ktisis poetry can be expected to shift in accordance with local lore and ideology.[2] It may even be that different local traditions could present the same incident to the disadvantage of different heroes--so that different heroes would become the object of blame. In fact, the words of Aeneas himself allude to precisely this factor of local variation in theme:
esti gar amphoteroisin oneidea muthêsasthai
polla mal', oud' an nêus hekatozugos achthos aroito. streptê de glôss' esti brotôn, polees d' eni muthoi pantoioi, epeôn de polus nomos entha kai entha. hoppoion k' eipêistha epos, toion k' epakousais.
alla tiê eridas kai neikea nôïn anankê neikein allêloisin enantion, hôs te gunaikas,
hai te cholôsamenai eridos peri thumoboroio neikeus' allêlêisi mesên es aguian iousai,
poll' etea te kai ouki: cholos de te kai ta keleuei. alkês d' ou m' epeessin apotrepseis memaôta ...
It is possible for the two of us to tell each other very many reproaches [oneidos plural],[3] and not even a hundred-benched ship could bear their burden.
But the tongue of men is twisted, bearing many stories
of all kinds. And there is a manifold range of epos[plural] from place to place.[4] The sort of epos you say is just the thing that you will hear told about yourself.[5] But why must there be eris and neîkos [plural][6] for the two of us
to make neîkos against each other, like women[7] who are angry in a thûmos-devouring eris
and who make neîkos against each other in the middle of the assembly, saying many true things and many false.[8] Anger urges them on.
But I am eager for battle and you will not deflect me from my strength with epos [plural] ...
At verse 250, Aeneas is in effect saying that he could recount epos[plural] about Achilles as an object of blame, and that his narration would be the exact opposite of the epos [plural] Achilles had recounted about him. Instead of any further talk, however, the Trojan ally is now determined to start fighting (XX 244-245, 256 ff.). The ensuing narrative of the duel between Aeneas and Achilles may even reveal some details from a variant local tradition in which the hero of our Iliadwas actually injured by his opponent. At XX 291, the action of the duel is interrupted by Poseidon at the very moment when Aeneas has the initiative: he is about to throw a huge rock at Achilles (XX 285-287). On the basis of parallels in other narratives about duels where one hero throws a rock at another, we should expect Aeneas to win the encounter.[9] But then the thematic requirements of the Iliad take over: evenif Aeneas had succeeded in hitting Achilles with the rock (XX 288), the hero's shield or helmet would surely have withstood the blow (XX 289), and then Achilles would surely have killed Aeneas (XX 290)!
§9. To sum up: the war of words between Aeneas and Achilles reveals the presence of an independent Aeneid tradition within the Iliad. Moreover, it reveals Aeneas himself as a master of
poetic skills in the language of praise and blame. On the one hand, he has the power to tell stories about Achilles that make him the object of blame. On the other, he actually tells the full story of his own genealogy--an exercise in heroic self-affirmation that amounts to the ultimate praise of the hero by the hero.[1] In view of these characteristics of Aeneas, we may consider the etymology of his name. As Karl Meister has argued,[2] Homeric Aineiâs is the Ionic reflex of *Ainaâs (by way of *Aineâs), derivative of a noun that survives as ainê. As a formal parallel, Meister cites Homeric Augeiâs (XI 701), the Ionic reflex of *Augaâs (by way of *Augeâs), derivative of a noun that survives as augê. Now this word ainê (as in Herodotus 3.74, 8.112) is a by-form of aînos, the semantic range of which has revealed a bivalence of praise and blame.[3] There is a parallel bivalence in the figure of Aeneas.
Notes
§3n1. Cf. also XVII 342.
§3n2. As the two heroes confront each other in combat, they are described as duo ... âneres exokh' aristoi 'two men who were by far the best' (XX 158).
§3n3. Compare the conflict between Aeneas and Priam over tîmê with the conflict between Achilles and Agamemnon, as discussed at Ch.5§§7-8. {sy,be} Cf. Reinhardt 1961.453 and Fenik 1968.121-122.
§3n4. Compare the geras deprived from Achilles: discussion at Ch.7§19.
§3n5. An ironic understatement!
§3n6. The taunts of Achilles continue at XX 184-186: if Aeneas kills him, does he expect that the Trojans will assign him a temenos 'precinct' of fertile land? Perhaps this description is appropriate to the grove of a cult hero: see Ch.16§8n1 (cf. the notion of tîmê for Aeneas from the dêmos, at XI 58; discussion at Ch.8§11n5).
§3n7. The valuable work of Heitsch 1965 on the Hymn and its relationship with the Aeneas stories in the Iliad is for me marred by his persistent assumption that he is dealing with interrelationships of texts rather than traditions. I also value the interesting work of Dihle
ff.) on the idiosyncratic diction of the Iliadic passages about Aeneas. But for me his evidence shows not that the passages about Aeneas are "non-oral" but that they reflect an Aeneas tradition that is significantly different from the Achilles tradition of our Iliad. I have similar problems with the admirable work of Lenz 1975, who offers a conscientious reassessment of the interpretations found in Heitsch and Dihle.
§3n8. The everlasting continuity predicted for the line of the Aeneadae is in compensation for the
mortality of their ancestor Anchises, father of Aeneas; see Ch.7§1n5.
§3n9. For more on huper moîran as 'contrary to destiny' and kata moîran as 'according to destiny' (as at viii 496), where moîra is the 'destiny' inherited by the traditional poetic narrative, see Ch.2§17 and Ch.5§25n2; cf. also Pestalozzi 1945.40. Note too the traditional function of Dios boulê 'the Will of Zeus' as the given plot of a given epic narrative. Discussion at Ch.5§25n2 (with further references).
§4n1. See Scheibner 1939.6-7.
§4n2. Cf. Scheibner ibid.
§4n3. Note XI 58, where it is said of Aeneas himself that "he got tîmêfrom the dêmos, like a god"; this characterization of the ancestor of the Aeneadae is appropriate to a cult hero (Ch. 8§11nn5, 6).
§4n4. Cf. Jacoby 1961 [=1933] I 39-48, 51-53; also Donini 1967.
§4n5. So Scheibner 1939.133 on the Hymn to Aphrodite. I also distance myself from any of the theories featuring the "poet of the Iliad" at the court of the Aeneadae (cf. Jacoby, ibid.).
§4n6. Reinhardt 1961.451. I would note, however, that there are other Homeric passages that refer to the present: see Ch.9§§15-16.
§4n7. Pace Reinhardt ibid.
§4n8. Cf. Kullmann 1960.283n1.
§4n9. Besides Iliad XX 306-308 and H.Aphr. 196-197, there are attestations of still other prophecies addressed to the Aeneadae: see Acusilaus FGrH 2.39 and the commentary by Jacoby I 383.
§5n1. The infinitive eukhetaasthai refers to the boast of Aeneas to Achilles at XX 206-209, as expressed by eukhomai 'I boast' at XX 209 (recapped at XX 241). As Muellner points out (1976.93), "When a hero eukhetai [boasts], he says the most significant facts he can about himself." From the diction of XX 206-209, Muellner (pp. 76-77) can also show that Aeneas is using words that formally assign Achilles to a heroic stature lower than his own. On the etiquette- rules of such eukhomai speeches, see Muellner, pp. 74-75n9.
§6n1. Note the expression ê ou memnêi 'do you not remember' at XX 188; for the poetic implications of mimnêskô 'remind' and memnêmai 'have in mind', see Ch.1§3n2 and Ch.6§§5-9.
§6n2. On the poetic traditions that told of the Capture of Lyrnessos and Pedasos: Ch.7§29.
§6n3. Note that kertomiâs êd' aisula mûthêsasthai at XX 202 is equated with oneidea mûthêsasthai 'tell reproaches [oneidos plural]' at XX 246, on which see further at §8.
§6n4. See n3. On kertomiai, see Ch.14§§11(n6) and 14. On aisula see Ch.19§6n6.
§7n1. See Ch.12§15n3. Compare also the use of epos in Theognis 16 and 18 as discussed at Ch. 17§12.
§7n2. The epithet pro-kluto- 'famed', applied to epos [plural], is from the same root as kleos
'fame' = 'that which is heard' (on which see Ch.1§2).
§7n3. Again, Ch.1§2. As for the theme of hearing instead of seeing, compare the theme of the blind poet (Ch.1§§3-4) and the story of the poet who was taken beyond the field of vision (Ch. 2§13n5).
§7n4. Compare the iste ... idmen in II 485-486 and the idmen ... idmen in XX 203 (recapped by isâsi at XX 214) with the idmen ... idmen of the Muses in Hesiod Th. 27-28 and the idmen ... idmen of the Sirens in Odyssey xii 189-191.
§7n5. Lord 1960.33.
§7n6. See Koller 1972; cf. also Ch.17§12(n4).
§7n7. Cf. Nagy 1974.143-145.
§7n8. Cf. Kelly 1974 on the different patterns of correption in quoted speeches compared to plain narrative.
§7n9. For lineage as essence in the etiquette of eukhomai, see again Muellner 1976.74-77.
§8n2. Ibid.
§8n3. On the word oneidos as an indicator of blame poetry, see Ch.12§§3 and 7 (usage in praise poetry) and §§6 and 11 (usage in Epos).
§8n4. On nomos in the metaphorical sense of a pastoral "range": Pohlenz 1965 [= 1948] 337.
§8n5. On the semantics of epi- in epakousais, cf. Ch.6§6n4.
§8n6. On the words eris and neîkos as indicators of blame poetry, see Ch.12§§3, 6, etc.
§8n7. Richardson (1974.215) provides a list of festivals and cults where aiskhrologiâ was restricted to women. On aiskhrologiâ as 'ritual jesting', see Richardson, pp. 213-217. On to aiskhron 'baseness' as a formal mark of blame poetry, see Ch.14§§4-5.
§8n8. From the standpoint of praise poetry, the words of the blame poet are conventionally false (cf. Pindar N.8.21-25 and 32-33); discussion at Ch.12§§5-7. By contrast, the kleos conferred by the praise poet is true (cf. Pindar N.7.63); discussion at Ch.12§3(n2), Ch.14§12(n3). The theme that blame can actually be true reflects an earlier time when the concept of a blame poet was not
yet distinct from that of a praise poet: see Ch.16§10n6.
§8n9. See Merkelbach 1948.307-308; also Heitsch 1965.66-71, esp. p. 67. I do not agree, however, with their inferences about textual interpolation.
§9n1. Cf. again Muellner 1976.74-77.
§9n2. Meister 1921.156-157; cf. Perpillou 1973.186.
§9n3. Ch.12§§18-19, Ch.13§12.
The Best of the Achaeans Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry Revised Edition
Gregory Nagy
Copyright © 1980, 1997 The Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved. First edition 1979. Revised edition 1999. This document may be used, with this notice included, for noncommercial purposes within a subscribed
institution. No copies of this work may be distributed electronically outside of the subscribed institution, in whole or in part, without written permission from the JHU Press.
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§1. In the story of Thersites, we have seen that the details told about him consistently reflect his function as poet of blame.[1] As it happens, even the story of his death reflects this function. From the epic tradition of the Aithiopis, we learn that Thersites was killed by Achilles himself; the reason given for the killing is that the hero had been "reproached and blamed" by Thersites (loidorêtheis ... kai oneidistheis: Proclus summary p. 105.25-26 Allen). Specifically, Thersites had alleged that Achilles loved Penthesileia (Aithiopis/Proclus p.105.26-27). The killing is followed by dissension among the Achaeans, and Achilles has to atone for his deed: he sails off to Lesbos, sacrifices to Apollo and his divine family, and is ritually purified by Odysseus (Aithiopis/Proclus pp. 105.27-106.1).
§2. In these details from the Aithiopis, the figure of Thersites is parallel to that of a pharmakos 'scapegoat'.[1] We turn to an aition 'cause'[2] motivating a ritual that entails the expulsion of pharmakoi at the Thargelia, an Ionian festival in honor of Apollo. According to Istros (FGrH 344.50, ap. Harpocration, s.v.), this ritual is a set of reenactments or apomîmêmata.[3] In particular, the ritual reenacts the killing of one Pharmakos, personified, by Achilles and his men;
he was stoned to death on the grounds that he stole sacred phialai 'bowls' belonging to Apollo (Istros, ibid.). Whereas this ritual of pharmakoi has the function of purifying the community (Istros, ibid.),[4] the myth of the primordial pharmakoshas the opposite function, in that his death had been the original cause of impurity and pestilence. We see this theme in another attested aition that likewise motivates the ritual. According to Helladios (ap. Photius Bibliotheca 279, p. 534a3-4 Bekker), a ritual of pharmakoi was instituted at Athens for the purpose of purifying the city, which had been afflicted by a pestilence resulting from the unjustified death of Androgeos the Cretan. In effect, then, the primordial death of the primordial pharmakos on the level of myth causes a potentially permanent impurity, which in turn calls for permanent purification by way of year-to-year reenactment on the level of ritual.[5] There is too little evidence for us to know for sure whether such reenactments could once have taken the form of real executions or whether the ritual deaths of pharmakoi were normally stylized in song and dance, as the word apomîmêmata indicates (Istros, ibid.). For now, it is more important to observe two modes of killing the pharmakos on the idealized level of myth: death either by stoning (Istros, ibid.) or by being thrown off a cliff (Ammonius 142 Valckenaer).[6] Returning to the story from the Aithiopis (in the abbreviated form that survives in the Proclus summary), we may speculate as to whether Thersites too had been stoned to death by Achilles and his men, as was Pharmakos. In this case, however, the medium of epic collapses the distinction between the perspectives of myth and ritual: the same figure who caused the impurity--Achilles himself--is also given the chance to be purified for his action.[7]
§3. Such details about the death of a pharmakos are strikingly parallel to the details about the death of Aesop at Delphi, as we find them in the Life of Aesop tradition (Vitae G+W Perry; also papyrus fragments of Vitae: Pap.Oxy. 1800 and Pap.Soc.Ital. 1094).[1] Aesop too is killed on the grounds that he stole a sacred phialê'bowl' of Apollo (Vitae G+W 127). The Delphians had deliberately hidden the bowl amidst Aesop's belongings as he was about to leave Delphi, so that they might accuse him of stealing it (ibid.). Like some primordial pharmakos, Aesop is unjustly accused and executed by the Delphians, who either stone him to death (Pap.Soc.Ital. 1094, p. 165 Callimachus I ed. Pfeiffer) or throw him off a cliff (ibid. and Vita W 142).[2] As in an aition about pharmakoi, the Delphians are then afflicted by a pestilence resulting from the unjustified death of Aesop (Vitae G+W 142).
§4. I omit here several other details that can be adduced about the death of Aesop as parallel to the death of a pharmakos.[1] I also postpone our considering how it was that the Delphians purified themselves of the pestilence resulting from Aesop's death.[2] Our immediate concern is the similarity of Aesop not just with pharmakoi in general but also with Thersites in particular. We must now consider how it was that Aesop provoked the people of Delphi to kill him. Just as Thersites had incurred death by blaming Achilles, so also Aesop incurs his own death by blaming the Delphians (cf. Aristotle Constitution of the Delphians fr. 487 Rose). And the medium of his blame is the Aesopic fable, the formal word for which is aînos.[3]
§5. Since the aînos is by nature an ambiguous mode of discourse, its effect will be praise or blame on the basis of ad hoc application--whether explicit or even implicit.[1] A story like "The Travelers and the Driftwood," one of the fables that Aesop initially tells the Delphians in our attested Life of Aesop tradition (Vitae G+W 125),[2] contains an implicit message of blame by virtue of the context set by the narrative. Aesop's explicit likening of the Delphians to driftwood, which looks from afar like a seaworthy ship as it floats towards travelers waiting on the shore
(but turns out to be a piece of nothing as it comes closer into view) is actually redundant from the hindsight of all the other fables he is yet to tell--fables bearing similar implicit messages of blame against the Delphians. The blame is fulfilled through the development of the narrative, and the deployment of interlocking fables is intensified as the time of Aesop's execution draws near. Among the fables that he tells just before he dies are "The Frog and the Mouse" (Vitae G+W 133) and "The Dung Beetle and the Eagle" (G+W 134-139).[3] With each telling of each aînos, the narrative reinforces the ad hoc application of Aesop's words to the Delphians as objects of blame. Without its framing narrative, of course, the ad hoc moral of any given aînos could be lost.[4] It is highly significant, therefore, that the actual framing of an aînos like "The Dung Beetle and the Eagle" within a narrative about the death of Aesop is itself traditional. In the comedy of fifth- century Athens, there is an overt reference to this fable as one that was told by Aesop when the Delphians accused him of stealing Apollo's bowl (Aristophanes Wasps 1446-1448; cf. also Peace 129-132).[5] We have here the most compelling sort of evidence for drawing two conclusions:
In particular, the Life of Aesop--as it survives in VitaeG and W--preserves a traditional context for the telling of the Aesopic aînos.[6]
In general, the aînos takes on its distinct message of praise or blame only within the context of the narrative that frames it, and the Vitae are a survival of such a narrative tradition.
We may also observe again that the Archilochean Iambos is itself a medium where the words of blame can be framed within narrative.[7] Further, an aînos like "The Fox and the
Eagle" (Archilochus fr. 174W)[8] is actually framed within a poem of blame against Lykambes himself (Archilochus frr. 172-181W).[9]
§6. In the Life of Aesop tradition, the various fables that Aesop tells the Delphians serve to blame them for various things. As an example, I will single out again "The Travelers and the Driftwood," for the main purpose of emphasizing that the Life of Aesop is deeply archaic in content if not in diction.[1] When Aesop narrates this fable, he concludes from it that the Delphians are inferior to other Hellenes and that their behavior is worthy of their ancestors (Vitae G+W 125). When the Delphians challenge him to say outright what he means, Aesop answers: since the ancient custom is to make one-tenth of a captured city--population and all--sacred to Apollo, and since the Delphians are by ancestry sacred to Apollo, they are therefore slaves of all the Hellenes (Vitae G+W 126). As Anton Wiechers has argued in detail, these words of reproach actually reflect the political situation of Delphi in the era of the First Sacred War (ca. 590 B.C.).[2] However, the sequence of events in the Life of Aesop tradition reverses the sequence in history:[3] Aesop's reproach-- causing his death--is based on the situation immediately after the First Sacred War, but his death--effected by his reproach--sets the stage for the events immediately before it, namely, the undertaking of a joint expedition against Delphi (Vitae G+W 142).[4] To put it another way, the Life of Aesop tradition actually presents the death of Aesop as a cause of the First Sacred War, but the institutional reality that Aesop reproaches--namely, that the people of Delphi are sacred to Apollo--is a lasting effect of the First Sacred War.[5] From the standpoint of the myth, the death of Aesop is the effect of his reproaching the institutions of Delphi; from the standpoint of these institutions, on the other hand, his death is their indirect cause. It is this sort of "cause" that qualifies as an aition.[6] Only here, the aition of Aesop's death motivates not simply one institution, such as a ritual, but an entire conglomeration of institutions sacred to Apollo-- the very essence of Delphi after the First Sacred War.
§7. We also have, in a fragment from the Life of Aesop tradition, an example of a specific description concerning one single Delphic institution, which happens to be a ritual. As before, we see this institution being reproached by Aesop. Here too, we see him killed by the people of Delphi as a result of his reproach. And again we may say that the death of Aesop is an aition, implicitly motivating the particular ritual that he reproaches. The fragment first describes the ritual in question, then tells of Aesop's death. I present the text in its entirety:
est]in d' aitia toia[utê]eir[ê]menê:[1] epan [eise]lthêi t[is] tôi theôi thusias[ôn o]hi Delph[o]i per[i] estêkasi ton bôm[o]n huph' heautois machairas k[o]mizontes,sphagiasamenou de tou hiereôs[2] kai deirantos to hiereion kai ta splanchna periexelomenou, hoi periestôtes hekastos hên an ischusêi moiran apotemnomenos apeisin, hôs pollakis ton thusiasanta auton amoir[o]n api[e]nai. touto oun Ai[s]ôp[o]s Delphous onid[i]zôn epeskôpsen, eph' hois diorgisthentes hoi polloi lithois auton ballontes kata krêmnou eôsan. met' ou polu de loimikon pathos epeskêpse têi polei,chrêstêriazomenois d' autois ho theos aneilen[3] ou proteron [lêx]ein tên nos[on me]chris [an A]isôpon exi[laskônt]ai. hoi de peritei[chis]antes ton topon [en hôi k]atepesen bômo[n th' hi]d [rusa]menoi lutêr[i]o[n][4] tês nosou, hôs hêrôi th[usias] pro[s]ênenkan.
The cause is said to be this:[5] When someone goes in for the purpose of initiating sacrifice to the god, the Delphians stand around the altar carrying concealed daggers [makhairai]. And after the priest has slaughtered and flayed the sacrificial victim and after he has apportioned the innards, those who have been standing around cut off whatever moîra [portion] of meat each of them is able to cut off and then depart, with the result that the one who initiated the sacrifice oftentimes departs without having a moîra himself. Now Aesop reproached and ridiculed the Delphians for this, which made the people angry. They stoned him and pushed him off a cliff. Not much later, a pestilence fell upon the city, and when they consulted the Oracle, the god revealed that the disease would not cease until they propitiated Aesop. So they built a wall around the place where he fell, set up an altar as an antidote to the disease, and sacrificed to him as a hero.
Pap.Oxy. 1800 fr. 2 ii 32-63 = Aesop Testimonia 25 Perry
§8. Explicitly, the death of Aesop is motivating a specific institution, the hero cult of Aesop at Delphi. There is a striking parallel in Vitae G+W 142. As in Pap.Oxy. 1800, we see that a pestilence falls upon Delphi after Aesop's death (G+W), that the Oracle tells the Delphians to propitiate the dead Aesop (G+W), that the Delphians accordingly build a shrine and set up a stêlê for Aesop (W).[1] But the same passage in Vitae G+W 142 presents a complex aition. Aesop's death motivates not only his cult as hero but also, as we have already seen, the undertaking of a joint expedition against Delphi. The death of Aesop is thus motivating the First Sacred War and the institutional reality resulting from it, namely, that all Delphi is sacred to Apollo.[2] As we have also seen,[3] the death of Aesop in Vitae G+W 142 is thereby an aition or 'cause' that implicitly motivates the very institutions that he reproaches--from the standpoint of these institutions. From the standpoint of the myth, however, Aesop's death is the explicit effect of his reproaching these institutions. So also with Pap.Oxy. 1800: from the standpoint of its myth, Aesop's death is the explicit effect of his reproaching the ritual described. From the combined standpoints of myth and ritual, however, we may conclude by way of the comparative evidence in
Vitae G+W 142 that the myth of Aesop's death is an aition or 'cause' that implicitly motivates this very ritual.
§9. Actually, we have already seen a parallelism between this ritual concerning the distribution of meat, exactly as we find it described in Pap.Oxy. 1800, and the myth concerning the death of Pyrrhos as we find it described in Pindar's Paean 6 and Nemean 7.[1] In fact, the parallelism in theme between ritual and myth is so close here that we also have considered the possibility that the death of Pyrrhos is an aition that had once explicitly motivated the ritual described in Pap.Oxy. 1800.[2]
§10. Following through on this hypothesis, we may tentatively formulate a twofold pattern wherein the deaths of Pyrrhos/Aesop are the explicit/implicit motivations for the Delphic ritual that dramatizes strife over cuts of sacrificial meat. The pattern can be extended much further. Whereas Pyrrhos is killed because he reacts to strife over meat by resorting to physical violence (Pindar Paean 6.117-120 and N.7.40-43),[1] Aesop is killed because he reacts to the institution of this strife with verbal violence: he makes oneidos against the Delphians (Pap.Oxy. 1800: onidizôn).[2] While the hero cult of Pyrrhos is based on his death as a warrior, the hero cult of Aesop is based on his death as a poet. I say "poet" rather than "blame poet" because the word aînos, applicable to Aesop's fables of blame for the Delphians, also designates praise poetry itself.[3] In fact, Aesop's blaming the Delphic procedure of meat cutting fits the self-avowed function of the praise poet, who blames what is base while praising what is noble. Significantly, one of the main traditional targets for the praise poet to blame is phthonos 'greed'.[4] Moreover, we have seen that the phthonos blamed by praise poetry is primarily manifested in the imagery of greedily devouring meat.[5] Accordingly, Aesop's blaming the ritualized strife and greed inherent in the Delphic distribution of meat represents an archetypal function of praise poetry.[6] On the other hand, Aesop's blame takes the specific form of ridicule (Pap.Oxy. 1800: epeskôpsen), which in turn is a characteristic of blame poetry.[7] I conclude, then, that the themes surrounding the Aesop figure go back to a time when the concept of a blame poet was not yet distinct from that of a praise poet--that is, to a time when the poet blamed or praised in accordance with what he saw was bad or good. The semantic range of the very word aînos reveals a parallel bivalence of blame and praise.[8]
Notes
§1n1. Ch.14§§10-14.
§2n1. Cf. Usener 1912/1913 [= 1897] 244; also Wiechers 1961.44n2.
§2n2. To be more precise: I use aition in the sense of "a myth that traditionally motivates an institution, such as a ritual." I stress "traditionally" because the myth may be a tradition parallel to the ritual, not derivative from it. Unless we have evidence otherwise, we cannot assume in any particular instance that an aetiological myth was an untraditional fabrication intended simply to explain a given ritual. The factor of motivating--as distinct from explaining--is itself a traditional function in religion, parallel to the traditional function of ritual. It is only when the traditions of religion become obsolescent that rituals may become so obscure as to invite explanations of a purely literary nature. For a particularly illuminating discussion of a specific aition as a traditional
complement to a specific ritual, I cite Brelich 1969.229-311.
§2n3. On mimêsis as 'reenactment', in song and dance, of themes in myth, see Ch.13§12n3.
§2n4. For further testimonia on purification by way of pharmakoi, see Wiechers 1961.34n9.
§2n5. For more on this sort of logic in the linking of myth and ritual, cf. the discussion of the Bouphonia by Wiechers 1961.37-42.
§2n6. For further references, see Wiechers 1961.34nn7, 8.
§2n7. For a similar collapsing of myth/ritual distinctions, see Sinos 1975.131-143 on the funeral of Patroklos as instituted by Achilles.
§3n1. For the fragments, see in general Aesop Testimonia 20-32 Perry. As for the Life of Aesop as attested in Vitae G+W, Perry says (1936.1): "It is almost without parallel among the ancient Greek texts that have come down to us. For, although many popular traditions have survived concerning the doings and sayings of Homer, Hesiod, and the Seven Wise Men of Greece, yet these are either scattered and fragmentary or else, when embodied in continuous accounts such as the Contest between Homer and Hesiod, the Lives of Homer, or Plutarch's Banquet of the Seven Sages, have taken on something of the formal and learned character of the environment in which they were composed or through which, at any rate, they have been transmitted to us whatever their original character may have been."
§3n2. In Pap.Oxy. 1800, Aesop is stoned and then thrown off a cliff.
§4n1. For an exhaustive listing: Wiechers 1961.35-36.
§5n1. Ch.12§§18-19, Ch.13§12, Ch.15§9.
§5n2. The story is also attested in the canonical corpus of Aesopic fables: Fable 177 Perry.
§5n3. The second story is also attested as Aesop Fable 3 Perry.
§5n4. When an aînos like "The Dung Beetle and the Eagle" is taken out of its narrative context, it can function simply as a nature story that explains why eagles and beetles breed in different seasons; there is a trace of this function at line 12 of Aesop Fable 3 Perry, side-by-side with the moral at lines 13-14. The moral, of course, functions as the message of the aînos in the context of the narrative, as made explicit in Vitae G+W 139. The moral attached to each aînosin the canonical collection of Aesopic fables serves as a compensation for the context that a framing narrative would supply.
§5n5. Again, the word for 'bowl' is phialê (Aristophanes Wasps 1447): so also in the story of
Pharmakos (§2) and in the Life of Aesop (§3).
§5n6. Cf. Wiechers 1961.11-13. It follows that the canonical collections of Aesopic fables, presented without framing narratives, entail the truncation (sometimes even distortion) of the aînos as a traditional genre. Granted, some of the themes found in aînoi may have an independent existence in other genres such as the nature story (cf. n4 and Wiechers, p.12n13). But the point still remains that the Fables as we find them in Perry's edition do not represent the aînos in its archaic traditional form.
§5n8. The story is also attested as Aesop Fable 1 Perry; see Ch.12§18n2.
§5n9. See Ch.12§§18-19, Ch.13§12.
§6n1. Even in matters of language, however, we can detect archaic traces of Ionic underneath the Koine that pervades the narrative. See Wiechers 1961.9n5 on the fable about the girl without noos 'sense', who is tricked into having sex with a man whom she sees having sex with an onos
'ass' (Vitae G+W 131). The point of the whole story depends on a misunderstanding by way of metathesis: onos instead of noos, the Ionic equivalent of noûs. The form noûs, which is what we read in the Koine of our attested Vitae, conceals the play on words and in effect renders the story unintelligible.
§6n2. His argument has to be read in its entirety: see Wiechers, pp. 7-30.
§6n3. Cf. Wiechers, p. 27n45.
§6n4. The First Sacred War was actually directed against Cirrha/Crisa, which controlled and in that sense defined the sacred center of Delphi. Before Delphi was reconstituted as distinct from the defeated Cirrha/Crisa, however, the First Sacred War could be envisaged as an expedition against Delphi. See Wiechers, p. 27. On Cirrha/Crisa: Giovannini 1969.19-20.
§6n5. Before the First Sacred War, Delphi was a sacred center controlled by the polis Cirrha/ Crisa; after it, the defeated Cirrha/Crisa ceases to exist as a polis. Its fertile territory and its population are now sacred to Apollo, since Delphi now controls Cirrha/Crisa. In that sense, the polis is now controlled by the sacred center. See Wiechers, p. 24, for testimonia indicating that the territory of Cirrha/Crisa became hiero- 'sacred' to Apollo; his discussion should be supplemented, however, with Benveniste's observations on the semantics of hiero- (1969 II 192-196).
§6n6. On our use of the word aition, see again §2n2.
§7n1. The lines that precede this sentence unfortunately are lost.
§7n2. Hunt corrects from hiereiou: Perry 1952.221.
§7n3. Maas corrects from apeipen, as noted by Wiechers 1961.23 but not by Perry (ibid.).
§7n4. Reading by Perry (ibid.).
§7n5. See n1. The sense of the missing sentence that precedes would have been something to the effect that Aesop had a hero cult at Delphi. As Albert Henrichs points out to me, aitiâ 'cause' is a word used by mythographers and scholiasts as an equivalent of aition 'cause' (as defined at §2n2 and as applied at §6); cf. the scholia to the Aitia of Callimachus!
§8n1. Instituting a hero cult for Aesop as purification for his death is parallel to instituting a ritual of pharmakoi. For the parallelisms between the death of Aesop and the death of a proto- pharmakos, see §3. There are also traces in Vitae G+W of a variant tradition, of Samian origin, concerning the hero cult of Aesop. The people of Samos voted tîmai for Aesop (G+W 100); one version says that they assigned a temenos 'precinct' to him (W 100), while the other adds that this precinct came to be called the Aisôpeion (G 100). At this point, while he is being honored by the Samians, Aesop himself neglects to honor Apollo (G 100); for the significance of this neglect, see Ch.17§1. (Note too the parallelism with Hesiod W&D 138-139 compared to 142: the Silver Generation get tîmai from us mortals although they themselves failed to give tîmai to the gods. Discussion at Ch.9§§1-3.) From another detail in the narrative about Aesop in Samos, we can even infer that the Samians may have believed that Aesop was actually buried on their island. When Aesop tells the Samians the story of "The Wolves and the Sheep" (= Fable 153 Perry), he gives this as the reason: "so that you may engrave it on my mnêma [memorial] after my
death" (Vita G 96). This narrative device of a self-fulfilling prophecy implies that the Life of Aesop tradition had once been suitable for an inscription in a precinct of Aesop as cult hero. (Compare the Life of Archilochus tradition on the Mnesiepes Inscription in the precinct of Archilochus, the Arkhilokheion, at Paros; discussion at Ch.18§§3-5.) For traces of Samian traditions about Aesop, see also Aristotle Constitution of the Samians fr. 573 Rose.
§9n2. This is a modified restatement of the hypothesis offered at Ch.7§12.
§10n1. Note the use of dêriazomai 'fight', derivative of the noun dêris 'fight', in Pindar Paean
6.119. Another derivative, dêrîomai, applies twice to the fight between Achilles and Odysseus "at a dais of the gods" (viii 76, 78), as we have observed in Ch.7§13. Significantly, this fight between Achilles and Odysseus is called a neîkos (viii 75), on which see Ch.7§17 as also the discussion of eris/neîkos at Ch.11§16 and Ch.12§§3, 6, etc. See also Hesiod W&D 27-41, a particularly explicit passage about Eris (line 28) and neîkos (the word occurs in this passage four times!); at line 33, dêris is equated with neîkos [plural]. Note too that the Strife Scene of Pyrrhos concerns his tîmai (Pindar Paean 6.118), which are formalized as portions of meat; compare the primal eris between Prometheus and Zeus, again concerning tîmai formalized as cuts of meat (above, Ch.11§§5-10).
§10n2. While the words eris/neîkos apply not only to the language of blame but also to the action of physical combat (Ch.12§8n1), the semantic range of the word oneidos and its derivatives
seems to be restricted to the verbal dimension (cf. the discussion of oneidos as the opposite of kleos, at Ch.12§7; cf. also Ch.12§§6, 11). Note that Aesop's blame was provoked when the Delphians specifically "gave no tîmê to him" (ouden ... etimêsan: Vita W 124).
§10n3. See §5; also Ch.12§§18-19, Ch.13§12.
§10n4. See Ch.12§§4-6.
§10n5. See especially Ch.12§5.
§10n6. The blaming of anything by praise poetry is programmatically justified as a positive social function. See esp. Ch.12§4, Ch.14§3. So also on the two occasions that Hektor justifiably blames Paris (on which see Ch.14§5): both times the words of blame are introduced by neikessen 'made neîkos' (III 38, VI 325), and both times Paris acknowledges the justness of the blame by saying epei me kat' aisan eneikesas oud' huper aisan 'since you made neîkos against me according to aîsa, not beyond aîsa' (III 59, VI 333). Note that the word aîsa can designate not only the ordained way that things are to be--that is, 'fate'--but also 'cut of meat' (see Ch.7§21n1). Proper and improper blame are presented in imagery that connotes the proper and improper apportioning of meat. For another allusion to blame as a positive social function, see Ch.14§12n4.
§10n7. See esp. Ch.14§§7 and 13. On the word skôptô 'ridicule' (epeskôpsen), see Ch.13§3 and n4; also Ch.18§3 and n4. Since the greed blamed by Aesop is ritualized (Ch.7§11), it may well be that Aesop's act of blaming is itself an aition that motivates ritualized blaming in the form of ridicule. Note too the ridiculing of the Delphians' greed in comedy--e.g., Aristophanes fr. 684 Kock, Anon. fr. 460 Kock.
§10n8. See again §5; also Ch.12§§18-19, Ch.13§12.
The Best of the Achaeans Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry Revised Edition
Gregory Nagy
Copyright © 1980, 1997 The Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved. First edition 1979. Revised edition 1999. This document may be used, with this notice included, for noncommercial purposes within a subscribed
institution. No copies of this work may be distributed electronically outside of the subscribed institution, in whole or in part, without written permission from the JHU Press.
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§1. Aside from the direct testimony of Pap.Oxy. 1800 and Aesop Vitae G+W 142 about a hero cult of Aesop, there is important indirect evidence for his actual function as cult hero. Again we turn to the parallelism between the deaths of Aesop and Pyrrhos. In the myth of Pyrrhos, the theme of his antagonism with Apollo is fundamental to his essence as cult hero of Delphi.[1] Now we see a parallel pattern of antagonism in the Life of Aesop tradition. At the moment that the Delphians plot the death of Aesop, Apollo is described as having mênis 'anger' against him (mêniontos: Vita G 127).[2] There is a crucial supplementary detail in the Golenißçev Papyrus, where the god is described as actively helping the Delphians bring about Aesop's death (Pap.Gol.: sunergountos).[3] Apollo's anger is motivated by an incident in Samos: Aesop had sacrificed to the Muses and set up a shrine for them, neglecting to place Apollo in the center (VitaG 100, 127; Pap.Gol.).[4] The pattern of antipathy between Aesop and Apollo is in fact complemented by a pattern of sympathy between him and the Muses. In the course of Vita G, there is mention of the Muses no fewer than twenty-five times, often in the context of Aesop's swearing by them.[5] It was the Muses who had originally given Aesop his power of verbal skills (Vita G 7).[6] Before he dies, it is at a sanctuary of the Muses that Aesop takes refuge (Vita G 134), imploring the Delphians in the name of Zeus Xenios not to despise the smallness of the sanctuary (Vita G 139)--as the eagle had once despised the smallness of the dung beetle (Vita G 135).[7] The implicit but obvious foil here for the smallness of the Muses' sanctuary is the overwhelming greatness of Apollo's sanctuary at Delphi. In this connection, we may observe that Aesop never mentions Apollo by name in Vita G: instead, he refers to the god either as the prostatês 'leader' of the Muses (G 33, 142) or simply as 'he who is greater than the Muses' (G 33). The latter designation meshes neatly with the implicit theme that the Muses' sanctuary is small in comparison to Apollo's.
§2. Significantly, the two contexts of these references by Aesop to Apollo are by no means marginal to the central themes of Aesop's death. In the first instance, Aesop is telling a humorous fable about Apollo's powers of prophecy, and the humor is at the god's expense (Vita G 33);[1] in effect, Aesop is here implicitly provoking Apollo's anger. In the second instance, Aesop is by now at the actual moment of his death and is calling upon Apollo to be a witness of his unjust execution by the Delphians (Vita G 142). It seems a matter of ostentatious indirectness that Aesop is presented as referring to Apollo at these very moments by way of tabu periphrasis. Moreover, the timing as well as the meaning of Aesop's reference to Apollo as "leader of the Muses" and as "he who is greater than the Muses" amount to a clear acknowledgment by the narrative that Aesop's essence as poet is defined not only by the Muses but also by their leader, Apollo himself. [2]
§3. In fact, the traditional diction of archaic Greek poetry makes it explicit that the essence of the poet is defined by the Muses and Apollo:
ek gar toi Mouseôn kai hekêbolou Apollônos andres aoidoi easin epi chthona kai kitharistai
For it is from the Muses and from far-shooting Apollo that there are poets on earth, and lyre players too.[1]
Moreover, Apollo is traditionally the leader of the Muses from the standpoint of ritual poetry, as we see from the following spondaic fragment concerning libations:
spendômen tais Mnamas paisin Mousais kai tôi Mousarchôi Latous huiei[3]
Let us pour libations to the Muses, children of Mnâmâ [Memory] and to the Mousarkhos [Leader of the Muses], the son of Leto.
fr.adesp. 941 Page
Besides the title Mousarkhos, Apollo also qualifies as Mouseîos (IG 7.1.36: Megara) and Mousagetês 'Leader of the Muses' (IG 12.5.893: Tenos).[4] Still, in view of this evidence, an important question arises: why is it, then, that the archaic poet as a rule invokes the Muses without Apollo at the beginning of his composition (Iliad I 1, Odyssey i 1, W&D 1, etc.)? We will arrive at an answer, I submit, by looking further at the context of the same Hesiodic passage that explicitly derives the essence of the poet from the Muses and Apollo (Th. 94-95): the aoidos 'poet' is now specifically called Mousaôn therapôn 'the therapôn of the Muses' (Th. 100). Before we can interpret this expression, however, an excursus on the word therapôn is in order.
§4. As Nadia Van Brock can show,[1] therapôn had actually meant something like 'ritual substitute' at the time it was borrowed into Greek from Anatolia, probably in the second millennium B.C. Compare Hittite tarpaßßa-/tarpan(alli)- 'ritual substitute', corresponding formally to Greek theraps/therapôn. To paraphrase Van Brock, the Hittite word designates an entity's alter ego ("un autre soi-même"), a projection upon whom the impurities of this entity may be transferred.[2] She goes on to cite a Greek reflex of these semantics in the Iliadic application of therapôn to Patroklos,[3] the one Achaean who is by far the most philos to Achilles[4] --and who is killed wearing the very armor of Achilles.[5] Without any such comparative evidence, without even having to consider the word therapôn, Cedric Whitman has independently reached a parallel conclusion: that Patroklos functions as the epic surrogate of Achilles.[6] Granted, the prevailing applications of the word therapôn in ancient Greek poetry are semantically secondary: 'warrior's companion' (as typically at IV 227, VIII 104, XIII 246, etc.) or simply 'attendant' (XI 843, XIX 143, xviii 424, etc.). But we can see from the contexts where Patroklos is therapôn of Achilles (XVI 165, 244, 653; XVII 164, 271, 388) that the force of the word goes far beyond the dimensions of 'warrior's companion'. As Dale Sinos has convincingly argued,[7] Patroklos qualifies as therapôn of Achilles only so long as he stays within his limits as the recessive equivalent of the dominant hero.[8] In the words of Achilles himself, Patroklos and he are equivalent warriors, so long as Patroklos stays by his side; once he is on his own, however, the identity of Patroklos as warrior is in question:
tôi kudos hama proes, euruopa Zeu,
tharsunon de hoi êtor eni phresin, ophra kai Hektôr eisetai ê rha kai oios epistêtai polemizein
hêmeteros therapôn, ê hoi tote cheires aaptoi mainonth', hoppot' egô per iô meta môlon Arêos
Far-seeing Zeus! Let the glory of victory go forth with him. Make him breathe courage from inside, so that Hektor too
will find out whether our therapôn knows how to fight in battle alone, or whether his hands rage invincible only those times
when I myself enter the struggle of Ares.[9]
By its very outcome, the fatal impersonation of Achilles by Patroklos reveals that the therapôn is no longer the equivalent of Achilles once he leaves his side and goes beyond the limits Achilles had set for him (XVI 87-96).[10] Since even the epithet assigned to the therapontesof Achilles is ankhemakhoi 'those who fight nearby' (XVI 272, XVII 165),[11] we may infer that Patroklos has ceased to be therapônof Achilles at the moment of his death. As we shall now see, he has become the therapôn of someone else.
§5. When Patroklos has his fatal confrontation with Apollo, he is described as daimoni îsos 'equal to a daimôn' (XVI 786), and we have observed that this epithet is traditionally appropriate for marking the climactic moment of god-hero antagonism in epic narrative.[1] In the Death Scene of Patroklos, this climactic moment is also the context of a more specific epithet: he is described as thoôi atalantos Arêi 'equal to swift Ares' (XVI 784). There was one other time when Patroklos was equated with Ares: back in Iliad XI, when he first became involved in his fatal impersonation of Achilles. There we find Patroklos leaving the tent of Achilles and coming out of seclusion; he is described at that very moment as îsos Arêi 'equal to Ares' (XI 604). In the very same verse, the narrative itself takes note that the application of this epithet marks Patroklos for death:
ekmolen isos Arêï, kakou d' ara hoi pelen archê
He came out, equal to Ares, and that was the beginning of his doom.[2]
We recall that the designation 'equal to Ares' is particularly appropriate in the Iliad to the two other heroes who wear the armor of Achilles--the two main antagonists who are thereby cast in the same mold of warrior:[3]
Achilles
Hektor
isos Arêï XI 295, XIII 802 atalantos Arêï VIII 215, XVII 72.
In fact, when Hektor puts on the armor of Achilles which he had despoiled from the body of
Patroklos,[5] he is sealed in this armor by Zeus (XVII 209-210) and then, quite literally, "Ares entered him" (du de min Arês: XVII 210). Here we see Ares not so much as an Olympian ally of the Trojans but as the divine embodiment of murderous war. The same notion is inherent in such Homeric adjectives as Arêiphatos (XIX 31, etc.) and Arêiktamenos (XXII 72), both meaning 'killed by Ares' = 'killed in war'. No matter who the immediate killer may be in any given narrative of mortal combat, the ultimate killer is Ares as god of war. For example, the Achaean Idomeneus kills the Trojan Alkathoos[6] in mortal combat (XIII 424-444), with the direct help of the god Poseidon (XIII 434-435); nevertheless, Ares is designated as the god who actually takes the hero's life (XIII 444).[7] So also with the death of Patroklos: although it is Hektor who kills him, with the direct help of the god Apollo, Patroklos is the ultimate victim of the war god, Ares. In his fatal moment of god-hero antagonism, the therapôn of Achilles is overtly equated with Ares, who is the ultimate motivation for his dying as a warrior of epic. Accordingly, Patroklos is identified no longer with Achilles but rather with Ares himself. In that sense, he is now the therapôn of Ares! And the most important evidence for this assertion has yet to be adduced: as an aggregate of warriors, the Achaeans [Danaans] are specifically addressed as therapontes Arêos 'therapontes of Ares' (II 110, VI 67, XV 733, XIX 78). As a generic warrior, the hero of epic qualifies as a therapôn of Ares.[8]
§6. This formulation needs further refinement, for besides the dimension of myth as stylized in epic, we must also consider the dimension of ritual. As a generic warrior, the hero of epic is a therapôn of Ares precisely because he must experience death. The requirement of the hero's death, however, is dictated not so much by the narrative traditions of epic but by the ritual traditions of cult. Death is fundamental to the essence of the hero in cult, as we have already had occasion to observe.[1] This much said, we may finally return to the designation of the poet as Mousaôn therapôn 'therapôn of the Muses' in Hesiod Th. 100, and, in this same context, to the explicit derivation of the poet's essence from the Muses and Apollo (Th. 94-95).[2] We see from this testimony the emergence of a parallel pattern: whereas the generic warrior is the 'therapôn of Ares', the generic poet is the 'therapôn of the Muses'. Furthermore, the parallelism in itself indicates that the poet, as 'therapôn of the Muses', is thereby worthy of being a cult hero.
§7. We find supporting evidence in the Life of Hesiod tradition (see especially Aristotle Constitution of the Orchomenians fr. 565 Rose). Its themes, especially the theme of Hesiod's death, correspond to the typical mythology surrounding the cult of a typical epichoric hero. For a convincing exposition, I simply refer to the discussion of Hesiod as cult hero by Angelo Brelich-- a discussion framed by countless other examples of typical mythology surrounding local heroes. [1] I will content myself here by citing his conclusion: the figure of Hesiod in the Life of Hesiod tradition fits perfectly the characteristic morphology of the cult hero.[2]
§8. Significantly, even the figure of Hesiod as presented by Hesiodic poetry itself fits this same pattern of the cult hero; Brelich cites in particular such details as the poetic contest entered by Hesiod at the Funeral Games of Amphidamas (W&D 654-659).[1] It follows, then, that the Hesiodic compositions determine the identity of their composer. This inference may strike us at first as an absurdity--until we reconsider the implications of the simple fact that Hesiodic poetry is
not idiosyncratic but deeply traditional in both form and content.[2] The ambition of a poem like the Theogony is to present the traditions that reveal the very essence of the universe, and to do so with a Panhellenic "audience" in mind.[3] To enact such a vast program, the composer must surely be presented as the ultimate poet and sage who has all of tradition under his control.
§9. This ambition even motivates the generic function of the poet's name at Th. 22: Hêsiodos 'he who emits the Voice'.[1] Compare also the generic function of the name Homêros 'he who fits [the Song] together',[2] to be interpreted in conjunction with the patterns characteristic of a cult hero as we find them in the Life of Homer tradition.[3] In fact, the themes inherent in both names Hêsi-odos and Hom-êros recur in the actual diction of the proem to the Hesiodic Theogony itself, and the context for these themes is the actual description of the Muses and their poetic function:
perikallea ossan hieisai 'emitting a beautiful voice' Th. 10
ambroton ossan hieisai 'emitting an immortal voice' Th. 43
eratên ... ossan hieisai 'emitting a lovely voice' Th. 65
epêraton ossan hieisai 'emitting a lovely voice' Th. 67[4]
So also Hêsi-odos 'he who emits the voice'[5]
artiepeiai 'having words [epos plural] fitted together' Th. 29 phônêi homêreusai 'fitting [the song] together with their voice' Th. 39[6] So also Hom-êros 'he who fits [the song] together'
In short, the names Hêsiodos and Homêros identify the poet's function with that of the Muses
themselves.[7] Thus the poet's very name indicates that he is 'therapôn of the Muses' (Th. 100), in that the word therapôn identifies god with hero through death. And by being a therapôn, the generic poet assumes the ritual dimensions of a cult hero.
§10. Supplement: The Name of HomerMore needs to be said about the name of Homer, since its meaning seems to reveal a particularly archaic view of the poet and his function. For the interpretation of Hom-êros as 'he who fits [the song] together', built from the verb root *ar- as in ar-ar-iskô 'fit, join', we may compare the following use of the same verb, as an intransitive perfect:
houtô sphin kalê sunarêren aoidê
So beautifully is their song fitted together.[1]
Moreover, I adduce the semantics of the Indo-European root *tek(s)-, which like *ar- means 'fit, join'. From the comparative evidence assembled by Rüdiger Schmitt,[2] we see that *tek(s)- was traditionally used to indicate the activity of a carpenter in general (compare the semantics of joiner, an older English word for "carpenter") and of a chariot-carpenter in particular. In addition, Schmitt adduces comparative evidence to show that *tek(s)- was also used to indicate, by metaphor, the activity of a poet: much as a chariot-carpenter fits together his chariot, so also the poet fits together his poem/song.[3] This comparison is actually attested as an overt simile in the
most archaic body of Indic poetry:
imam te vacam vasûyánta âyávo rátham ná dhirah svápâ ataksisuh
The sons of Âyu, wishing for good things, have fitted together [root taks-, from *tek(s)-] this utterance,[4]
just as the skilled artisan (fits together) a chariot.
Rig-Veda 1.130.6ab It is, then, an Indo-European poetic tradition that the poet may compare his activity with that of artisans like carpenters.[5] Moreover, we see from Odyssey xvii 381-387 that poets are in fact the social equals of artisans--carpenters included.[6]
§11. In this light, we may now turn to the internal Greek evidence of *ar-, which parallels the comparative evidence on *tek(s)-. In the Linear B texts (e.g., Knossos tablets Sg 1811, So 0437, etc.), the word for "chariot-wheel" is a-mo = harmo, by etymology an abstract noun ("fitting") derived from the verb root *ar- as in ar-ar-iskô 'fit, join'.[1] Note too the Homeric name at V
59-60: Harmonidês 'son of Harmôn' (root *ar-), the patronymic of one Tektôn 'Carpenter' (root
§12. The technical sense of Harmonidês is parallel to that of harmoniê 'joint [in
woodwork]' (e.g., v 248),[1] but the latter form also has the social sense of "accord" (e.g., XXII 255)--as well as a musical sense roughly corresponding to our notion of "harmony" (e.g., Sophocles fr. 244 Pearson).[2] Both the musical and the social aspects of the word are incorporated in the figure Harmoniê, bride of Kadmos (Hesiod Th. 937, 975),[3] at whose wedding the Muses themselves sang a song inaugurating the social order of Thebes--a song quoted by Theognis (verses 17-18W) in the context of his invoking the Muses and thus inaugurating his own poem (verses 15-16W):
Mousai kai Charites, kourai Dios, hai pote Kadmou es gamon elthousai kalon aeisat' epos:
"hotti kalon philon esti, to d' ou kalon ou philon esti": tout' epos athanatôn êlthe dia stomatôn
Muses and Kharites, daughters of Zeus! You were the ones
who once came to the wedding of Kadmos, and you sang this beautiful epos:[4]
"What is beautiful is philon, what is not beautiful is not philon."[5]
This is the epos[6] that came through their immortal mouths.
Theognis 15-18W
§13. I conclude, then, that the root *ar- in Homêros traditionally denotes the activity of a poet as well as that of a carpenter, and this semantic bivalence corresponds neatly with the Indo-European tradition of comparing music/poetry with carpentry, by way of the root *tek(s)-.[1] This tradition is proudly recaptured in the words of Pindar extolling the themes of Homer:[2]
Nestora kai Lukion Sarpêdon', anthrôpôn phati_s, ex epeôn keladennôn, tektones hoia sophoi harmosan, ginôskomen
We know of Nestor and Lycian Sarpedon--subjects for men to talk about-- from famed words [epos plural]
such as skilled carpenters fitted together.[3]
Notes
§1n1. See Ch.7 in general and Ch.7§4 in particular.
§1n2. Here as well as throughout the Life of Aesop, the involvement of Apollo as Aesop's antagonist has been eliminated in the "W" branch of the story's transmission. For evidence that this adjustment is secondary and amounts to a distortion, see Wiechers 1961.11n9.
§1n3. For the pertinent passage in this fragment, see Perry 1952.11. For the entire text of the Golenißçev Papyrus, see Perry 1936.58-67.
§1n4. Instead, the central place is assigned to Mnemosyne, mother of the Muses (Vita G 100). This incident in the Life of Aesop tradition is linked by the narrative itself with Aesop's ultimate position as cult hero: see Ch.16§8 and n1.
§1n5. Conversely, there is not a single mention of the Muses in Vita W; see n2 and cf. Perry 1952.11.
§1n6. The role of Isis as leader of the Muses (Vita G 6) is an innovation made possible by (1) an Egyptian phase in the transmission of the Aesop story and (2) the Egyptian religious trend of associating the cult of Isis with the cult of the Muses (on which see the evidence adduced by Perry, p.2n8, esp. Plutarch De Iside 352b).
§1n7. The message of "The Dung-Beetle and the Eagle," as built into the narrative of Vita G 135 and as formally enunciated in the moral that concludes Aesop Fable 3 Perry, is that one should not despise the small, since no one is so negligible as to be incapable of revenge. For more on this fable, see Ch.16§5. Note that Aesop appeals to the ultimate protector of guest-strangers, Zeus Xenios, in acknowledging the smallness of the Muses' sanctuary; compare the appeal made by Odysseus, in his disguise as a lowly beggar, to the same moral code of the xenos 'guest-
stranger' (Ch.12§16). See in general Ch.12§§12-16 on the ideology of the poet as xenos.
§2n1. See Perry 1962.299-300 on the probability that this fable was in the collection of Demetrius of Phaleron.
§2n2. I disagree here with Wiechers 1961.14n21, who thinks that Aesop's periphrastic references to Apollo in Vita G 142 are an innovation, not an archaism. Also, I think that the story of Aesop's encounter with Isis and the Muses at Vita G 6-7 is the reflex of an older version in which Apollo functioned as the leader of the Muses. The replacement of Apollo by the polymorphous Egyptian goddess Isis would have been facilitated if the references to Apollo had been periphrastic even in this older version. From the Egyptian standpoint, Isis could then be substituted easily as "leader of the Muses" or as "she who is greater than the Muses" (cf. §1n6). Still, the question remains: if indeed the older version presents Apollo and the Muses as givers of speech and speech skills respectively to Aesop, why is Apollo in this case beneficent, rather than maleficent? See Ch.18§2.
§3n1. Whereas{bw,10} aoidoi 'poets' (`singers') are traditionally pictured as accompanying themselves on the lyre (as at Odyssey viii 67-69), they are here mentioned along with "lyre players" (kitharistai). This doublet of singers and lyre players reflects not the fragmentation of the poet's traditional function but rather the ensemble of song as embodied by the Muses and Apollo combined: the former sing while the latter plays the lyre, as at Iliad I 603-604. In this passage, the ensemble of the Muses and Apollo is described in a manner more appropriate to a specific picture than to a general event; cf. H.Apollo 186-206. By "picture" I mean a traditional mode of iconographic representation.{bw,12}
§3n2. The same verses recur in Homeric Hymn 25.2-3. On the integrity of this hymn as a piece of traditional poetry, see Koller 1956.178-179 (pace West 1966.186: "a senseless bit of patchwork").
§3n3. Page (1962) supplies tôi in front of Latous.
§3n4. Cf. Plato Laws 653d; Strabo 468; Pausanias 5.18.4, 8.32.2, 10.19.4. Cf. also Iliad I 603-604 and H.Hermes 450-452.
§4n1. Van Brock 1959.
§4n2. Van Brock, p. 119; cf. also Lowenstam 1975.
§4n3. Van Brock, pp. 125-126.
§4n5. Cf. Householder/Nagy 1972.774-776.
§4n6. Whitman 1958.199-203.
§4n7. Sinos 1975.46-52.
§4n9. Whitman (1958.200) quotes the same passage, adding: "When Achilles prays to Zeus for Patroclus' safety, he seems to ask, indirectly, whether his friend can play his role adequately or not."
§4n10. Note especially what Achilles tells him at XVI 89: do not be eager to fight aneuthen emeio
'apart from me'. Dan Petegorsky draws my attention to a parallel: Pindar O. 9.76-79.
§4n11. See Sinos, pp. 46, 61(n6).
§5n2. See Nagy 1974.230-231. Cf. Whitman 1958.200: "Then he is `like Ares'; but here the poet is looking forward consciously to the Patrocleia, as is shown by the remark, `this was the beginning of his woe' [XI 604]." Cf. also Whitman, pp. 114, 194.
§5n3. Cf. Ch.2§8. When Hektor sets out to fight in the armor of Achilles, he is specifically described as looking just like him (XVII 213-214).
§5n4. On the equivalence of Ares and Enyalios, see Nagy 1974.136.
§5n5. The manner in which Patroklos is denuded of Achilles' armor is highly significant: see Ch. 9§33n2.
§5n6. The semantics of -thoos in Alkâ-thoos seems relevant to the passage: Ch.20§10. On alka-, see Ch.5§31n5. On the parallelisms between the death of Patroklos and the death of Alkathoos, see Fenik 1968.132-133.
§5n7. For another striking example, consider the description of the tapestry woven by Helen depicting the aethloi'struggles' endured by Trojans and Achaeans alike at the hands of Ares (III 125-128). For the connotations of poetic theme ("The Ordeals of the Trojans and Achaeans") in the image of weaving here, see Clader 1976.6-9.
§5n8. Note also the epithet ozos Arêos (ten times in Iliad), where ozos is not the same word as the one meaning `branch' but rather a reflex of a compound: o- `together' + *-sd-os 'seated'; see Chantraine III 777. The hero Leonteus, described as îsos Arêi (XII 130), also qualifies as ozos Arêos (II 745, XII 188, XXIII 841). In the Alexandrian lexicographical tradition, ozos and therapônwere apparently considered synonyms (cf. Hesychius s.v. ozeia: therapeia). The semantics of ozos are suggestive of the relationship between god and hero in cult. Compare the description of Erikhthonios as a hero who gets a share of the sacrifices offered to Athena in her temple: Epigrammata 1046.89-90 Kaibel (on which see Nock 1972 [= 1930] 237). For more on Erikhthonios/Erekhtheus, see Nagy 1973.170-171. On the convergences and divergences of the Erikhthonios and Erekhtheus figures, see Burkert 1972.176, 211.
§7n1. Brelich{bw,10} 1958.321-322. The most convincing aspect of Brelich's book is the sheer accumulation of evidence for parallel patterns; it is well worth reading in its entirety.{bw,12}
§7n2. Brelich, p. 322: "Così il poeta rientra perfettamente nella morfologia caratteristica dell' eroe."
§8n1. Brelich, p. 321. Note that Hesiod's divine patronage is local: the Muses of Helicon (W&D 658-659) as distinct from the Muses of Olympus/Pieria as invoked in the proem (W&D 1). In the Theogony too, we see that Hesiod's essence as poet is defined by the Muses of Helicon (Th.
22-34).
§8n3. Note the transformation of the Muses from Heliconian (Th. 1) to Olympian (Th. 25, 52, etc.), once they have defined Hesiod's essence as poet at Helicon (Th. 22-34). For the correlation of Olympus and Panhellenic ideology, see Intro.§14.
§9n1. The root *uod- of *Hêsí-uodos recurs as *ud- in audê 'voice' and audaô 'speak': Chantraine I 137-138, II 417. At Th. 31, audê designates the poetry with which the Muses themselves inspire Hêsiodos. See now Nagy 1990b.47n32.
§9n2. I agree with Durante 1976.194-197 (cf. Welcker 1835.128) that Hom-êros is a compound built from the Indo-European elements *som- `together' and *{an,2,10}r- `fit, join' (as in Greek ar-ar-iskô 'fit, join'). My interpretation of the semantics, however, is different (see §§10-13); so too is my reconstruction of the earliest Greek form: *homo-ar-os, becoming *hom-âros.
§9n3. On these patterns, see the brief remarks of Brelich 1958.320-321.
§9n4. For a defense of this line, see West 1966.178-179 (I fail to agree, however, with his objections to the line on esthetic grounds).
§9n5. In Pindar O.6.61-62, the oracular response of Apollo is called artiepês / patriâ ossa 'the ancestral voice having words [epos plural] fitted together'; for more on ossa, see Ch.7§25n1.
§9n6. West (1966.170) translates "with voices in tune," helpfully adducing H.Apollo 164 for comparison.
§9n7. And, latently, with that of Apollo. Cf. n5.
§10n1. Cf. West 1966.170.
§10n2. Schmitt 1967.296-298.
§10n3. Ibid.
§10n4. The vak 'utterance' here is the sacral hymn itself; see Muellner 1976.128.
§10n5. On the comparative evidence for the likening with weavers, see Schmitt, pp. 298-301. For an attestation of this comparison in the semantics of the word rhapsidos 'he who stitches the song together', see Durante 1976.177-179.
§10n6. For the text of this passage from the Odyssey, with discussion, see Ch.12§13.
§11n1. See Chantraine I 110-111.
§11n2. The noun tektôn occasionally designates `artisan' in general, not necessarily `carpenter', but the context of V 60-63 clearly indicates carpentry. For more on tektôn, see §12n1.
§12n1. The woodwork here is described as the kind done by one well-versed in tektosunai
'carpentry' (v 250).
§12n2. On which see Nagy 1974.45.
§12n3. Note that Harmoniê is daughter of Ares (Th. 937). For the theory that the name Arês itself is derived from *ar- `fit, join', see Sinos 1975.52-54 and 71-72, who argues that Ares is the obsolete embodiment of the principles joining together the members of society in general and of warrior-society in particular.
§12n4. On the use of epos to mean not just `utterance' but also `poetic utterance' as quoted by the poetry itself: Ch.12§15n3 and Ch.15§7.
§12n5. Neuter philon indicates the institutional and sentimental bonds that join society together (cf. Ch.6§13). Since beauty is philon, the social cohesion of Thebes is implicitly embodied in the esthetics of the Muses' song, which in turn sets the cohesion of the poetry composed by Theognis. The concept of Harmoniê is appropriate to both the social and the artistic cohesion.
§12n6. Note that the quoted utterance of the Muses is called an epos both before and after the quotation. This framing effect may itself suggest Harmoniê.
§13n1. The Latin and Greek words ars and tekhnê are formed from verb roots that are no longer attested in the respective languages: Latin no longer has the verb *ar- from which the noun ars (*ar-ti-) is derived, while Greek no longer has the verb *tek(s)- from which the noun tekhnê (*téks-nâ) is derived. But Latin does have the verb texô (`build, join' in the older Latin, `weave' in the later), and Greek does have the verb ar-ar-iskô (`fit, join'). Note that Homeric diction actually combines the verb ar-ar-iskô with tektôn 'artisan' as subject: êrare tektôn (IV 110, XXIII 712; in the latter passage, the artisan is actually a carpenter). This word tektôn is by origin an agent noun derived from the verb *tek(s)- `fit, join'.
§13n2. For further discussion, see Schmitt 1967.297.
§13n3. The verb harmozô 'fit together' is derived from the noun *hármo, by origin an abstract noun ("fitting") which came to have a concrete designation ("chariot wheel") and which is in turn derived from the verb *ar- as in ar-ar-iskô (`join, fit'); see §11. The phonology of harmozô (from *hármo as distinct from standard classical harma, meaning 'chariot') suggests that the word was inherited from the élite social strata of the second millennium B.C. See Risch 1966, esp. p.
157. On the name of Homer and its relevance to the concept of rhapsode, see now Nagy 1996.74-78.
The Best of the Achaeans Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry Revised Edition
Gregory Nagy
Copyright © 1980, 1997 The Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved. First edition 1979. Revised edition 1999. This document may be used, with this notice included, for noncommercial purposes within a subscribed
institution. No copies of this work may be distributed electronically outside of the subscribed institution, in whole or in part, without written permission from the JHU Press.
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§1. In the preceding chapters, I have argued that the generic warrior/poet, as therapôn of Ares/ Muses, is implicitly worthy of becoming a cult hero after death. This in fact is the explicit message, I now submit, of the famous poetic declaration made by the one attested figure who boasts of being both warrior and poet:
eimi d' egô therapôn men Enualioio anaktos kai Mouseôn eraton dôron epistamenos
I am a therapôn of Lord Enyalios [Ares],
and of the Muses, well-versed in their lovely gift.
Archilochus fr. 1W
The poet's own words imply that Archilochus deserves a hero cult as both warrior and poet. And a hero cult is what he actually has on his native island of Paros, from archaic times onward, as we know both from the literary testimonia and from the evidence of archaeology.[1] Moreover, the Life of Archilochus tradition motivates the death of the poet as also being the death of a warrior. [2] He is killed in combat by a figure whose eponym is Korax 'Raven'.[3] Apollo is angry at Korax, who approaches his sanctuary at Delphi,[4] and he orders him to depart:
Mousaôn theraponta katektanes: exithi nêou
You killed the therapôn of the Muses. Get out of the Sanctuary!
Oracle 4 Parke/Wormell[5]
Korax protests that Archilochus had been killed as a warrior, not as a poet,[6] but Apollo again declares that Korax has killed the therapôn of the Muses.[7] After further entreaties, Korax is finally granted an oracular directive: he must go "to the House of the Tettîx [Cicada],"[8] where he must propitiate the psûkhê of Archilochus.[9] We may detect a deeper significance in the names and themes of this story by considering the traditions of the Aesopic aînos. In the fables of Aesop, the korax 'raven' is conventionally presented as the bird of Apollo (Fable 323 Perry), endowed with powers of prophecy (Fables 125, 236); he is also a harbinger of death (Fable 162). [10] The tettîges 'cicadas', on the other hand, are creatures of the Muses (Fable 470).[11] As we turn back to the Life of Archilochustradition, we may infer that the figures of Korax and Tettîx are parallel to Apollo and the Muses respectively. More specifically, the parallelism of Apollo and Korax implies that Apollo is maleficent as well as beneficent towards the poet.
§2. Similarly in the Life of Aesop tradition, Apollo is in fact both maleficent and beneficent to Aesop. We have already examined the maleficent aspect: Apollo is angry at Aesop for his neglect of the god at a sacrifice, and he actively helps the Delphians to bring about Aesop's death.[1] Now we see that there is also a beneficent aspect of Apollo's involvement in the killing of Aesop. Surely the pestilence that descends upon the Delphians after Aesop's death is ordained by Apollo himself, and it is his Oracle that commands the Delphians to propitiate Aesop by worshiping him as a cult hero (Pap.Oxy. 1800, Vitae G+W 142; cf. Aristotle Constitution of the Delphians fr. 487). This beneficent aspect of Apollo helps account for the final gesture of Aesop, when he calls upon Apollo as "leader of the Muses" to be witness of his unjust execution by the Delphians (Vita G 142). I propose, then, that the traditional themes of antagonism between god and hero do not preclude a beneficent aspect on the god's part. There is in fact solid evidence that the ambivalence of a god in being both maleficent and beneficent towards a hero is so archaic as to have a heritage in the Indo-European traditions of epic narrative: it comes from the comparative studies of Georges Dumézil in linking the Old Norse hero Starka[[radical]]r and the Indic hero Sô'isupâlawith the Greek hero Hêrakleês '.[2] Aided by Dumézil's findings, we now know that the suckling of Hêrakleês 'by Hêrâ after his birth (Diodorus Siculus 4.9.6) and the adoption of Herakles by Hera after his death (Diodorus 4.39.2-3) are themes of beneficence that complement the prevalent themes of her maleficence towards this hêrôs 'hero',[3] and that together these themes of beneficence/maleficence constitute the traditional epic theme embodied in the very name of Hêrakleês 'he who has the kleos of Hêrâ'.[4]
§3. Whereas Apollo's relationship to Archilochus and to Aesop in the Lives is ambivalent, that of the Muses is not; rather, it appears to be one-sidedly beneficent. Having already seen the evidence in the Life of Aesop tradition,[1] we turn to another story from the Life of Archilochus--this time as preserved in section E1 col.II of the Parian Mnesiepes Inscription.[2] According to this story, [3] Archilochus received his verbal powers of poetry from the Muses, who appeared to him in disguise as he was on his way to sell a cow (E1 col.II 23-29). Archilochus thinks that they are rustic women leaving the fields and heading for the city; he draws near and "ridicules" them (lines 29-30: skôptein),[4] but the Muses respond with playful laughter (lines 30-31). They then induce Archilochus to trade them his cow for a lyre; once the transaction is made, they disappear (lines
32-35). He falls into a swoon, and when he awakens he is aware that the Muses have just given him the gift of poetry (lines 36-38).
§4. The rest of this story about Archilochus is beyond our immediate interest, except for what it says about the future. An oracle from Apollo himself at Delphi prophesies to the father of Archilochus that his son will have immortality and fame:
a]thanatos soi pais kai aoidimos, ô Telesikleis,
estai en anthrôpoisin
Your son, O Telesikles, will be immortal among men, a subject of song ... [1]
We see here an important dovetailing of the story with the self-avowed function of the entire Mnesiepes Inscription, which is to motivate the hero cult of Archilochus at Paros. First, the inscription formally restates an oracular command by Apollo to Mnesiepês, with specific directives about the cult of Archilochus and other attendant ritual practices (E1 col.II 1-15). Then it briefly tells how the Parians complied with the Oracle's directives, instituting the cult in a sacred precinct called the Arkhilokheion (EE1 col.II 16-19). Finally, it tells the Life of Archilochus (EE1 col.II 20 ff.), in which context we find the story of the poet and the Muses (EE1 col.II 23 ff.). In other words, the Mnesiepes Inscription is itself the clearest evidence for arguing that the Life of Archilochus tradition is deeply rooted in the realia of cult. Moreover, the poetry of Archilochus and its transmission also are rooted in cult, as we have seen from the poet's traditional concept of himself as "therapôn of the Muses" (Archilochus fr. 1W).[3] I conclude, then, that the Life of Archilochus tradition is not only derived from the poetic tradition of Archilochus but also parallel to it.[4]
§5. This conclusion can be dismissed only if the Mnesiepes Inscription can be discredited as untraditional in its contents. For this to be so, one would have to argue that the commissioning of the inscription, dated as it is to the third century B.C., is coeval with the information that it contains about the oracular directives, about the cult itself, and about the Life of Archilochus. But we have in fact already seen direct evidence that the commissioning of the Mnesiepes Inscription is predated by reports about the cult of Archilochus (cf. Alcidamas ap. Aristotle Rhetoric 1398b11),[1] as also by the story about Archilochus and the Muses.[2] We may now add an interesting piece of indirect evidence from the ideology of the oracular directive about cult procedures in the sacred precinct (EE1 col.II 1-15): the cult of the main gods in the Arkhilokheion is the first element to be formulated (lines 3-6, 10-12), whereas the cult of the hero himself is the last (lines 14-15). Significantly, the listing of the main gods is headed by the Muses and Apollo Mousagetês 'Leader of the Muses' (lines 3-4). Such a grouping of Apollo and the Muses is clearly archaic.[3] Also, this grouping presents a relationship between Archilochus and Apollo/Muses on the level of cult that corresponds on the level of myth to the identity of Archilochus as poet:therapôn of the Muses.
§6. In fact, I am now in a position to offer an overall interpretation of the epithet Mousaôn
therapôn ' therapôn of the Muses' (Hesiod Th. 100, Archilochus fr. 1W). I propose that the designation "Muses" here includes Apollo as leader of the Muses. Whereas the Muses are one- sidedly beneficent toward the poet, Apollo is ambivalently beneficent and maleficent.[1] It is Apollo who causes the impurity of a poet's death, thereby also causing eternal purification through the hero cult of this poet. If indeed Apollo is latent in the designation "therapôn of the Muses," his maleficent stance toward the poet is thereby also latent. In this line of reasoning, I can also offer an explanation for why the archaic poet invokes the Muses without mentioning Apollo: [2] in this manner, he invokes the one-sidedly beneficent aspect of his divine patronage.
§7. Throughout our discussion of the poet as antagonist of his patron deities, we have had numerous occasions to see information taken from the Lives of the poets and used as evidence. I have tried to defend the validity of such information on a detailed case-to-case basis, but the ultimate defense rests on the cumulative evidence of the patterns that have by now emerged from our collection of the details. Admittedly, the Lives are extremely difficult source material, requiring the greatest caution. It is unfortunate that they are generally attested in versions that are late or fragmentary--or both. Worse still, we seldom have historical controls. Worst of all, the Lives have no strict literary form, and they are in the course of their transmission most vulnerable to distortion at the hands of transmitting scholars of the ancient world who supplement and modify, sometimes on the basis of the poet's attested poetry.[1] To use the Lives, one must be selective and critical, since the ultimate evidence is not so much in the text but in the tradition underneath. This much said, I now offer a brief reassessment of my conclusions about the Lives.
§8. We begin with the findings of Brelich about the Life of Hesiod tradition: the themes here fit the mythology surrounding a typical cult hero.[1] From such findings, I infer that the purpose of this and other Life traditions is to motivate not so much the poet's poetry but the poet's hero cult. This purpose is actually overt in the Life of Archilochustradition as presented in the Mnesiepes Inscription, which serves explicitly to motivate the poet's hero cult.[2] The inscription also specifies that the primary gods worshiped within the frame of this hero cult are the Muses--and Apollo as their leader.[3] This symbiotic connection of Muses/Apollo with Archilochus in cult is matched by an antagonistic connection in myth: the Life of Archilochustradition implies that Apollo is ambivalently beneficent/maleficent towards the poet, whereas the Muses are one-sidedly beneficent.[4] Such an antagonistic relationship in myth is overtly attested in the Life of Aesoptradition: Apollo abets the poet's death and then makes him a cult hero.[5] Aesop's very essence as poet is defined both by the beneficent Muses and by the beneficent/maleficent Apollo as their leader.[6] These relationships of god and poet correspond to the relationships of god and hero: antagonism in myth, symbiosis in cult.[7]
§9. We continue our reassessment by summarizing the evidence of epic diction, which amplifies our understanding of the antagonistic relationship between god and hero. At the moment of his death, the hero of epic in effect loses his identity to the god who takes his life; as such, the hero qualifies as the god's therapôn .[1] A "therapôn of Ares," then, is a hero who forfeits his identification with his philos or philoi and becomes "equal to Ares" at the moment of his death. [2] On the surface, of course, the hero's death is motivated by the inherited conventions of epic narrative; underneath the surface, however, it is motivated by the requirements of ritual ideology. As the semantic prehistory of the word indicates, the therapôn has a distinctly religious function. By losing his identification with a person or group and by identifying himself with a god who
takes his life in the process, the hero effects a purification by transferring impurity.[3]
§10. Keeping in mind this religious dimension of purification inherent in the word therapôn, we turn from the hero as warrior to the hero as poet. From the evidence of ancient poetic diction, we know that the generic poet is " therapôn of the Muses" just as the generic warrior is "therapôn of Ares."[1] From the evidence of the Lives, on the other hand, we know that the poet becomes a hero because he forfeits his life and identity to Apollo, the leader of the Muses. The evidence is perhaps clearest in the Life of Aesop tradition, where Apollo ordains first the death and then the hero cult of Aesop.[2] In such a hero cult, god and hero are to be institutionalized as the respectively dominant and recessive members of an eternal symbiotic relationship. The clearest evidence for this sort of institutionalization is to be found in the actual cult of Apollo/Muses and Archilochus at Paros, as actually documented by the Mnesiepes Inscription.[3] Finally, we see from the Life of Aesop tradition that the poet's death results in purification. The immediate result from the death itself is impurity, but the ultimate result is eternal purification by way of propitiating the hero in cult--as ordained by Apollo himself.[4] Moreover, the mode of Aesop's death is itself a purification, in that he dies like a pharmakos 'scapegoat'.[5] His very appearance indicates a transfer of impurities upon himself: Aesop is notoriously ugly and misshapen (Vitae G
+W 1), much like that other image of a pharmakos, Thersites (II 217-219).[6]
Notes
§1n1. See Kontoleon 1964, esp. p. 46, and Treu 1959.250; see now also Kontoleon 1965, esp. pp. 413-418, on the discovery at Paros of an archaic iconographical representation of Archilochus as cult hero. See now Nagy 1990b.47-51.
§1n2. The references that follow are conveniently assembled by Treu, pp. 122-124.
§1n3. Plutarch De sera numinis vindicta 560e. See also the references at nn5, 6.
§1n4. I infer that Korax does so for the purpose of purification, on account of a pestilence or the like.
§1n5. From Galen Protreptikos 23, to be read in conjunction with Dio Chrysostomus 33.12.
§1n6. Heraclides Ponticus Perì politeiôn 8 (cf. Aristotle fr. 611.25 Rose).
§1n7. Dio Chrysostomus (n5) ibid.
§1n8. Plutarch (n3) ibid.: epi tên tou tettingos oikêsin.
§1n9. Plutarch (n3) ibid.; the author also supplies an interpretation of the oracular response, suggesting why the "House of the Tettîx" should be Tainaros.
§1n10. In this fable, the korax of death turns out to be the cover of the larnax in which the overprotective mother is sheltering her child.
§1n11. This fable is transmitted by Plato Phaedrus259b-c. From Archilochus fr. 223W, we
know that the poet called himself a tettîx in the context of composing blame poetry against those who harmed him.
§2n2. Dumézil 1971.13-132; to be fully appreciated, the argument must be read in its entirety.
§2n3. For the semantic relationship of Hêrâ and hêrôs, see the important article of Pötscher 1961; cf. also Householder/Nagy 1972.770-771.
§2n4. See Dumézil, p. 120, to be supplemented by Pötscher 1961 and 1971; cf. also Davidson 1975.
§3n2. Conveniently available in Treu 1959.40-45. Although the inscription is of a relatively late date (ca. third century B.C.), its contents are archaic in theme: see Maehler 1963.49n2, with bibliography and brief polemics.
§3n3. There is an archaic iconographical attestation of the same story (or of a close parallel) on a Boston pyxis from Eretria, dated ca. 460 B.C. (no. 37 tab. 15 Caskey/Beazley); see Kontoleon 1964.47-50.
§3n4. On the verb skôptô 'ridicule', see Ch.13§3 and n4; also Ch.16§10 and n7.
§4n1. For more on aoidimos 'subject of song', cf. VI 358 and H.Apollo 299; note the orientation of both passages toward the audiences of the future.
§4n2. The rest of the oracle (lines 51-52) links up with the continuation of the story (E1 col.II 53 ff.).
§4n3. As an indication that the transmission of Archilochean poetry was rooted in the cult of Archilochus, I cite not only the function of the Mnesiepes Inscription but also the meaning of the name Mnêsiepês 'he who remembers the words [epos plural]'. As the figure to whom Apollo ordains the cult of Archilochus in the Arkhilokheion, Mnesiepes bears a name that seems to correspond to his own function. The semantics of his name integrate Mnesiepes into the mythology surrounding the foundation of the Arkhilokheion. Compare also the mythology surrounding the Aisôpeion at Samos, as discussed in Ch.16§8n1.
§4n4. Cf. Ch.17§§7-8 on the Life of Hesiod tradition. In the case of a typical local hero who is not a poet, his life story is simply a function of his cult. In the case of the poet-hero, on the other hand, his life story is a function of his cult and of the poetry ascribed to him. I would reconstruct, then, an archaic poet's life story as a Vita tradition originally controlled both by the ideologies of his cult and by the contents of his poems. With the passing of the archaic period, however, the factor of cult recedes, and the genre of the poet's Vita becomes totally dependent on the poems themselves. Without the control of the religious ideologies conveyed by the cult, the narrative patterns of the Vita become subject to arbitrary interpretations based on the contents of the poetry. On the other hand, if indeed the traditional narrative patterns of the Vita are historically rooted in
the institution of hero cults, the characters in the Vita traditions will assume the roles of heroes even when they are historical figures. Consider the Life of Pindartradition as discussed at Ch. 7§9n1.
§5n1. See Treu 1959.250.
§6n1. I must allow, however, that the Muses may not always be one-sided in every variant.
§7n1. Cf. Slater 1971, esp. p. 150, and Lefkowitz 1976. But see Foreword §7n5 above.
§8n5. §2; also Ch.16§8n1, Ch.17§1.
§8n6. Ibid.
§8n7. See again Ch.7.
§9n2. Ibid.
§10n4. Ch.16§8. This formulation helps account for the semantics of agos 'pollution'/'expiation' and enagizein'perform sacrifice in the cult of a hero' as distinct from thuein 'perform sacrifice in the cult of a god'. For a discussion of the formal and semantic connection between agos and enagizein, see Chantraine/Masson 1954. Nock (1944) has reservations about the god/hero distinction in thuein/enagizein, on the grounds that thuein is also attested in the context of sacrificing to heroes. Even so, I maintain that the god/hero distinction remains valid so long as enagizein is not attested in the context of sacrificing to the celestial gods. Thus, thuein/
enagizeinwould be the unmarked/marked members of the opposition. For the terms unmarked/ marked, see Jakobson 1971.136: "The general meaning of a marked category states the presence of a certain (whether positive or negative) property A; the general meaning of the corresponding unmarked category states nothing about the presence of A, and is used chiefly, but not exclusively, to indicate the absence of A" (italics mine). In the case of thuein/enagizein, "property A" is the factor of a hero (or of a chthonic god--where I intend "chthonic" in the sense of "noncelestial").
§10n6. Note the use of katharma 'purification, refuse of purification' in the sense of 'outcast' when it is applied to Aesop as a term of insult by the other characters in the Life tradition (e.g., Vitae G+W 31); cf. Wiechers 1961.35.
The Best of the Achaeans Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry Revised Edition
Gregory Nagy
Copyright © 1980, 1997 The Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved. First edition 1979. Revised edition 1999. This document may be used, with this notice included, for noncommercial purposes within a subscribed
institution. No copies of this work may be distributed electronically outside of the subscribed institution, in whole or in part, without written permission from the JHU Press.
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§1. The deaths of Aesop and Thersites result directly from their engaging in blame,[1] and the result of their deaths is purification.[2] It follows, then, that their engaging in blame is itself an ultimately purifying act. Thus even in the ideology of myth, blame and the ridicule that it can bring have a potentially positive social function.[3] Moreover, among the things that Aesop actually blamed was the negative social function of blame itself, formalized in ritual as strife over cuts of sacrificial meat (Pap.Oxy. 1800).[4] The same negative social function is formalized in classical praise poetry as eris 'strife, conflict' (Pindar N.4.93), a negative foil of praise poetry itself.[5] A parallel negative foil is phthonos 'envy, greed', conventionally visualized by praise poetry as a bestially gluttonous appetite for meat (Bacchylides 3.67-68, Pindar N.8.21-25).[6] The negative social function of blame is also formalized in myth as the primal eris between Prometheus and Zeus (Hesiod Th. 534)--a conflict over cuts of meat that is the very cause of the human condition (Th. 535-616).[7] Alternatively, it is formalized as the personified Eris at the Judgment of Paris, the cause of the Trojan War in particular (Cypria/Proclus p. 102.14-19 Allen) and of the human
condition in general (Hesiod fr. 204MW).[8] At the Judgment of Paris, Eris overtly takes the form of blame: as our Iliad tells it, Paris had engaged in blaming Hera and Athena, while praising Aphrodite (XXIV 29-30).[9]
§2. If there is a positive social function assigned by myth to the institution of blame, there might also be a parallel assignment to the Hellenic concept of eris 'strife, conflict', a word we have seen so far as formalizing only the negative social function of blame. The social ambivalence of Eris is in fact a prime theme of the Works and Days:
ouk ara mounon eên Eridôn genos, all' epi gaian eisi duô: tên men ken epainêseie noêsas,
hê d' epimômêtê: dia d' andicha thumon echousin. hê men gar polemon te kakon kai dêrin ophellei, schetliê: ou tis tên ge philei brotos, all' hup' anankês athanatôn boulêisin Erin timôsi bareian.
tên d' heterên proterên men egeinato Nux erebennê, thêke de min Kronidês hupsizugos, aitheri naiôn, gaiês t' en rhizêisi kai andrasi pollon ameinô:
hê te kai apalamon per homôs epi ergon egeiren. eis heteron gar tis te idôn ergoio chatizôn
plousion, hos speudei men arômenai êde phuteuein oikon t' eu thesthai: zêloi de te geitona geitôn
eis aphenos speudont': agathê d' Eris hêde brotoisin. kai kerameus keramei koteei kai tektoni tektôn,
kai ptôchos ptôchôi phthoneei kai aoidos aoidôi
There was not just one Eris born, but there are two
on earth. When a man recognizes one, he should praise it.
The other one is worthy of blame. The two have split dispositions. One brings about the evil of war and fighting.[1]
It is wretched. No man loves it, but, by necessity,
in accord with the Will of the Immortals, men give tîmê to this burdensome Eris.[2]
The other one was the elder-born from dark Night.
The son of Kronos, who sits on high and abides in the aether,
placed it in the very roots of Earth. And this one is far better for men. This one incites even the resourceless man to work--
as one man who is out of work looks at another who is rich and busy with ploughing, planting,
and maintaining his household properly. Neighbor envies neighbor, striving for wealth. This Eris is good for men.
And the potter is angry with the potter, and the artisan with the artisan.[3]
And the beggar has phthonos [envy] for the beggar, and the poet for the poet.[4]
We see here the "good" Eris in her positive social function as the principle of competition, that
fundamental aspect of most Hellenic institutions--including poetry itself.[5] In this connection, it is important to keep in mind that even the performance of such sublime poetic compositions as Pindar's Paean 6 took place in the framework of a competition. This song that tells about the eris of the gods (Paean 6.50, 87) in the awesome setting of Delphi's Panhellenic theoxenia is actually being performed, in the song's own words, at an agôn 'place of contest' (agôna: Paean 6.60).[6] In sum, one can praise and blame the good and the evil Eris, as the Works and Days tells us, but these very activities of praising and blaming are subsumed in the principle of competition itself-- that elder and hence more primordial kind of Eris.
§3. Evil or good, eris functions as a prime definition of the human condition. It comes as no surprise, then, that eris is the overt catalyst for many of the major poems of Hellenic civilization. We have already seen that eris or neîkos precipitates not only the Cypria in particular but also in general the entire mass of epic material framed by the Trojan War.[1] Moreover, the Iliad itself begins with the eris/neîkos between Achilles and Agamemnon.[2] When Achilles tells Agamemnon that the Achaeans will long remember their mutual eris (XIX 63-64), his words apply--far beyond the Achaeans of their time--to the future generations of Hellenic listeners who will ask to hear the story of the Iliad.[3] The grand Strife Scene between Agamemnon and Achilles is even recapitulated on the Shield of Achilles, in that microcosmic stop-motion picture of litigation between a defendant who offers compensation and a plaintiff who refuses it (XVIII 497-508).[4] Like its major counterpart, this minor Strife Scene is also a neîkos (neikos/eneikeon: XVIII 497/498). But here the quarrel is a formal litigation, with claims and counterclaims expressed in correct legal language.[5] And the objective of the whole procedure is dikê
'justice' (dikazon/dikên: XVIII 506/508). This quarrel is in fact strikingly similar to the one between Perses and Hesiod himself, where the objective is again dikê (dikêis/dikên ... dikassai: W&D 36/39) and where the quarrel itself is a neîkos(neikos at W&D 35; cf. also neike'/neikeôn/ neikeaat W&D 29/30/33).[6]
§4. The neîkos of Perses and Hesiod is in fact a formal context for engaging in blame as a positive social function, as we see from the corresponding quarrel of Agamemnon and Achilles. Here the words spoken by the aggrieved warrior against the king of his philoi are taken from the language of blame-poetry.[1] Achilles insults Agamemnon by calling him such names as kunôpa 'having the looks of a dog' (I 159) and kunos ommat' ekhôn 'having the eyes of a dog' (I 225)-- epithets that typify a bestial degree of gluttony.[2] When blame is justified, the application of kuôn 'dog' and its derivatives is a quintessentially appropriate insult.[3] With other insults as well, Achilles attacks Agamemnon by picturing him as the ultimate glutton: most notably, he calls him dêmoboros basileus 'a king who is the devourer of the dêmos' (I 231).[4] Agamemnon is here branded as a king so greedy that he consumes his own community.[5] This insult is immediately pertinent to the neîkosof Perses and Hesiod, where the adjudicating basilêes'kings' are themselves called dôrophagoi 'devourers of gifts' on account of their lack of dikê
'justice' (W&D 38-39 and 263-264; cf. 220-221). The figure of Hesiod is engaged in making justified blame, expressed in language appropriate to blame-poetry, just as Achilles had done in his quarrel with Agamemnon. Here too we see blame-poetry in its positive social function. Moreover, this blaming of unjust kings whose injustice promotes the neîkos of Perses and Hesiod is in sharp contrast with the praising of the just kings in Hesiod Th. 80-93. A king who makes settlements with dikê (Th. 85-86) is described as one who can stop "even a great neîkos" (kai mega neikos: Th. 87). Such just kings are ekhephrones 'aware' (Th. 88) precisely
because they heed what the Muses say (Th. 80 ff.)--through the intermediacy of the poets.[6] Thus only those kings who are phroneontes 'aware' can understand the message of Hesiod the poet, as he tells them the aînos of the hawk and the nightingale:
nun d' ainon basileusin ereô phroneousi kai autois
Now I will tell an aînos for kings, aware [phroneontes] as they are.[7]
In sum, the neîkos of Perses and Hesiod is a context for blaming the unjust king; it is a neîkos that can be stopped only by the just king. The blaming itself is justified so long as the injustice remains--which is hubris as opposed to dikê (W&D 213-285).[8] In this sense, the neîkos of Perses and Hesiod has the positive social function of precipitating the Works and Days. Moreover, this very neîkosmotivates the major theme that has served as our point of departure-- the Hesiodic portrait of Eris as a prime determinant of the human condition (W&D 11-26).[9]
§5. The human condition is not only defined by eris; it is even caused by it. On the level of myth, this eris is formalized as one primordial Strife Scene that takes place at one primordial dais 'feast' shared by gods and men.[1] There are various multiforms of this feast, such as the one attended by Prometheus (Hesiod Th. 535 ff.) or the one celebrating the Wedding of Peleus and Thetis (Hesiod fr. 204.95 ff.; Cypria/Proclus p. 102.13 ff. Allen; Pindar Paean 6.50 ff.). But, aside from such variables, there is also an essential constant: by disrupting the dais, the eris of the Strife Scene disrupts the communion of gods and men, thereby bringing to an end the golden existence of mankind.[2] Since eris is inevitable and since it also can be formalized as blame,[3] the institution of blame in general and blame poetry in particular is itself conceived as one of life's necessary evils.
§6. Ironically, the aînos as a traditional form of blame is not only an institution of eris but also an eternal reminder of what had been disrupted by eris at a primal Strife Scene, namely, the golden existence of mankind. The standard setting for the narrative of the aînos is the Golden Age itself. In the proem to the versified fables of Babrius, where the poet cites the prosaic retellings of the Aesopic tradition as his immediate source (lines 14-16),[1] we read that the Golden Age was a time when:
animals had the same phônê 'power of speech' as men (lines 5-12)
men and gods were one community (hetaireiê: line 13).
In other words, there had been in the Golden Age a communion of animals and men and of men and gods. In the fables of Aesop, we find animals actually communicating with men as well as one another through the power of speech,[2] and there are instances where the fable is actually introduced with an explicit statement to that effect:[3]
kath' hon kairon ên homophôna ta zôia tois anthrôpois ...
At the time when animals had the same phônê as men have ...
Life of Aesop G 99, introducing "The Poor Man Catching Insects" = Fable 387 Perry
kath' hon kairon ên homophôna ta zôia ...
At the time when animals had the same phônê ...
Life of Aesop W 97,[4] introducing "The Wolves and the Sheep" = Fable 153 Perry Ironically too, Aesop himself had no phônê'power of speech' before he received the gift of verbal skills from the Muses (Life of Aesop G 7).[5] In the beginning, he had been like an animal, doubly removed from the Golden Age. By having no phônê, he had been excluded from the community of both gods and men. We see as a permanent reminder of his primal state the simple fact that Aesop actually remains a theriomorphic figure throughout his Life.[6] In the end, however, after having died for blaming a ritualized Strife Scene (Pap.Oxy. 1800), Aesop wins immortality (Plato Comicus fr. 68 Kock).[7] It was in fact immortality that the animals had demanded from Zeus in their own Strife Scene, which had plummeted them from their own golden existence (Callimachus Iambus 2 = fr. 192 Pfeiffer).[8] In the end, Aesop transcends the condition of both animals and men. The gaps that are bridged in his aînoi between animals and men and gods are bridged in the course of his Life.
Notes
§1n3. On the acknowledgment of this social function in the ideology of epic, cf. Ch.14§12 and n4.
§1n4. For the text, see again Ch.16§7.
§2n1. For more on dêris 'fighting', see Ch.16§10n1.
§2n2. For the correlation of Eris and the Dios boulê 'Will of Zeus', see Ch.11§§10-15.
§2n3. The "anger" of potter against potter and artisan against artisan is equivalent to phthonos, as we see from the parallelisms in the next verse. On the inherited parallelism of the tektôn 'carpenter' as artisan par excellence with the aoidos 'poet', see Ch.17§§10-13. On the poet as dêmiourgos, see xvii 381-387 as discussed at Ch.12§13 and nn2, 3.
§2n4. On the convention of presenting the xenos'guest-stranger' on a social scale that ranges from
beggar all the way to poet, see Ch.12§§13-16.
§2n5. Cf. Pucci 1977.31-32, 130-135.
§2n6. The agôn is also the traditional context of such archaic poetic forms as the Homeric Hymns--and we can see this from the use of the word agônat HH 6.19-20. See also the Hesiodic and Homeric references to poetic contests at W&D 654-659 and II 594-600, and the commentary
by Maehler 1963.16. In fact, the name of the competitive poet Thamuris at II 595 seems to be the embodiment of the social context for poetic competition. In the Alexandrian lexicographical tradition and elsewhere, we see that thamuris means 'assembly'; see Durante 1976.202 for documentation and commentary. Moreover, the word agôn itself denotes 'assembly' (from agô; cf. Chantraine I 17); the semantic extension 'place of contest' reveals that the holding of contests was a basic social function of such an 'assembly'. Compare the semantics of samaryá- 'poetic contest' in the Rig-Veda, as discussed by Durante, pp. 198-201. I disagree, however, with Durante's equating the meaning of samaryá- with that of Homêros: see Ch.17§9n2.
§3n3. For the poetic self-references associated with the theme of remembering and not forgetting
a story of grief, see Ch.6§§4 ff.
§3n5. See Muellner 1976.100-106 on the legal use of eukheto 'claimed' at XVIII 499, for which he finds a striking parallel in the use of e-u-ke-to = eukhetoi 'claims' in the Linear B texts (Pylos tablets Ep 704 and Eb 297). Muellner (p. 104) also notes the collocation of e-u-ke-to with da-mo
= dâmos (Ep 704), corresponding to the collocation of eukheto with dêmos in the Homeric passage at hand (XVIII lines 499 and 500 respectively). For Linear B dâmos as 'an administrative entity endowed with a juridical function', see Lejeune 1965.12.
§3n6. Cf. Vernant 1977. Note especially the expression diakrînômetha neîkos 'let us settle our quarrel' at W&D 35. The compound verb diakrînomaihere must be compared to the simple krînomai'have a definitive settlement' as used in Hesiod Th. 535 and 882, where the settlements lead to the permanent separation of gods/men and gods/Titans respectively. Discussion at Ch. 11§5. Cf. also the semantics of the passive formation krithen'they separated from each other' in Pindar P.4.168.
§4n3. Consider again Ch.12§§5-6.
§4n4. For the semantics of dêmos in this context of neîkos, see §3n5. Since there is a traditional interplay in Homeric diction between dêmos 'district, community' and dêmos 'fat' (Nagler 1974.5-9), we may note that dêmoboros can also be understood as 'devourer of fat'. On the traditional theme that tells of dogs devouring the dêmos 'fat' of corpses (VIII 379-380, XI 818,
XIII 831-832), see Ch.12§5. If this interpretation is valid, then Agamemnon is being described by Achilles with an epithet that befits a corpse-devouring dog.
§4n5. Note that Thersites himself blames Agamemnon for his greed (II 225-238). At II 236-237, he even says that the Achaeans should forsake Agamemnon, leaving him behind "to digest his geras [plural; = honorific portions]" all to himself (gera pessemen: II 237). For geras 'honorific portion' in the sense of 'cut of meat', see Ch.7§19. On the greed of Agamemnon, consider also philokteanôtate 'preeminent lover of possessions' (I 122), an epithet applied to him again by Achilles.
§4n6. Cf. Puelma 1972.97-98.
§4n8. For more on dikê and hubris: Ch.9§7 and n2.
§4n9. See again §2.
§6n1. This is not to say, of course, that the original Aesopic tradition of aînoi was not poetry.
§6n2. For an example of verbal communication between animals and men, see Aesop Fable 465 Perry.
§6n3. Cf. also Callimachus Iambus 2 = fr. 192 Pfeiffer.
§6n4. Also at G 97, where the introductory phrasing is exactly as at G 99.
§6n5. In the attested version (G 7), Isis gives Aesop the power of speech itself (phônê) while the Muses give him the power of speech skills. I believe that earlier versions had Apollo in place of Isis: see Ch.17§1n6, §2n2; Ch.18§2. Note too that the epiphany of the Muses to Aesop is in the setting of an elaborately lush garden, where the tettîx 'cicada' sings (G 6). For more on the tettîx, see Ch.18§1.
§6n6. There is a collection of epithets applied to Aesop, many of them having to do with the
various grotesque forms of various animals, at the very beginning of the Life narrative (Vitae G
+W 1), on which see Wiechers 1961.31-32. Throughout the narrative, in fact, the other characters keep insulting Aesop by way of appellations like kunokephalon 'dog-head' (G 11, 30; W 31). The association of Aesop with the figure of a dog is especially interesting in view of the traditional use of kuôn 'dog' and its derivatives in the language of blame; see in particular Ch. 12§6 on Iliad I 159 and 225, where Achilles insults Agamemnon by calling him kunôpa 'having the looks of a dog' and kunos ommat' ekhôn 'having the eyes of a dog'. In fact, the name of Aesop himself may be a semantic parallel: Ais-ôpos may mean 'having the looks of baseness', if the element ais- can be connected with ais-kh- as in the word aîskhos 'baseness' and its family (on the semantics of which see Ch.14§13). The element ais- also may be connected with the adjective ais-ulo- 'unseemly'. Note that the speaking of aisula 'unseemly things' is equated with kertomiai 'reproaches' at Iliad XX 202 and 433. On the semantics of kertomeô 'reproach' and its family, see Ch.14§§11(n6) and 14. Questions of etymology aside, however, the strong association of Aesop with the figure of a dog seems to be connected with the function of the Aesopic aînos as blame poetry. We observe the message of Aesop's fable about "The Wolves and the Sheep" (Fable 97 Perry), as conveyed by the context of its retelling in Vitae G+W 97: just as the dogs' barking protects the sheep from the wolves, so also the fable of Aesop protects the Samians from Croesus. In connection with the Samian phase of Aesop's Life (on which see also Ch.16§8n1), I should note in passing a curious passage in Vita G 87, featuring a barrage of insulting appellations as spoken by the Samians against Aesop (the last one of which is "a dog in a wicker basket"!). The categories of these appellations are well worth careful study, since they may match some stock characters in the Aesopic fables (though their language is certainly far more picturesque than that of the rhetorical retellings in the Aesopic corpus that has come down to us).
§6n7. For a collection of other testimonia on the immortalization of Aesop, see Perry 1952.226; cf. Wiechers 1961.41.
§6n8. The contents of this Callimachean fragment can be supplemented by two paraphrases of its substance: (1) a papyrus from Tebtynis [see Maas 1934] and (2) Philo of Alexandria De confusione linguarum6-8. See Perry 1962.312-313. Significantly, this same Callimachean passage telling of the animals' loss of immortality also alludes to Aesop's death at Delphi (fr. 192.15-17 Pfeiffer).
The Best of the Achaeans Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry Revised Edition
Gregory Nagy
Copyright © 1980, 1997 The Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved. First edition 1979. Revised edition 1999. This document may be used, with this notice included, for noncommercial purposes within a subscribed
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§1. Having just seen how the neîkos 'quarrel' between Hesiod and Perses (W&D 35) serves as the context for a grand definition of dikê by way of its opposition to hubris,[1] we return one last time to the neîkos between Odysseus and Achilles (Odyssey viii 75) in the first song of Demodokos (viii 72-82). This quarrel too serves as a context for defining one theme, the mêtis 'artifice' of Odysseus, by opposing it to another theme, the biê 'might' of Achilles.[2] But here it is not simply a matter of choosing between negative and positive, as with hubris and dikê. True, the mêtis of Odysseus is vindicated as the heroic resource that will lead to the ultimate capture of Troy. But the biê of Achilles is also vindicated by the events of traditional epic narrative, in that the Achaeans survived to capture Troy only because they had been rescued earlier by Patroklos/ Achilles from the onslaught of Hektor.[3] The kleos of Achilles as the best of the Achaeans in the Iliad is achieved because the Achaeans are doomed without his biê. For his own kleos as best of the Achaeans in the Odyssey,[4] even Odysseus will need to have biê against the suitors. When they fail in their attempts to string the bow of Odysseus, the suitors themselves must recognize the hero's superiority in biê:
pollon de biês epideuees êsan
and they were by far inferior in biê
all' ei dê tossonde biês epideuees eimen antitheou Odusêos
but if indeed we are so inferior in biê
to godlike Odysseus
In Penelope's own conditional words, the disguised Odysseus would have to use his biê in order
to string the bow (xxi 314-315) and thereby win her as wife (xxi 316). Odysseus is of course not only about to string the bow, thus fulfilling the condition set down by Penelope. He will also kill the suitors with it.
§2. We may proceed, then, with the understanding that biê is a key to the kleos of Achilles/ Odysseus in the Iliad/Odyssey. Now we are about to see that it is also a key element in epic traditions about other prominent heroes. In the case of Herakles, for example, the theme of biê is actually embodied in the hero's identity, since he is conventionally named not only as Hêra-kleês but also as biê + adjective of Hêrakleês:[1]
nominative biê Hêraklêeiê XI 690; Hes.Th. 289, 982, fr. 35.1(MW) genitive biês Hêraklêeiês II 666; Hes.Th. 332; fr. 33(a)25, 30 dative biêi Hêraklêeiêi II 658, XV 640; Hes.Th. 315, fr. 25.18, 165.9 accusative biên Hêraklêeiên V 638, XIX 98, xi 601; Hes.Th. 943, fr. 33(a)23
The fact that a full declension of this periphrastic naming construct biê + adjective of Hêrakleês is
attested in the diction of archaic hexameter poetry is itself striking evidence, on the level of form, that the Herakles figure and biê are traditionally linked on the level of theme.[2] Since the very name Hêra-kleês 'he who has the kleos of Hera' embodies the theme of glory through epic,[3] the traditional combination of biê with kleos in the periphrastic naming construct biê + adjective of Hêra-kleês is a formal indication that biê is a traditional epic theme. In fact, other heroic names built with kleos are also found in the same naming construct:
biê + adjective of Eteo-kleês (-klos)[4] = Eteoklêeiê IV 386 biê + adjective of Iphi-kleês (-klos)[5] = Iphiklêeiê xi 290, 296 Cf.
biê + genitive of Patro-kleês (-klos)[6] = Patrokloio XVII 187, XXII 323
§3. The heroic resource of biê, then, has a distinctly positive aspect as a key to the hero's kleos. Nevertheless, it has a disquieting negative aspect as well. For our first example, let us turn again to the Odyssey. Whereas Odysseus uses biê to kill the suitors, the overall behavior of the suitors themselves in the course of the Odyssey is also characterized as biê (e.g., xxiii 31). Moreover, the biê of the suitors in the House of Odysseus is equated with hubris (xv 329, xvii 565). This noun hubris characterizes not only the outrageous behavior of the suitors (xvi 86, xxiv 352) but also that of the blood-crazed warriors belonging to Generation III of mankind (Hesiod W&D 146).[1] In fact, the hubris of Generation III is correlated with their biê (W&D 148).[2] Furthermore, the hubris that characterizes the blood-crazed warriors of Generation III is in direct opposition to the dikê of the noble Generation IV warriors (W&D 158).[3] We come back, then, to our point of departure, the negative/positive opposition of hubris/dikê as dramatized by the neîkos of Perses and Hesiod (W&D 35). We now see that biê itself has a negative aspect, an element of hubris. In this way, biê can even be contrasted directly with dikê:
kai nu dikês epakoue, biês d' epilêtheo pampan
Listen to dikê! Forget biê entirely!
§4. The ambivalence of biê is also reflected by the Iliad. Only here it is not a matter of assigning good and bad biê to good and bad characters respectively. Rather, the good/bad ambivalence of biê is built into one character, Achilles himself. The good aspect has already been mentioned: without the biê of Achilles, no mêtis can rescue the Achaeans from Hektor's onslaught.[1] As for the bad aspect, it is manifested throughout the rampage of Achilles as he finally enters his war in the Iliad. He does more, much more, than simply kill Hektor. A veritable slaughter is to precede Hektor's death, only to be followed by mutilation and human sacrifice.[2] Apollo says it all when he compares Achilles to a ravenous lion who lunges for his dais 'portion', yielding to his own savage biê (XXIV 41-43).[3] The words of Apollo describing the hero's disposition correspond to the words used by Achilles himself as he expresses his own brutal urge to devour the vanquished Hektor (XXII 346-347).[4] Such ghastly aspects of biê lead us to wonder what words the man of mêtis may possibly have used against the man of biê during their neîkos 'quarrel', which actually took place at a dais 'feast' (viii 76). One thing is certain: when Odysseus for a single moment despairs of his mêtis, the reaction of his men is to be overwhelmed by thoughts about biê. Let us observe first the hero's words of despair:
ô philoi, ou gar idmen hopêi zophos oud' hopêi êôs, oud' hopêi êelios phaesimbrotos eis' hupo gaian oud' hopêi anneitai: alla phrazômetha thasson
ei tis et' estai mêtis: egô d' ouk oiomai einai.
Dear friends! I speak because we know neither where the western darkness is nor the dawn, neither where the sun that shines upon mortals sets below the earth
nor where it rises,[5] but let us hasten to think[6]
whether there is any mêtis any longer. I myself think there is none.
Then the reaction of his men:
hôs ephamên, toisin de kateklasthê philon êtor mnêsamenois ergôn Laistrugonos Antiphatao Kuklôpos te biês megalêtoros, androphagoio. klaion de ligeôs, thaleron kata dakru cheontes: all' ou gar tis prêxis egigneto muromenoisin.
So I spoke. And their heart was broken
as they remembered the deeds of Antiphates the Laestrygonian and the biê of the great-hearted Cyclops, the man eater.[7] And they wept loud and shrill, letting many a tear fall.
But crying did not get them anywhere.
In the absence of mêtis, disorienting thoughts of biê are stirred up in the mind. And the
nightmarish vision of the man-eating Cyclops in the Odyssey is marked by the same biê that marks the epic vision of a rampaging Achilles in the Iliad. Significantly, it is only here in the Odyssey that the Cyclops is ever called "great-hearted" (megalêtoros: x 200)--an epithet generically applied to the warriors of the Trojan War.[8]
§5. The theme of biê is not only ambivalent in its positive and negative aspects, it is also elemental. Most prominently, the power of the winds is designated by biê (bias anemôn: XVI 213, XXIII 713) or by its synonym îs (is anemou/anemoio: XV 383/XVII 739, etc.).[1] Also, the power of fire is called the "biê of Hephaistos" (Hêphaistoio biêphi: XXI 367),[2] and this appellation applies at the very moment when the power of fire is defeating the power of water. The latter is manifested in the river god Xanthos, who in turn is called the "îs of the river" (is potamoio: XXI 356).[3] Before Hephaistos, Achilles himself had confronted the river god, but Xanthos says that the hero's biê will not suffice against a god (ou ... biên chraismêsemen: XXI 316). What strikes us in particular here is that the narrative is presenting the biê of Achilles as parallel to the biê of fire itself. The god of water even says it about Achilles:
He is in a rage, equal to the rage of the gods.[4]
§6. The ultimate cosmic biê is that of Zeus himself as he readies himself for battle with the Titans:
oud' ar' eti Zeus ischen heon menos, alla nu tou ge eithar men meneos plênto phrenes, ek de te pasan phaine biên
Zeus did not any longer restrain his menos [might], but straightway his breathing was filled with menos[1] and he showed forth
What follows these verses is an elaborate description of an ultimate thunderstorm (Th. 689-712) marked by thunder and lightning (Th. 689-692, 699, 707-708) that brings fire (Th. 692-700) and is conducted by winds (Th. 706-709).[3] The Cyclopes themselves, who had actually made
thunder and lightning for Zeus (Th. 139-141), are characterized by their biê (Th. 146). And here we see at least one interesting point of convergence between the Cyclopes of the Theogony and those of the Odyssey, who in turn are described as "better in biê" than the Phaeacians (biêphi ... pherteroi: vi 6). We should also recall the biê of the man-eating Cyclops Polyphemus (x 200).[4] The main point remains, however, that the cosmic aspect of biê as manifested in the thunderstorm of Zeus is parallel in epic diction to the heroic aspect of biê as manifested in the martial rage of Achilles. The slaughter of the Trojans by Achilles is directly compared to the burning of a city (XXI 520-525) as effected by the mênis 'anger' of the gods (XXI 523). The anger of the gods in general and of Zeus in particular is of course manifested directly in the fire and wind of a thunderstorm inflicted by Zeus, as we have already seen in Hesiod Th. 687-712.[5] Moreover, cosmic fire marks the reentry of Achilles in battle: Athena brings about a phlox 'flame' that burns over the hero's head (XVIII 206), and the Trojans are terrified at the sight of this akamaton pûr 'inexhaustible fire' (XVIII 225). We may compare the phlox of Zeus during his thunderstorm against the Titans (Hesiod Th. 692, 697), and in addition, the phlox and the akamaton pûr of Hephaistos as the fire god stands in for Achilles by combating the element of water itself (XXI 333/349 and 341 respectively). Again I note that the phlegma 'conflagration' of Hephaistos is conducted by the thuella 'gust' of the West and South Winds (XXI 334-337),[6] just as the thunderbolt of Zeus is conducted by anemoi 'winds' (Th. 706-709).
§7. The cosmic and heroic aspects of biê combined bring us now to a striking parallel in Indo- Iranian religion and epic. The parallelism is to be found in the Indo-Iranian storm god Vâyu: his very name means "Wind," and he had once functioned as a god of the Männerbund or warrior society.[1] The parallelism is also to be found in the Indic hero Bhîma, one of the main figures in the epic Mahâbhârata. Begotten of a mortal woman Kuntî by the war god Vâyu himself, Bhîma is the very embodiment of balam 'physical might', who is destined to be "the best among the strong" (MBh. 1.114.8-10).[2] He is, for that matter, not only strong but fast as well, running "with the speed of wind" (e.g., MBh. 1.136.19). He is also decidedly brutal--a quality that occasionally earns the solemn blame of his older brother Yudhis.tô.hira (MBh. 9.58.15 ff.). In one episode (MBh. 3.153), he goes on a rampage of violence (again blamed by Yudhis.tô.hira) that is actually inaugurated by a violent windstorm. Bhîma has a younger brother Arjuna, begotten of Kuntî by the war god Indra. This hero is the embodiment not only of balam 'physical might' as applied to enemies but also of beneficence as applied to friends (MBh. 1.114.23). In this connection, we must note the important discussions of Stig Wikander and Georges Dumézil, who have convincingly shown that the relationship of the five brothers Yudhis.tô.hira, Bhîma û Arjuna, Nakula û Sahadeva, collectively known as the Pânô.dô.ava-s, reflects an ideology so archaic that it is Indo-European in origin.[3] What is of more immediate concern, however, is the specific relationship of the heroes Bhîma and Arjuna, which reflects an ideology that is no longer apparent in the relationship of the gods who fathered them, Vâyu and Indra respectively. By the time that the Mahâbhârata was taking on its present shape, Vâyu had long been obsolescent, while Indra had long ago evolved from a god of war into a far more complex and versatile figure. [4] The contrast between Bhîma and Arjuna in epic, however, remains unaffected--or at least less affected--by the trends of Indic religion. For my own purposes, I note in particular the following details of contrast from among a more extensive list of details assembled by Dumézil:[5]
Bhîma is defiant of military institutions; Arjuna is respectful
Bhîma is a solitary combatant; Arjuna fights in the army
Bhîma tends to fight without armor; Arjuna is equipped with a spectacular array of weaponry.
§8. Each of these thematic contrasts between the two Indic figures evokes a striking parallel within the single figure of Achilles. There is on one hand the Hellenic hero's defiance of military institutions, taking the specific form of his challenge to Agamemnon in Iliad I as well as his rejection of the Embassy in Iliad IX. On the other hand, his treatment of Priam in Iliad XXIV reflects a stance of ultimate military etiquette. Or again, there is his solitary disposition as manifested in his refusal to aid the philoi despite the entreaties of the Embassy. Only after the death of Patroklos, who is to him more philos than anyone else, is Achilles finally reintegrated with the rest of his philoi.[1] Before his reintegration into the Männerbund of his philoi,[2] Achilles is pictured spending his time together with Patroklos in their mutual isolation, as we hear from the retrospective words spoken by the apparition of Patroklos himself:
ou men gar zôoi ge philôn apaneuthen hetairôn boulas hezomenoi bouleusomen
No longer shall you and I, alive, be planning our plans
as we sit far away from the philoi companions [hetaîroi].[3]
Achilles had even expressed the wish that he and Patroklos should be the only Achaeans to survive for the grand event of capturing Troy:
ai gar, Zeu te pater kai Athênaiê kai Apollon, mête tis oun Trôôn thanaton phugoi, hossoi easi, mête tis Argeiôn, nôïn d' ekdumen olethron, ophr' oioi Troiês hiera krêdemna luômen
Father Zeus, Athena, and Apollo! If only
not one of all the Trojans could escape destruction,
nor a single one of the Argives, while you and I emerge from the slaughter, so that we two alone may break Troy's sacred coronal.
Finally, we come to the third contrast. Achilles, like Arjuna, has the most splendid armor, and the lengthy description of his shield in Iliad XVIII (468-608) even entails a distinct narrative form. The tradition that tells of his armor is in fact so strong that the Iliad itself reckons with not one but two occasions when Achilles was given a set of armor made by Hephaistos himself (the later occasion at XVIII 468-613, the earlier at XVII 194-197 and XVIII 82-85).[4] As for the image of an Achilles without armor, I find an interesting attestation in Pindar N.3.43-66, a rare survival from the poetic traditions that had told about the boyhood deeds of Achilles.[5] Here we see the young hero killing lions and boars while armed with nothing but a spear (lines 46-47);[6] in motion he is as fast as the winds (isa t' anemois: line 45), and his speed is such that he even
outruns deer, hunting them down without the aid of hunting dogs or traps (lines 51-52).[7]
§9. Mention of Achilles' wondrous speed brings us back to the theme of biê as manifested by wind. The hero's speed is reflected even by the epithet system that adorns him in epic diction. Achilles is in fact the only hero in the Iliad who is called podarkês 'relying on his feet' (over 20x),[1] podas ôkus 'swift with his feet' (over 30x), and podôkês'swift-footed' (over 20x).[2] Moreover, his windlike speed is a direct function of his biê, as we see from the words directed at Hektor by Athena in disguise:
êthei', ê mala dê se biazetai ôkus Achilleus, astu peri Priamoio posin tacheessi diôkôn
Dear brother, indeed swift Achilles uses biê against you,
as he chases you with swift feet[3] around the city of Priam.
In other heroic traditions as well, biê is manifested in the speed of wind. An ideal example is Îphiklos, who is also called biê + adjective of Îphi-kleês (as at xi 290, 296: biê Iphiklêeiê).[4] This hero's identity, which is the very embodiment of biê and its synonym îs,[5] is determined predominantly by his windlike speed. He is pictured in Hesiod fr. 62MW (quoted by Eustathius 323.42) as racing through a field of grain with such speed that his feet barely touch the tips of the grain stalks. His epithet is podôkês 'swift footed', and he is said to have races with the winds themselves (scholia ad xi 326 and Pap.Soc.Ital. 1173.78-81). He even has a son called Podarkês 'relying on his feet ' (Hesiod fr. 199.5MW).[6]
§10. The verb theô 'run, speed', as we see it applied to the speeding Îphiklos (theen: Hesiod fr. 62.1MW), also applies to speeding ships (I 483, ii 429, etc.) and to speeding horses (X 437, XIX 415, XX 227, 229).[1] In the case of horses, we may be more specific: their speed is by convention compared directly to the speed of wind, by way of the verb theô. At X 437, the horses of Rhesos are "like the winds in speed [theiein]." At XIX 415, Xanthos, the wondrous horse of Achilles, says that they, the hero's horse team, could run [theoimen] as fast as the gust of Zephyros the West Wind, described as the fastest of all. Despite their speed, however, Achilles is fated to die "by îs [iphi], at the hands of a god and a man" (XIX 417). Finally, at XX 227, the wondrous horses fathered by Boreas the North Wind are described as so swift that their feet barely touch the tips of the grain stalks as they race [theon] across fields of grain. Also, at XX 229, their feet barely touch the tips of the waves as they race [theeskon] across the surface of the sea. Needless to say, the parallel with the speeding Iphiklos (Hesiod fr. 62MW) is striking. I lay such emphasis on the associations of the verb theô in Homeric diction because I see an interesting semantic complement in the associations of the adjective derived from theô, thoos 'swift'. As an epithet, thoos applies to Ares the war god himself (V 430, VIII 215, etc.) as well as to occasional warriors (V 571, XV 585, etc.). Moreover, the epithet Arêithoos 'swift with Ares' applies in the plural to aizêoi, an obscure noun designating warriors at VIII 298/XV 315 and hunters at XX
167. We are reminded of the Indo-Iranian war god Vâyu, whose very name means "Wind"; also of the warrior Bhîma, son of Vâyu, who runs with the speed of wind.[2] In the associations of Greek theô and thoos, we find close parallels to these Indo-Iranian themes: the semantic range of
the two words combined conveys a fusion of the elemental and martial functions.[3]
§11. The form Arêithoos recurs as the name of an Arcadian hero in a particularly interesting narrative tradition preserved by the Iliad. The context is set as Nestor is reproaching the Achaeans (neikess''made neîkos': VII 161) because not one of them has yet taken up Hektor's challenge issued to whoever is "best of the Achaeans" (VII 50). The old man wishes that he were young again (VII 132-133), as he was at the time of his youthful exploits during a war between the Pylians and the Arcadians (VII 133-156). The tale of his exploits is concluded with a reiteration by Nestor of his wish that he were as young as he had been at that time:
eith' hôs hêbôoimi, biê de moi empedos eiê
If only I were that young! If only my biê had remained as it was!
The narrative framed by Nestor's wish, which took place in those former days when he still had his full biê, concerns a duel between Nestor and a gigantic Arcadian hero--a duel that the old man is now contrasting with the present prospect of a duel between Hektor and whoever is "best of the Achaeans." The Arcadian hero was Ereutha- liôn, wearing the armor of Arêithoos:
toisi d' Ereuthaliôn promos histato, isotheos phôs, teuche' echôn ômoisin Arêïthooio anaktos,
diou Arêïthoou, ton epiklêsin korunêtên andres kiklêskon kallizônoi te gunaikes,
[140] hounek' ar' ou toxoisi machesketo douri te makrôi, alla sidêreiêi korunêi rhêgnuske phalangas.
ton Lukoorgos epephne dolôi, ou ti krateï ge, steinôpôi en hodôi, hoth' ar' ou korunê hoi olethron chraisme sidêreiê: prin gar Lukoorgos hupophthas
[145] douri meson peronêsen, ho d' huptios oudei ereisthê: teuchea d' exenarixe, ta hoi pore chalkeos Arês.
kai ta men autos epeita phorei meta môlon Arêos: autar epei Lukoorgos eni megaroisin egêra,
dôke d' Ereuthaliôni philôi theraponti phorênai:
[150] tou ho ge teuche' echôn prokalizeto pantas aristous. hoi de mal' etromeon kai edeidisan, oude tis etlê:
all' eme thumos anêke polutlêmôn polemizein tharseï hôi: geneêi de neôtatos eskon hapantôn:
kai machomên hoi egô, dôken de moi euchos Athênê. [155] ton dê mêkiston kai kartiston ktanon andra: pollos gar tis ekeito parêoros entha kai entha.
Their champion stood forth, Ereuthaliôn, a man godlike, wearing upon his shoulders the armor of King Arêithoos, Arêithoos the brilliant, named the Club Bearer[1]
by the men and fair-girdled women of that time,
[140] because he fought not with bow and arrows, nor with a long spear, but with a club coated with iron he smashed the army ranks.
Lukoorgos killed him--with a stratagem, not with kratos--[2]
in a narrow pass, where the iron club could not ward off his destruction, since Lukoorgos anticipated him
[145] by pinning him through the middle with his spear, and he fell down backwards to the ground.
And he stripped off the armor that brazen Ares had given him.
And from then on he wore the armor himself whenever he went to the môlos [struggle] of Ares. But when Lukoorgos was growing old in his halls,
he gave it to Ereuthaliôn to wear, his philos therapôn.
[150] So, wearing his armor [of Areithoos], he [Ereuthalion] was challenging all the best to fight him.
But they were all afraid and trembling: no one undertook to do it.
I was the only one, driven to fight by my thûmos which was ready to undertake much, with all its boldness, even though I was the youngest of them all.
I fought him, and Athena gave me fame.[3]
[155] For I killed the biggest and the best man:[4] he sprawled in his great bulk from here to here.[5]
Within the limits of my present inquiry, I cannot do justice to the many details of this fascinating narrative, and I content myself by citing only those points that are immediately pertinent. Surely the key point is that Arêithoos is an ideal exponent of biê, by virtue of both his name and his primary attribute, the club. The themes of war and swiftness inherent in the name Arêithoos remind us of the warrior Bhîma, who runs "with the speed of wind" (e.g., Mahâbhârata 1.136.19). So also with the theme of the club: Bhîma has the epic reputation, well-known to other warriors, of wielding clubs (e.g., MBh. 1.123.40, 4.32.16, 9.57.43).[6] Aside from the comparative evidence, there is also the internal evidence provided by the context: Arêithoos was actually killed as an exponent of biê, which is to be contrasted with the stratagem of the man who killed him, Lukoorgos.[7] Furthermore, we may suspect that the Arcadian hero who inherited the armor of Arêithoos is also by implication a man of biê, since Nestor's whole narrative here is intended as an illustration of the old man's biê in the days when he was young.
§12. Let us pursue, then, the idea that Ereuthaliôn is a man of biê. From local Arcadian traditions, we learn that the young Nestor gave form to his joy over defeating Ereuthaliôn by doing a dance without taking off his armor (Ariaithos of Tegea FGrH 316.7). As Francis Vian points out,[1] the dance as it is described corresponds to the formal war dance called the purrhikhê.[2] In fact, what Nestor did corresponds to the basic definition of the purrhikhê as we find it in Hesychius (s.v. purrichizein): tên enoplion orchêsin kai suntonon purrichên elegon 'the word for energetic dancing in armor was purrhikhê'.[3] This word is actually derived from purrhos 'fiery red', which in turn is derived from pûr 'fire'.[4] Vian accordingly links the semantics of purrhikhê with the name Ereuthaliôn, which must mean something like "red" (cf.
verb ereuthô 'be red').[5] What could be more appropriate, he asks, than a "red dance" celebrating a "red warrior"?[6] We may go considerably further than this formulation. The fact is that pûr 'fire' is a prime manifestation of biê, on the cosmic level and on the heroic as well.[7] Moreover, the figures of myth who are especially noted for their biê are frequently called by names denoting fire--we are immediately reminded of Purrhos himself, as also of the wanton society of warriors known as the Phleguai.[8] The element phleg- of Phleguai is actually the same root as in phlox 'flame', a word that marks the biê of Achilles in the Iliad.[9] The point is, the concept of purrhikhê is appropriate to the name Purrhos as well as to the adjective purrhos. In fact, there are traditions that derive the name of the dance from the name of the hero. In Archilochus fr. 304W, for example, the purrhikhê gets its name because Purrhos danced it for joy over his defeat of Eurypylos.[10] In another tradition used by Lucian (De saltatione 9), Purrhos not only "invented" the purrhikhê but also captured Troy through the power of this dance.[11] It also bears emphasizing that the dance themes of the purrhikhê seem to be connected with fires at specific occasions, such as the cremation of Patroklos[12] or the holocaust of Troy itself.[13] In sum, the name of the warrior Ereuthaliôn is not motivated by the theme of Nestor's "red dance," nor for that matter is the purrhikhê motivated by the name of Purrhos. Rather, the names of such heroes as Ereuthaliôn and Purrhos are motivated by the theme of martial biê as manifested in the element of fire--and the same goes for the dance purrhikhê. We may even say that the purrhikhê is a dramatization of biê itself. There is in fact an Arcadian festival called the Môleia, which dramatizes a duel between Ereuthaliôn and Lukoorgos (scholia ad Apollonius of Rhodes Argonautica 1.164).[14] In Panhellenic Epos, môlos Arêos is combat, 'the struggle of Ares' (as at VII 147; also at II 401, etc.). In local ritual, the Môleia is a reenactment of such combat. And again, the reenactment amounts to a dramatization of martial biê.[15]
§13. Now that we have surveyed the heroic attributes of wind and fire as conveyed by the themes of Arêithoos and Ereuthaliônrespectively, we are brought back to our central point of interest, the figure of Achilles, whose biê happens to incorporate both of these elemental attributes. So far, the most direct Iliadic example of a traditional parallel between the martial rage of the hero and the thunderstorm of Zeus has been XXI 520-525, where the slaughter of the Trojans by Achilles is being directly compared to the burning of a city by divine agency.[1] But the overt description of divine power as manifested in fire and wind combined is actually to be found elsewhere, as in the Hesiodic description of the ultimate thunderstorm effected by Zeus against the Titans (Th.
687-712).[2] Moreover, an overt description of the hero's power as manifested in fire and wind is also to be found elsewhere. So far, the most striking instance has been the intervention of Hephaistos on the side of Achilles, where the phlegma 'conflagration' of the fire god is being conducted by Zephyros the West Wind and Notos the South Wind (XXI 334-337).[3] Now we may add the scene where Achilles prays to Boreas the North Wind and Zephyros the West Wind to conduct the fires that will cremate Patroklos (XXIII 194-198); without the winds, the funeral pyre will not burn (XXIII 192). As the winds blow, they literally "throw flame," and the word for flame is again phlox (phlog' eballon: XXIII 217).[4]
§14. In the Cremation Scene, the epiphany of the winds Boreas and Zephyros takes the form of a violent storm (XXIII 212-215), described as happening over the pontos 'sea' (XXIII 214).[1] This image, as I will attempt to show in the next several pages, relates directly to the figure of Achilles. We begin with a simile. When the Achaeans and their king Agamemnon are afflicted by penthos 'grief' and akhos 'grief' at IX 3 and 9 respectively, their affliction is directly compared to
a violent storm brought about by the winds Boreas and Zephyros (IX 4-7); again, the storm is described as happening over the pontos 'sea' (IX 4). The akhos/penthos of the Achaeans and the corresponding kratos of the Trojans are of course brought about ultimately by the Will of Zeus, which takes the form of Hektor's onslaught.[2] In the same scene where Diomedes acknowledges that Zeus has given the kratos to the Trojans and not to the Achaeans (XI 317-319),[3] Hektor is actually being compared to a violently blowing wind that stirs up the pontos (XI 297-298). The expression huperaeï isos aellêi 'equal to a violently blowing wind' at XI 297 follows a parallel simile applied to Hektor at XI 295: brotoloigôi isos Arêï 'equal to Ares, the loigos [devastation] of mankind'.[4]
§15. But the immediate loigos 'devastation' afflicting the Achaeans in the Iliad is of course not the winds of the pontos that threaten to destroy their ships, but the fire of Hektor.[1] Significantly, even this fire threatens specifically to destroy the ships of the Achaeans, and this theme is central to the Iliad. The Will of Zeus, to give kratos to the Trojans until the Achaeans give Achilles his proper tîmê 'honor' (I 509-510), is of course what Achilles himself prays for in his mênis 'anger'. The hero's prayer in fact specifically entails that the Trojans should prevail until they reach the ships of the Achaeans (I 408-412, 559, II 3-5, XVIII 74-77). In this light, let us consider the first indication of the algea 'pains' that the mênis of Achilles inflicted on the Achaeans through the Will of Zeus (I 1-5). It happens when the Achaeans first begin to be losers in the absence of Achilles: as Zeus is weighing the fates of the two sides, the Trojans are found to be on the winning and the Achaeans on the losing side (VIII 66-74). Zeus signals the decision with thunder and a selas 'flash' of lightning hurled towards the Achaeans, who are panic stricken (VIII 75-77). As Cedric Whitman remarks, "The lightning flash which dismays the Achaeans is a direct reflex of Achilles' retirement. The action of the god and the inaction of the hero are essentially one."[2] Until now, the most successful Achaean in battle has been Diomedes, and Zeus hurls at him a special thunderbolt with a terrifying phlox 'flame' (VIII 133-135), forcing the hero to retreat and giving him akhos 'grief' (VIII 147). The thunderings of Zeus are a sêma 'signal' of victory for the Trojans (VIII 170-171), and Hektor straightway recognizes that the Will of Zeus entails the
kûdos 'glory' of victory for the Trojans and pêma 'pain' for the Achaeans (VIII 175-176; recalled at XII 235-236, 255-256).
§16. Now we are ready to examine how the Will of Zeus is translated into the fire of Hektor's onslaught against the Achaean ships. Once Zeus sends the flash of his thunderstroke, "lightning carries the day; fire is on the Trojan side, and burns threateningly in the form of watchfires which at the end of Book VIII dot the plain, and burn throughout the succeeding night."[1] By the beginning of Book IX and thereafter, the threat of fire from the Trojan side is consistently formalized in one theme: Hektor will burn the ships of the Achaeans:
• IX 76-77, 241-242, 347, 435-436, 602, 653
• XV 417, 420, 597-598, 600, 702, 718-725, 743-744.[2]
In fact, Hektor already realizes his function as threatening fire against the Achaeans' ships when Zeus signals victory for the Trojans by way of his thunderstroke (VIII 170-171), and the hero actually says then and there to his fellow Trojans:
all' hote ken dê nêusin epi glaphurêisi genômai, mnêmosunê tis epeita puros dêïoio genesthô, hôs puri nêas eniprêsô, kteinô de kai autous
Argeious para nêusin atuzomenous hupo kapnou
But when I get to the hollow ships,
let there be some memory in the future[3] of the burning fire, how I will set the ships on fire and kill
the Argives right by their ships, confounded as they will be by the smoke.
When the fire of Hektor finally reaches the Achaean ships, the Muses are specially invoked for the telling of this vital event (XVI 112-113).[4] Zeus himself has been waiting to see the selas 'flash' of the first ship to be set on fire (XV 599-600), which is to be the signal that his Will has been fulfilled, that the kûdos 'glory' of victory has been taken away from the Achaeans and awarded to the Trojans (XV 592-599). The selas 'flash' that marks the final enactment of Zeus' Will must be compared with the selas 'flash' of his thunderstroke at VIII 76, which had signaled the beginning of the reverses suffered by the Achaeans.[5] Once the fire of Hektor reaches the ships of the Achaeans, the Will of Zeus is complete: the narrative makes it explicit that Zeus will now shift the kûdos 'glory' of victory from the Trojans to the Achaeans (XV 601-602). Even this reversal is expressed in terms of "driving the Trojans away from the ships" (ibid.).
§17. Once the Will of Zeus is complete, the prayer of Achilles in his mênis is thereby fulfilled. The hero's prayer, as we have seen, has the same limit as the Will of Zeus: the Trojans should prevail until they reach the ships of the Achaeans (I 408-412, 559, II 3-5, XVIII 74-77). Thus when Achilles himself sees the fire of Hektor reaching the ships of the Achaeans at XVI 127, he sees in effect the ultimate fulfillment of his mênis. For Zeus, the selas 'flash' of Hektor's fire at XV 600 signals the termination of the Trojan onslaught, which was inaugurated by the selas of his own thunderstroke at VIII 76. For Achilles, the same fire at XVI 122-124, called phlox 'flame' at 123, signals the end of his wish that the Trojans should reach the ships of the Achaeans and the beginning of his concern that their ships should be saved from the fire of Hektor (XVI 127-128). The hero now calls upon his substitute, Patroklos, to avert the fiery threat that his own mênis had originally brought about:
alla kai hôs, Patrokle, neôn apo loigon amunôn empes' epikrateôs, mê dê puros aithomenoio nêas eniprêsôsi, philon d' apo noston helôntai
Even so, Patroklos, ward off the loigos [devastation] from the ships and attack with kratos, lest they [the Trojans] burn
the ships with blazing fire and take away a safe homecoming [nostos].[1]
Patroklos is a savior of the Achaeans by virtue of temporarily averting from their ships the fire of the Trojans:
ek nêôn d' elasen kata d' esbesen aithomenon pur
He drove them [the Trojans] from the ships, and he quenched the blazing fire.
hôs Danaoi nêôn men apôsamenoi dêïon pur
Thus the Danaans, having averted from the ships the burning fire ...
Appropriately, Hektor is called phlogi eikelos Hêphaistoio 'like the phlox [flame] of
Hephaistos' (XVII 88) in the very action where he has killed Patroklos;[2] the word phlox in this expression again implies the thunderstroke of Zeus.[3]
§18. To sum up, the kratos of the Trojans is signaled by the fire of Zeus in a thunderstorm, which is expressed with the same diction that expresses the fire of Hektor's onslaught against the ships of the Achaeans. On the other hand, the kratos of the Trojans is also signaled by the wind of Zeus in a thunderstorm. What is kratos for the Trojans is penthos/akhos for the Achaeans at IX 3/9, which in turn is compared by way of simile to violent winds raging over the pontos 'sea' at IX 4-7.[1] In the same scene where Diomedes acknowledges that Zeus has given the kratos to the Trojans (XI 317-319), Hektor is likened to a violent wind raging over the pontos (XI
297-298).[2] Just like Hektor's fire, these winds signaling kratos are expressed with the same diction that expresses the overall image of a thunderstorm brought by Zeus. As further illustration, I add the following simile describing the Trojans on the offensive:
hoi d' isan argaleôn anemôn atalantoi aellêi,
hê rha th' hupo brontês patros Dios eisi pedonde, thespesiôi d' homadôi hali misgetai, en de te polla kumata paphlazonta poluphloisboio thalassês, kurta phalêrioônta, pro men t' all', autar ep' alla.
And they came, like a gust of the racking winds,
which under the thunderstroke of Father Zeus drives downward and with gigantic clamor hits the sea, and the many
boiling waves along the length of the roaring sea
bend and whiten to foam in ranks, one upon the other.
§19. Since the traditional imagery that marks Hektor's onslaught as the ultimate bane of the Achaeans is appropriate to either the fire or the wind of a thunderstorm, Hektor is presented as a hero who is either "like fire" or "like wind" in Homeric diction. But there is an obvious difference in the Iliadic treatment of these two images. Whereas the threat of fire to the Achaean ships is both figurative and real, the threat of wind is only figurative, conveyed by similes. For the Iliad, Hektor's fire is real, even though it is expressed with imagery that suits the celestial fire of thundering Zeus; the threat of the god's winds, however, is real only as a general condition that can be expected to affect the Achaeans as a seafaring society. Still, the point remains that the most direct threat to the Achaeans, on land as well as sea, is the destruction of their ships--expressed in images most appropriate to a thunderstorm of Zeus. On the land, Achilles had it in his power both to bring the ships to the brink of fiery destruction by way of his mênis and then to rescue them from the fire by way of his surrogate Patroklos. On the sea, we may then ask, does Achilles have a power over winds that matches this power that he has over fire when he is on the land?
§20. Since the Iliad treats the onslaught of the Trojans as wind only by way of simile, we should expect the same mode of expression for any Iliadic treatment of the theme for which we are searching: how Achilles has the power to rescue the Achaean ships from the winds. I submit that I have found this theme in the simile deployed at the very moment Achilles has just put on the new armor made by Hephaistos. As the hero takes hold of his magnificent shield, it gives off a selas 'flash' described as follows:
tou d' apaneuthe selas genet' êüte mênês.
hôs d' hot' an ek pontoio selas nautêisi phanêêi kaiomenoio puros, to te kaietai hupsoth' oresphi stathmôi en oiopolôi: tous d' ouk ethelontas aellai ponton ep' ichthuoenta philôn apaneuthe pherousin:
hôs ap' Achillêos sakeos selas aither' hikane kalou daidaleou
From it [the shield] there was a selas [flash] from far away, as from the moon, or as when from out of the pontos [sea] a selas [flash] appears to sailors,
a flash of blazing fire, and it blazes up above in the mountains,
at a solitary station, while they [the sailors] are being carried along against their will by winds over the fishy pontos, far away from their philoi. So also the selas from the beautiful and well- wrought shield of Achilles shot up into the aether.
Previously, we have seen the selas 'flash' of fire as a signal of destruction for the Achaean ships (VIII 76, XV 600);[1] here, on the other hand, it is a signal of salvation from the winds. The winds threaten the isolation of the sailors from their philoi, while the fire promises reintegration with them. Yet, ironically, the fire of reintegration is itself isolated and remote, much as the hero who is himself signaled by its flame.[2] The fire at the solitary station overlooking the pontos shoots up into the ethereal realms (XIX 379), and the transcendence of this earthly fire marking
Achilles is matched by a multiple comparison with celestial fire: the light from the hero's shield is compared both to this earthly fire and to the light of the moon as well. Moreover, the light from his helmet is then likened to that of a star (XIX 381-383). And finally, the sight of Achilles fully armed is compared to the sun itself (XIX 397-398). At this moment, of course, Achilles is about to enter his war in the Iliad. Not only in simile but in reality as well, Achilles is emerging as savior of the Achaeans.
§21. For the moment, however, let us restrict our vision to the inner world of the simile, where the fire that is compared to Achilles is pictured as rescuing sailors from the winds that blow over the pontos 'sea'. I draw attention in particular to the word pontos, which serves as the setting for the dangerous winds in our simile. We have in fact already seen pontos as the setting for the winds that are compared to Hektor's onslaught, which in turn is endangering specifically the Achaean ships (IX 4-7, XI 297-298).[1] The theme of danger is actually inherent in pontos. From a comparative study of words that are cognate with pontos in other Indo-European languages, most notably Indic pánthâhô. 'path' and Latin pôns 'bridge', Émile Benveniste found that the basic meaning of the word is 'crossing, transition', with an underlying implication that the actual act of crossing is at the same time marked by danger.[2] The semantic aspect of crossing is inherent in the place name Hellês-pontos 'Crossing of Hellê',[3] a compound recalling the myth that told how Phrixos and Hellê crossed the Hellespont by riding on the Ram with the Golden Fleece. The aspect of danger is likewise inherent in the myth itself. During their crossing, Helle drowns, while Phrixos is saved (cf. Apollodorus 1.9.1).[4] The contrasting themes of danger and salvation here are reflected formally in the words of Pindar: Phrixos was "rescued out of the pontos" by way of the Golden Fleece (ek pontou saôthê: P.4.161). Even the epithet system of pontos in epic diction reflects the word's dangerous aspect. Let us consider the qualifier ikhthuoeis 'fishy, fish-swarming' as applied to pontos at XIX 378 (also IX 4!)[5] and to Hellêspontos at IX 360. The application of this epithet is motivated not so much by a fanciful striving for picturesque visualizations of the sea, but rather by the sinister implication of dangers lurking beneath a traveling ship. As we survey the collocations of pontos with the plain noun for "fish," ikhthûs, the ghastly themes of danger become overt:
ê ton g' en pontôi phagon ichthues ...
... or the fish devoured him in the pontos
êe pou en pontôi phagon ichthues ...
... or perhaps the fish devoured him in the pontos[6]
§22. We come back to the image of a fire on high that flashes salvation for sailors bedeviled by violent winds as they make their way over the pontos (XIX 374-380). It remains to ask whether there are any other instances, besides the simile of XIX 374-380, where the figure of Achilles is directly associated with such an image. The answer is yes, with an added detail that is not without interest. The flash of salvation for sailors may emanate from the tomb of Achilles himself, situated on a headland overlooking the Hellespont:
amph' autoisi d' epeita megan kai amumona tumbon cheuamen Argeiôn hieros stratos aichmêtaôn
aktêi epi prouchousêi, epi platei Hellêspontôi, hôs ken têlephanês ek pontophin andrasin eiê tois hoi nun gegaasi kai hoi metopisthen esontai
Over their bodies [of Achilles and Patroklos] we the sacred army of Argive spearmen piled up a huge and perfect tomb,
on a jutting headland, by the wide Hellêspontos,
so that it may be bright from afar for men coming from the pontos
both those who are now and those who will be in the future.
xxiv 80-84 The preoccupation with future generations who will sail the Hellespont is also apparent in the words of Achilles himself, as he lays down instructions for the building of his tomb:
tumbon d' ou mala pollon egô poneesthai anôga, all' epieikea toion: epeita de kai ton Achaioi eurun th' hupsêlon te tithêmenai, hoi ken emeio deuteroi en nêessi poluklêïsi lipêsthe
And I bid you to build a tomb,[1] not a very big one,
only a beautiful one. Later [when Achilles dies and is enshrined with Patroklos], you Achaeans will make it wide and tall--you who will be left behind me in your many-benched ships.
The Achaeans of the future who survive Achilles are "Achaeans in ships." The tomb of Achilles maintains its impact on future generations even in the warped vision of Hektor, who fancies himself as the man who will kill the one who is "best of the Achaeans":[2]
ton de nekun epi nêas eüsselmous apodôsô, ophra he tarchusôsi karê komoôntes Achaioi, sêma te hoi cheuôsin epi platei Ellêspontôi. kai pote tis eipêisi kai opsigonôn anthrôpôn,
nêï poluklêïdi pleôn epi oinopa ponton: 'andros men tode sêma palai katatethnêôtos,
hon pot' aristeuonta katektane phaidimos Hektôr.' hôs pote tis ereei: to d' emon kleos ou pot' oleitai.
And I will return his corpse to where the well-benched ships are, so that the long-haired Achaeans may give him a proper funeral
and pile up a tomb for him by the wide Hellêspontos. And some day someone from a future generation will say
as he is sailing on a many-benched ship over the wine-dark pontos: "This is the tomb of a man who died a long time ago.
He was performing his aristeiâ when illustrious Hektor killed him." That is what someone will say, and my kleos shall never perish.
Having long ago considered the irony of Hektor's words,[3] we are concerned now only with the vision of Achilles' tomb. The insistent references, here and in the other passages, to a future time beyond the narrative--a time when men will still contemplate the hero's tomb--reveal Achilles as not so much a hero of epic but rather a hero of cult. The future of the narrative is the here-and- now of the Homeric audience, and to them the tomb of Achilles is a matter of religion, reflecting this era's marked preoccupation with hero cults.[4] We recall Iliad XII 2-33, that other isolated instance where the perspective of the narrative switches from the heroic past to the here-and-now of the Homeric audience.[5] There too, the Achaean warriors who fell at Troy are suddenly perceived not as heroes of epic, hêrôes, but as heroes of cult, hêmitheoi (XII 23).[6]
§23. With his tomb overlooking the Hellespont, Achilles manifests the religious aspects of his essence as hero even within the epic framework of the Iliad and Odyssey. His cosmic affinity with fire and with the winds that blow violently over the pontos is appropriate to his being the Hero of the Hellespont, whose tomb flashes a light from afar to sailors who pass through it (xxiv 83)[1] --and we may compare again the light that is their very salvation from the violent winds of the pontos (XIX 375-378).[2] Achilles is needed because the danger is there--not only in the semantics of pontos but also in the reality of the Hellêspontos. The sailing conditions that prevail at the Hellespont have always been most difficult, and I merely cite the following report from our own time:[3]
It is probably not too much to say that on three days out of four during the sailing season what a landsman would describe as a tearing north-easter is blowing during a good part of the day right down the channel.But this is not all. A ship has not only this headwind on its sails to fight with; it has the opposing current under its keel, at least whenever it is in mid channel. The surplus of the enormous masses of fresh water poured into the Black Sea over the evaporation from its surface is enough to cause a stream; and when this is reinforced by the wind, it becomes a very serious matter for a sailing ship.
§24. The Hellespont, then, is a focal point for the heroic essence of Achilles: Homeric poetry presents his tomb as overlooking its dangerous waters, the setting for violent storms expressed by the same imagery that expresses the hero's cosmic affinity with fire and wind. Moreover, epic
diction presents this fire and wind as primarily endangering the ships of the Achaeans, which are conventionally described as being beached on the Hellespont (XV 233, XVII 432, XVIII 150, XXIII 2). In other words, the Hellespont is also a focal point for the heroic essence of all the Achaeans who came to fight at Troy. Moreover, Troy itself and the Hellespont are presented in epic diction as parallel markers of the place where the Trojan War took place (XII 30, XXIV 346). It is by sailing down the Hellêsponton ... ichthuoenta 'fish-swarming Hellespont' that Achilles could have left Troy and come back home safely to Phthia (IX 359-363).[1] In fact, from the standpoint of a Homeric audience in the eighth or seventh centuries B.C., the site of the Trojan War is significant not so much because of Troy itself but because of the Hellespont, passage to the Black Sea.[2] And the prime affinity of Achilles with the Hellespont and the realms to which it leads will survive for centuries, well beyond the classical period. From inscriptions found in the Black Sea area, we know that Achilles still presides over the pontos even as late as the second/ third centuries A.D.: he is in fact still worshiped as the Pontarkhês 'Ruler of the Pontos'.[3]
§25. The cosmic affinity of Achilles with the pontos in general and with the Hellêspontos in particular is of course inherited from his mother Thetis. We are reminded of the initial Iliadic scene where the solitary figure of a weeping Achilles is pictured gazing out toward the pontos (I 350),[1] actually praying to the divine Thetis (I 351-356). The goddess then makes an epiphany that is characteristic of a true Nereid, emerging from the sea like a cloud of mist (I 357-359). Of course, Thetis was actually born in the pontos (Hesiod Th. 241/244), the granddaughter of Pontos incarnate (Th. 233). In Pindar's Isthmian 8, a poem that tells how she would have given birth to a son greater than his father if Zeus or Poseidon had mated with her (lines 31-35), she is actually called pontian theon 'goddess of the pontos' (line 34). To avoid the danger that the essence of Thetis poses to the cosmic order, the gods get her married off to the mortal Peleus (lines 35-40).[2] And the son that issues from this marriage of Peleus and Thetis grows up to fulfill a function that is latent in the very word pontos:
gephurôse t' Atreïdai- si noston
... and he [Achilles] bridged a safe homecoming for the sons of Atreus.
In other words: by dint of his exploits at Troy (I.8.51-55), Achilles made it possible for the leaders of the Achaeans to traverse the sea and go back home. The semantics of "bridge" here correspond to the semantics of Latin pôns, cognate of Greek pontos.[3]
§26. The cosmic powers of Thetis over the pontos are evident from local traditions connected with her actual cult. Perhaps the most striking example is in Herodotus 7.188-192, the account of a shipwreck suffered by the Persian fleet off the coast of Magnesia. The precise location of the shipwreck was an aktê 'headland' called Sêpias (after sêpiâ 'sepia, cuttlefish')--given that name, says Herodotus, because local tradition had it that Thetis was abducted by Peleus at this spot (192). Moreover, the storm that wrecked the ships of the Persians took the form of a violent wind that the local Hellenic population called the Hellêspontiês (188). We are reminded that the tomb
of Achilles was on an aktê 'headland' at the Hellêspontos (xxiv 82)![1] After the storm has raged for three days, the Magi of the Persians sing incantations to the wind and sacrifice to Thetis, having been informed by the natives of the lore connecting the name Sêpias with her and the other Nereids (Herodotus 7.191).
§27. The place Sêpias is connected with Thetis not only because Peleus abducted her from there. In a story that was probably incorporated in the epic Cypria, the polymorphous Thetis actually assumes the shape of a sêpiâ 'sepia, cuttlefish' at the very moment when Peleus mates with her (scholia ad Lycophron 2.175, 178).[1] This identification is most significant in view of the sepia's function as animal of mêtis in Greek lore (e.g., sêpiê dolomêtis in Oppian Halieutica 2.120).[2] As Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant have argued most convincingly, Thetis herself is a figure of mêtis.[3] To go into this topic now would be to stray far beyond my line of inquiry, which has been confined mainly to the biê of Achilles and its cosmic affinities. Suffice it to say that the mêtis of Thetis also relates to the pontos. It is a key to the fundamentals of navigation, as embodied in the orienting principles of Poros 'charted path [over the sea]' and Tekmôr 'goal', which are opposed to the disorienting principle of Skotos 'darkness'. These personifications of opposing themes stem from the local cosmogonic traditions of Laconia as preserved in the poetry of Alcman, fr. 2P. From this same fragment, we also know that the opposing figures of Poros/ Tekmôr vs. Skotos are presented as fundamental cosmic principles that are transcended by one all-encompassing figure, who is none other than the goddess Thetis![4] I will simply refer to Detienne and Vernant for a discussion of the rich mythology surrounding these related themes of navigation, orientation, and cosmogony,[5] confining myself here to one point: in local traditions such as the Laconian, Thetis figures as a primordial goddess with the most fundamental cosmic powers, and her primacy is reflected by the utmost reverence that is her due in cult (consider the Laconian practices mentioned by Pausanias 3.14.4).[6]
§28. My point is that Thetis must by nature also transcend the concept of Achilles, a son who is after all a mere "demigod," hêmitheos. Her power over the pontos entails the principle of mêtis, whereas his power has affinities only with the biê of wind and fire.[1] And yet, the heroic irony is that Achilles as son of Thetis could actually be more powerful than Zeus himself, if only he had been fathered by the god instead of a mortal (Pindar I.8.31-35). We have indeed seen that the mênis of Achilles creates effects that are parallel to those created by the biê of Zeus in a thunderstorm, and that these effects are actually validated by the Will of Zeus. In this sense, Zeus himself is validating the divine potential of the mortal Achilles. Moreover, the theme of the hero's divine potential is actually conjured up by the manner in which the Will of Zeus goes into effect in the Iliad. The wind- and firelike devastation from the mênis of Achilles is willed by Zeus because Thetis asks for it (I 407-412, 503-510). Moreover, the validation of the hero's essence in the Iliad is in return for what Thetis had done for Zeus, when she rescued him from imprisonment by his fellow Olympians (I 396-406). Here we see a vital link with the theme of the hero's divine potential. Thetis rescued Zeus by summoning Briareôs the Hundred-Hander, who then frightened the Olympian rebels away from ever endangering Zeus again (I 401-406). In this context, the Hundred-Hander is specifically described as biên hou patros ameinôn 'better in biê than his
father' (I 404). The theme is strikingly parallel to what would have been if Zeus or Poseidon had mated with Thetis.
§29. The figure of Briareôs, also called Aigaiôn (I 404), is a sort of nightmarish variant of Achilles himself. In the Hesiodic tradition, Briareôs/Obriareôs[1] is likewise one of the
Hundred-Handers (Hesiod Th. 147-153). These figures are equal to the Titans themselves in biê (Th. 677-678), and they use their biê to defeat the Titans (Th. 649-650), thus ensuring the kratos of Zeus (Th. 662).[2] Their action in defeating the Titans (Th. 674-686, 713-719) is in fact a correlate of the victorious action taken by Zeus himself with the biê of a cosmic thunderstorm (Th. 687-712).[3] In other traditions, Aigaiôn is likewise a figure who fights against the Titans (Titanomachy fr. 2 p. 110 Allen); moreover, he lives in the sea and was actually fathered by Pontos (ibid.). On the other hand, still another tradition has Briareôs fathered by Poseidon himself (scholia ad Iliad I 404).[4] These variant figures Briareôs and Aigaiôn,[5] synthesized as one figure in Iliad I 403-404, conjure up the Iliadic theme of Achilles. He too is an exponent of biê; he too has strong affinities with the pontos. Here is a hero who would have been better than Poseidon--better than Zeus himself--if either had fathered him. Just as the divine essence of Zeus was validated by the biê of Briareôs/Aigaiôn, so also the god will now validate in return the heroic essence of Achilles in the Iliad. The biê of the Hundred-Hander is an antecedent for the biê that will mark Achilles. The hero cannot be the best of the gods, but he will be the best of heroes. And in the poetry that all Hellenes must recognize, he will be the best of the Achaeans.
Notes
§1n1. Ch.19§§3-4.
§1n3. Ibid.
§2n1. For a survey of other such periphrastic naming constructs: Schmitt 1967.109- 111. On îs
as a synonym of biê: Ch.5§37 and Ch.12§9n4.
§2n2. There is also an attestation of biê + genitive of Hêra-kleês at XVIII 117; also at Hesiod fr. 1.22MW. Periphrases combining a noun with the genitive of a name are less archaic than those combining a noun with the adjective of a name: Schmitt, p. 110n670. In this light, the preponderance of biê + adjective of Hêra-kleês over biê + genitive of Hêra-kleês is itself significant.
§2n4. On the semantics of this name: Ch.7§16n3, Ch.12§7n3, Ch.14§12n3.
§2n5. The element îphi- is the instrumental of îs, a synonym of biê (cf. n1). For a similar pleonasm in a naming construct, consider Hesiod Th. 332: îs + genitive of biê + adjective of Hêra-kleês (is ... biês Hêraklêeiês).
§2n6. This construct is less archaic not only because of the genitive (n2) but also because the compound name Patro-kleês is truncated to Patroklos in these combinations (Patrokloio biên); see Ch.6§12 and n1.
§4n2. On these themes see Segal 1971 and Redfield 1975.
§4n4. Ibid. Note that the contrast of biê and dikê in Hesiod W&D 275 is illustrated with the behavior of beasts: since they do not have dikê (W&D 278), they devour each other (W&D 276-278).
§4n5. On the theme of orientation as it relates to mêtis: §27.
§4n6. On phrazomai as the verb of mêtis: Ch.3§5n4, §7n2.
§4n7. Like the Cyclops, Antiphates too is a cannibal: x 116, 124. Ironically, Odysseus had defeated the Cyclops by way of mêtis (ix 414, 422). Note also the word play of mê tis 'no one' in ei ... mê tis se biazetai 'if no one uses biê against you' at ix 410 (cf. also ix 405, 406): mê tis conjures up mêtis!
§4n8. Besides the application of megalêtor- 'great-hearted' to a wide range of warriors in both the Iliad and the Odyssey, we may note in particular the combination of this epithet with Phlegues at XIII 302 and with the thûmos of Achilles as at IX 629 (on which see Ch.7§22). It is this same thûmos that tempts the hero to eat Hektor raw (XXII 346-347).
§5n3. Note also Xanthoio ... menos 'the menos of Xanthos' at XXI 383. The noun menos, which like biê and îs is used to designate the power of heroes as well as to name heroes in periphrastic constructs, also designates the power of the rivers (XII 18), of the winds (xix 440), of fire (VI 182), of the sun itself (XXIII 190). See Nagy 1974.268-269.
§5n4. The verb memonen 'is in a rage' is from the same root *men- that yields mênis, a word applied in the Iliad to the anger of gods and to the anger of Achilles--exclusively among heroes (Ch.5§8n2). Note that menos can designate 'rage, anger' as well as 'might, power' (ibid.).
§6n1. On menos as 'might, power' and as 'rage, anger': §5nn3,4.
§6n2. Overall as well, the war between the Titans and the Olympians is settled "by biê" (biêphi: Th. 882). In fact, the cosmic régime of Zeus and his Olympians is maintained by Kratos and Biê personified (Th. 385-401). On the other hand, Zeus had originally achieved his cosmic supremacy
by using both biê 'might' and tekhnai 'artifice' (Th. 496) against his father Kronos.
§6n3. Cf. the thunderstorm of Zeus at xii 403-426. I draw special attention to the thuella 'gust' of wind at xii 409; elsewhere, thuellai are described as conduits of fire (xii 68). Discussion at Ch. 10§41n4.
§6n5. Cf. again the thunderstorm at xii 403-426; in this case, the collective anger of the gods (cf. xii 349) is initiated by Helios (xii 348-349, 376, 377-383) and executed by Zeus (xii 387-388). On occasion, water rather than fire is the predominant manifestation of a thunderstorm inflicted by Zeus: cf. XVI 383-393.
§6n6. Cf. n3.
§7n1. For a basic work on the Indo-Iranian figure Vâyu: Wikander 1941. On the Indo-Iranian forms of Männerbund: Wikander 1938; for the broader standpoint of the Indo-European peoples in general: Dumézil 1969b.
§7n2. Cf. Dumézil 1968.63-64. My citations from the Mahâbhârata follow the numbering of the critical (Poona) edition.
§7n3. Wikander 1947, Dumézil 1968 part I.
§7n4. There are still traces of an archaic relationship between Vâyu and Indra in the oldest body of Indic literature: see Rig-Veda 1.139.1-2, 2.41.1-3, and the commentary by Dumézil, p. 51 (cf. also his p. 58n2).
§7n5. Dumézil, pp. 63-65.
§8n1. Ch.6§§12-22.
§8n2. On the philoi as a Männerbund: Ch.5§27.
§8n3. Compare the wording that describes the isolation of the Cyclops at ix 188-189.
§8n5. In the poet's own words: legomenon de touto proterôn / epos echô 'I have this epos as spoken of those that came before' (Pindar N.3.52-53). To defend my translation "of" (instead of "by"), I cite the discussion by Schmitt 1967.93-95. (I admit, however, that my interpretation may be undermined by an apparent parallel in Pindar P.3.80; thanks to Mark Griffith.) Compare also the introduction to a tale about another hunter, Meleager, at IX 524-525 (Ch.6§12). The stories about the boyhood of Achilles may be compared with parallel traditions as attested in the Irish evidence; I cite the Boyhood Deeds of CúChulainn and the Boyhood Deeds of Finn, with translations conveniently available in Cross and Slover 1936.137-152, 360-369. Cf. J. Nagy 1978.
§8n6. It is tempting to identify this spear with the meliê that Achilles inherited from his father Peleus (Ch.9§12). From Pindar's words we also hear that Peleus himself, when he was still in his prime, had captured Iolkos "alone, without an army" (monos aneu stratias: N.3.34).
§8n7. On the theme of the hunter in general: Vidal-Naquet 1968(b). On the manner in which Achilles eats his game: Ch.7§22n5. Even within the span of this boyhood narrative, the theme of eventually taming the savage disposition of Achilles is replayed: the Centaur Cheiron is responsible for the upbringing of the young hero, and as such he is described as "augmenting his thûmos [of Achilles] in all things that are fitting" (en armenoisi pasi thumon auxôn: Pindar N. 3.58). On the savage thûmos of Achilles as replayed in the Iliad, see Ch.7§22 (compare Bhîma, who himself commits cannibalism: Mahâbhârata 8.61.5 ff., anticipated at 2.61.44-46). Cheiron, by contrast, is "the Centaur who has the most dikê" (dikaiotatos Kentaurôn: XI 832).
§9n1. On the meaning: Chantraine I 109-110.
§9n2. There is one exception, in the Doloneia, where Dolon is called podôkês (X 316). I do not count the instances in the plural, where podôkes is a conventional epithet for swift horses (e.g., II 764) and for their charioteers (XXIII 262).
§9n3. Cf. XXI 564, XXII 173. It is also "with swift feet" that Achilles routs Aeneas from Mount Ida (XX 189) and confronts the god Apollo himself (XXII 8). Cf. also XXI 265, where Achilles is described as podarkês as he stands up against the river god Xanthos and matches "biê against biê" (enantibion: XXI 266).
§9n6. In view of such pervasive associations between the themes of windspeed and îs/biê in epic diction, I am inclined to reconsider the standard etymology offered for Îris: root *uî- 'bend' (e.g., Chantraine II 468-469). Instead, I propose the root *uî- as in îs 'force, might', and I defend this alternative by adducing the traditional epithet system of Iris, which consistently dwells on the theme of windspeed: podênemos 'having feet of wind' (exclusive to her, in Iliad 10x), podas ôkea 'swift with her feet' (exclusive to her, in Iliad 9x), aellopos 'having feet of wind' (exclusive to her, in Iliad 3x). The îris is a 'rainbow' at XVII 547 insomuch as it functions as a teras 'foreboding sign' either of war (XVII 548) or of a storm (XVII 549)--precisely the two themes associated with îs!
§10n1. Achilles is compared to such a speeding horse at XXII 21-24 (theêisi at 23). When Achilles is chasing Hektor, the verb theô applies to both (theon: XXII 161).
§10n3. In this connection, we should note that the feminine plural of thoos serves as the ubiquitous epithet for the ships of the Achaeans (I 12, 371, etc.), which of course have a distinctly martial function in the Iliad. We recall that the Battle of the Ships was a loigos 'devastation' for the Achaeans, who were to be rescued from Hektor's onslaught by Achilles/Patroklos (Ch.
5§§10-12). What bears emphasizing is that the Achaeans were rescued because their ships were
rescued from Hektor's fire (cf. XVI 80-82; further discussion at §§15-20). In this sense, Achilles (/Patroklos) is savior of the Achaeans by being the guardian of their ships (discussion at §20).
§11n1. Here the poetry itself is actually referring to an epithet as an epithet; then it follows up by explaining why the epithet is appropriate. The same epithet korunêtês 'club-bearer' is applied to Areithoos at VII 9; if we had only the latter attestation, we would never know that the epithet is directly pertinent to the story of this hero.
§11n2. The kratos 'superior power' of a warrior takes the form of biê 'might': Ch.5§37. In other words, a warrior may have biê and still lose without the kratos that only Zeus and the Olympians can grant. In this case, Areithoos implicitly has biê but has failed to get kratos from the gods. On the other hand, Lykoorgos wins by using stratagem rather than the might of biê. Still, he wins without kratos, which is properly a requisite of biê. (Even the cosmic regime of the Olympians is actually maintained by the combination of Kratos and Biêpersonified: Hesiod Th. 385-401.) The implicit biê of Areithoos is in direct contrast with the stratagem of Lykoorgos.
§11n3. On eûkhos as 'fame': Muellner 1976.110-112.
§11n4. That is, "the man with the most kratos" (kartiston).
§11n5. Surely the phrasing here calls for an accompanying gesture by the performer.
§11n6. On the context of MBh. 4.32.16, see Dumézil 1968.90,92; cf. also his p. 63. In one episode (MBh. 3.157.68), Bhîma's club is compared to Indra's bolt, released with the speed of wind.
§11n7. For further traces of Areithoos and Lykoorgos in Arcadian lore, see Pausanias 8.4.10, 8.11.4.
§12n1. Vian 1952.242-243.
§12n2. For collections of testimonia on the purrhikhê and related dances: Latte 1913.27-63 and Prudhommeau 1965.300-312; also Vian, pp. 249-250. One thing that emerges from Vian's documentation is the association of the purrhikhê with the kômos; the institution of the kômos, as we have seen, is in turn a partial heir to the ideologies of the lâos (Ch.12§§20-21).
§12n3. Cf. also Hephaestion 213.10 Consbruch. On poetry that can be sung to the accompaniment of the purrhikhê: Severyns 1938 II 176.
§12n4. Chantraine III 959-960.
§12n5. Vian, p. 242; on the formal relationship of Ereuthaliôn and ereuthô: Chantraine II 369.
§12n6. Vian, p. 242. Cf. Latte 1913.27-29, who argues that the "red dance" is motivated by the red garb traditionally worn by warriors in war (cf. Aristotle fr. 542 Rose on the martial phoinikis 'red cape' of the Lacedaemonians).
§12n10. Preserved in Hesychius s.v. purrichizein, in the same article that commenced with the basic definition of the word. For further testimonia relating to Archilochus fr. 304, see the scholia to Pindar P.2.127, the scholia (T) to Iliad XVI 617 (= Eustathius 1078.23), and Etymologicum Magnum 699.1. Cf. Latte, p. 30.
§12n11. Cf. also Eustathius 1697.1-6 ad Odyssey xi 505 and the scholia (B) to Hephaestion
299.1 Consbruch, where we hear that the purrhikhê originated when Purrhos leapt out of the Trojan Horse. On the alternative tradition that Achilles "invented" the purrhikhê: Aristotle fr. 519 Rose. On the Trôikon pêdêma 'Trojan Leap' as a dance form that apparently served to signal the Capture of Troy, see the scholia to Euripides Andromache 1139 and to Lycophron 245-246: as Achilles leapt off his ship, he hit the ground with such biâ 'force' that he caused a spring to gush forth, which was named Trôikon pêdêma (cf. Antimachus fr. 84 Wyss). On the Trôikon pêdêma of Pyrrhos himself at the hour of his death at Delphi, see Euripides Andromache
1139-1140. In the same context (verse 1135), the offensive and defensive maneuvers of Purrhos are actually designated as purrhikhai. On the offensive and defensive motions of the purrhikhê: Plato Laws 815a. As Borthwick 1967 argues cogently, the death dance of Pyrrhos at Delphi reenacts his own Trôikon pêdêma when he captured Troy. Cf. Pindar Paean 6.114-115, where Pyrrhos is described as e[p/en]thoronta 'leaping upon' the very altar of Priam in order to kill the old king.
§12n12. Aristotle fr. 519 Rose (see Ch.6§30n3).
§12n13. See again n11.
§12n14. Since we have only one source for this information, we cannot know for sure whether we are dealing here with a mistake, in that the duel in the Iliad is between Areithoos and Lykoorgos. On the other hand, we may be dealing with a genuine variant. Discussion by Vian, pp. 242-243n8. In either case, the essential thing is the ritualization itself.
§12n15. I would expect the reenactment of the môlos 'struggle' to take primarily the form of a dance, with a mîmêsis of the maneuvers taken by Lykoorgos against the hero of biê. Compare the epic narrative of these maneuvers at VII 142-145 with the dancelike description of a wolf's movements in Pindar P.2.83-85. Discussion at Ch.12§21. In terms of "drama," the fate of Ereuthalion/Areithoos is of course "tragic"; as for the môlos 'struggle' between Odysseus and Îros at Odyssey xviii 233, the fate of the loser, this mock hero of biê, is of course "comic." On Îros and the theme of biê ridiculed: Ch.12§9n4.
§14n1. The winds then move inland, approaching the pyre of Patroklos (XXIII 215-216). When their work is done, they take their leave the same way as when they arrived--over the pontos (XXIII 230).
§14n4. On the parallelism of Ares and the winds: §10.
§15n2. Whitman 1958.133-134.
§16n1. Whitman, p. 135.
§16n2. Cf. Whitman, ibid.
§16n3. This expression indicates a poetic recording of an epic event for audiences of the future:
§17n2. He is also phlogi eikelon 'like a flame' at XIII 688.
§18n2. Ibid.
§20n2. Just as the fire is apaneuthe 'far away' at XIX 374 and the sailors are philôn apaneuthe 'far away from their philoi' at XIX 378, so also Achilles and Patroklos are described as philôn apaneuthen hetairôn 'far away from their philoi companions [hetaîroi]' at XXIII 77; discussion at
§8.
§21n2. Benveniste 1966 [= 1954] 296-298.
§21n3. Benveniste, p. 298.
§21n4. On the name Phrixos, see Radermacher 1943.312. I would also adduce VII 63-64, describing the phrix 'shudder' brought down on the pontos by Zephyros the West Wind as it begins to blow violently, "and the pontos becomes black from it [the phrix]."
§21n5. On the context of IX 4, see again §§14, 18.
§21n6. Cf. Householder/Nagy 1972.768.
§22n1. The tumbos 'tomb', also called sêma 'marker' at XXIII 257, is to be located ep' aktês 'on a headland': XXIII 125. Note the parallel with xxiv 82: aktêi epi prouchousêi 'on a jutting headland'.
§22n3. Ibid.
§22n4. Ch.6§§28-30. The narrative of the Iliad leaves it open, however, whether the Tomb of Achilles is man-made or a natural formation: Ch.9§16n1.
§22n5. Ch.9§§15-16.
§22n6. Ibid. Whereas Thetis calls Achilles exochon hêrôôn 'best of hêrôes' in the diction of Panhellenic Epos (XVIII 56), he is called 'best of hemitheoi' in the diction of the local lyric of Lesbos (Alcaeus 42.13LP: aimitheôn [ ... ], where the word for 'best' is lost in a lacuna).
§23n3. Leaf 1912.358-359.
§24n1. The theme that Achilles would reach home "on the third day" (IX 363) may be connected with the controversial expression tritaion anemon in Pindar N.7.17, which has been variously explained as "third-day's wind" or "third wind." For an introduction to the controversy: Lloyd- Jones 1973.130.
§24n2. On the penetration of the Black Sea in the eighth/seventh centuries B.C.: Drews 1976.
§24n3. For documentation, see Fontenrose 1960.256n37, who also points out that Farnell's 1921 book on Greek hero cults fails to take this epithet into account, even at p. 409n69. For more on Achilles as Pontarkhês: Pfister 1909.536-537 and Diehl 1953.
§25n1. Of course the pontos here is the Hellêspontos.
§25n2. Cf. Iliad XVIII 429-434.
§25n3. On Latin pôns and Greek pontos, see again Benveniste 1966 [= 1954] 296-298.
§26n1. Cf. also §22n1.
§27n1. Detienne/Vernant 1974.159(n129).
§27n2. For a wealth of further documentation: Detienne/Vernant, pp. 160-164.
§27n3. Detienne/Vernant, pp. 127-164; their argument is well worth reading in its entirety.
§27n4. For a detailed treatment: West 1963, 1967; Detienne/Vernant, pp. 134-138.
§27n5. Detienne/Vernant, pp. 127-164. Cf. also Penwill 1974; much as I admire this article, I disagree with its interpretation of Poros and with its separating of Thetis from *thétis 'creation'.
§27n6. Divine figures with local traits that resist Panhellenic systematization tend to be non- Olympian, no matter how important they may be in the local traditions; cf. Rohde I 39-40n1. So also with Thetis in the Panhellenic Epos of Homeric poetry: she is distinctly non-Olympian and is treated as socially inferior to the Olympians (cf. XX 105-107, XXIV 90-91). But her cosmic powers are clearly recognized (I 396-406, XVIII 429-434). Cf. Nagy 1974.277-278; also West 1963, 1967 (esp. p. 3).
§28n1. Similarly with the fire god Hephaistos: his fire entails not only biê as at XXI 367 but also
mêtis as at XXI 355, where the god is called polumêtis 'whose mêtis is manifold'.
§29n1. On the name: West 1966.210.
§29n2. On the theme that Kratos and Biê maintain the cosmic régime of Zeus, see Th. 385-401
§29n3. To put it another way, in defeating the Titans the biê of the Hundred-Handers and the biê of Zeus are two variants of one theme that are combined in the narrative of the Theogony. For more on the biê of Zeus: §6 (esp. n2).
§29n4. There seems to be a concession to this variant in Th. 817-819; cf. West, p. 210.
§29n5. Solinus 11.6 says that Briareos had a cult at Karystos and Aigaion, at Khalkis.
Introduction
“One is no longer at home anywhere, so in the end one longs to be back where one can somehow be at home because it is the only place where one would wish to be at home: and that is the world of Greece.” -
Friedrich Nietzsche [[from part Two of “Der Wille zur Macht”]]
For a five-minute sketch of the history of this course on concepts of the heroic and anti-heroic in Greek civilization, see Introduction 1, on the Heroes website under the heading Commentaries under the heading Texts, Commentaries, More.
For a five-minute sketch of ancient Greek history, see Introduction 2, on the Heroes website, again under the heading Commentaries.
Chapter 01. The glory of the hero.
Key word for this chapter: kleos ‘glory, fame, that which is heard’; or, ‘the poem or song that conveys glory, fame, that which is heard’.
This word was used in ancient Greek poetry or song to refer to the poetry [“epic”] or the song [“lyric”] that glorifies the heroes of the distant heroic past. (Since the references to kleos in archaic Greek poetry and song make no distinction between poetry and song, I will simply use the word “song” hereafter.)
The song of kleos glorifies not only the heroes of the distant past, which is a “heroic age.” It glorifies also the gods - as they “existed” in the heroic age and as they continued to “exist” for their worshippers at any given moment in historical time.
Why did the ancient Greeks glorify heroes? Partly because they worshipped not only gods but also heroes. This is a fundamental fact of ancient Greek history: the ancient Greeks practiced hero-worship. See Introduction 1; for detailed argumentation, I refer to Introduction 3, which is my article “The Epic Hero.” This article, which we will read later on in the course, is likewise available on the Heroes website, again under the heading Commentaries.
Let us return to the main topic of this chapter, as signaled by the key word kleos. This word was used to refer to both the medium and the message of the glory of heroes. The dictum of Marshall McLuhan applies here (his main interest was popular culture): the medium is the message.
I begin by concentrating on the medium of song as marked by the word kleos. In ancient Greece, kleos was the primary medium for communicating the concept of the hero, which is the primary topic (or “message”) of this course. (For other media that we will study in this course, see Introduction 1.)
01 A. Iliad IX 410-414
In the Iliad, the main hero of the Iliad, Achilles, is quoted as saying:
My mother Thetis, goddess of the silver feet, tells me that there are two ways in which I may meet my end [telos]. If I stay here and fight, I will not have a return [nostos] alive but my glory [kleos] will be unwilting [aphthiton]: whereas if I go home my glory [kleos] will perish, but it will be a long time before the end [telos] shall take me.
This translation, based on that of Samuel Butler, has been adjusted by me to fit as accurately as
possible the meaning of the original Greek. The original wording of Butler is as follows:
My mother Thetis tells me that there are two ways in which I may meet my end. If I stay here and fight, I will not return alive but my name will live for ever: whereas if I go home my name will die, but it will be long ere death shall take me.
This is a literary translation, not a literal one. In general, Butler’s translation of the Iliad is literary, meant to be pleasing to the ear when read out loud. In the case of this passage, it successfully captures the general idea of what is being said by Achilles. I focus our attention on the part that I highlighted:
I will not return alive but my name will live for ever.
In place of this literary version, I substituted a more literal translation of the original Greek, which is contained in one single verse:
I will not have a return [nostos] alive but my glory [kleos] will be unwilting [aphthiton].
Iliad Scroll IX verse 413
Here is an even more literal translation of the original Greek:
I shall lose my safe homecoming [nostos], but I will have a kleos that is unwilting.
Iliad Scroll IX verse 413
(You notice I said “Scroll IX” of the Iliad, not “Book IX.” My intent was to drive home the reality of the “scrolls” or “rolls” of papyrus on which the performance-units of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey were written in the ancient world. In ancient Greek, these Homeric performance- units were called rhaps!idiai or ‘rhapsodies’.)
In the next paragraph, I offer my interpretation of this verse. From here on, I will refer to this kind of interpretation as exegesis, which is an ancient Greek term referring to a close reading of a given text.
Achilles has started to understand the consequences of his decision to reject the option of a safe homecoming. He is in the process of deciding to choose the other option: he will stay at Troy and continue to fight in the Trojan War. Choosing this option will result in his death, and he is starting to understand that. In the fullness of time, he will be ready to give up his life in exchange for getting a kleos that will never ‘wilt’. Unlike natural flowers that go through the cycle of blossoming and then wilting, this kleos is an unnatural or mutant flower that will forever stay the same, never losing its color, aroma, and overall beauty. Here we see a very ancient theme that is built into the traditional symbolism of kleos, which we will explore in more detail later. Like a natural flower, Achilles will ‘wilt’. But his kleos will never wilt because it is not a thing of nature: it is a thing of art, a song. This kleos is the story of Troy, the Iliad (the name of the poem, Iliad, means ‘story of Ilion’; Ilion is the other name for ‘Troy’). Achilles the hero gets into the Iliad by dying a warrior’s death. The consolation prize for his death is the kleos of the Iliad.
We can see a parallel theme in the tragedy Herakles, by Euripides: at line 350, the hero Linos is ‘wilted [phthitos] in his beauty’, but Apollo sings ‘him’. By implication, the song of Linos thus becomes unwilting, just as the kleos of Achilles in Iliad IX 413 is aphthiton or ‘unwilting’.
In ancient Greek culture, the distinction between art and nature, between the artificial and the natural, is not the same as in our culture. Their culture was what anthropologists call a song culture.
In our culture, artificial implies “unreal” and natural implies “real.” (I quote the words of an old commercial: “Is it real - or is it Memorex?”) In a song culture, the artificial can be just as real as the natural. In a song culture, the words of an “artificial” song can be just as real as the words of “natural” speech in a real-life experience. In a song culture, the song can be just as real as life itself.
A modern attempt to capture a sense of the “trueness” of song is a poem by Wallace Stevens, “Peter Quince at the Clavier.” You will find it on the Heroes website under the heading More under the heading Texts, Commentaries, More.
{LINK: Wallace Stevens, “Peter Quince at the Clavier”}
In ancient Greek song culture, the “story” of the Iliad was felt to be not only “real” but also “true.” As we will see in later chapters, the Homeric Iliad was felt to convey the ultimate truth-values of the ancient Greek song-culture.
Because we English-speakers have a different cultural perspective on the word story, which implies fiction and is therefore not expected to be “true,” I will ordinarily use the more neutral word narrative in referring to the story of the Iliad and other such stories.
I return to my point: in a song culture, the song can be just as real as life itself. To experience song in a song culture is to experience a real-life experience. For the Greek hero, as we will see, the ultimate real-life experience is death. (Which can be an alternative to sex, as we will also see.)
The hero must struggle against the fear of death, in order to achieve the most perfect death. Such a perfect moment must be recorded in song, which brings kleos ‘glory’.
In ancient Greek traditions, a hero’s dying words can be pictured as a swan song (see Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1444-1445, where the last lament of Cassandra before she dies is pictured as her swan song). According to such traditions, the swan sings his most beautiful song at the moment of his death. We will consider this myth at the end of this course, when we read Plato’s Phaedo: in that work, Socrates talks about the concept of the swan song at the moment of his own death by hemlock. What Socrates is quoted as saying in the Phaedo, as we will see, turns out to be his own swan song.
That said, I am ready to move on to the next passage to be considered in this chapter. 01 B. Iliad XI 218-227
Tell me now you Muses dwelling on Olympus, who, whether of the Trojans or of their allies,
was first to face Agamemnon? It was Iphidamas son of Antenor, a man both brave and of great stature, who was brought up in fertile Thrace the mother of sheep. Kiss#s, his mother’s father, brought him up in his own house when he was a child - Kiss#s, father to fair-cheeked Theano. When he reached manhood, Kiss#s would have kept him there, and was for giving him his daughter in marriage, but as soon as he had married he went off to seek the kleos of the Achaeans with twelve ships that followed him.
This passage, like the first passage I analyzed, is about a hero’s obsession with the goal of dying the right way, that is, by being remembered forever in the kleos or ‘glory’ of song. In this case, however, the hero is not a major figure of the Iliad, like Achilles. This other hero is mentioned only one time in the Iliad, in what amounts to a short story embedded inside the overall story of the Iliad.
To distinguish the story of the Iliad from such short stories that exist inside the story of the Iliad, I will as a rule refer to the Iliad as the Narrative, with an upper-case N, and to the stories inside the Iliad as narratives, with lower-case n. Such narratives are micro-narratives in comparison to the macro-Narrative that is the Iliad. Also, I will as a rule use the word Narrator in referring to ‘Homer’, who was a prehistoric culture-hero venerated by the ancient Greeks as the ultimate ‘singer’ of the Iliad and Odyssey. (I will return to the concept of culture-hero in later chapters.)
In order to appreciate the poetic artistry that produced this micro-narrative, we must consider the artistic device of compression in the traditional media of ancient Greek songmaking. This device of compression is to be contrasted with the device of expansion. Whereas expansion produces macro-narratives, such as the monumental composition of the Iliad itself, compression produces micro-narratives, such as the story-within-a-story that we are now considering. In many ways, a “trailer” in today’s culture of film-making is produced by techniques of compression that resemble the techniques used in producing such micro-narratives in ancient Greek songmaking.
I concentrate on the last verse of this micronarrative, which I now translate more literally: Married, he went away from the bride chamber, looking for kleos from the Achaeans. Iliad XI 227
This micro-narrative is about a hero who decides to interrupt his honeymoon and go to Troy to fight on the side of the Trojans against the ‘Achaeans’, which is an epic name - along with ‘Argives’ and ‘Danaans’ - for the Greeks of the heroic age. At this point in the narrative, he has just been killed in battle. Why did this hero give up his life, a life of newlywed bliss, just to fight and die at Troy? The Narrator of the macro-Narrative gives the answer to this question: this hero did it in order to get included in the kleos of the Greek song culture. He was ‘looking for kleos from the Achaeans’. This kleos is the macro-Narrative of the Iliad.
We see here a hero getting into the Iliad by dying a warrior’s death. To that extent, he is like the major hero Achilles, whose death is the core theme of the Iliad. But this minor hero, Iphidamas, dies for just a “bit part.” By contrast, Achilles will die for the lead part.
These “parts” in the epic master Narrative of the Iliad are just as real to these heroes as their very
own lives are real to them. For Achilles, the major hero of the Iliad, the song of kleos is just as real as his very own life is real to him. The infinite time of the artificial song, the kleos aphthiton or ‘unwilting glory’ (IX 413), is just as real to him as the finite time of his natural life.
Similarly, the infinite time of the gods, who are everlasting, is just as real to Homeric heroes as is the finite time of their natural lives. The gods are “artificial” but real, just as kleos is “artificial” but real. Even the sky, which is the abode of the gods, is “artificial.” The movements of the celestial bodies - the patterns of the stars and even sunrise and sunset - belong to the realm of immortality. By contrast, the earth, which is the abode of humans, is “natural”: it is mortal territory. In chapters coming up, I will have more to say about this opposition of mortal / natural and immortal / artificial.
Here is further reading about mortal / natural and immortal / artificial, not required for the course: Nagy, G. 1999. “As the World Runs Out of Breath: Metaphorical Perspectives on the Heavens
and the Atmosphere in the Ancient World.” In Ker, Keniston, Marx 1999:37-50.
{Ker, J. C., Keniston, K., and Marx, L. 1999. ed. Earth, Air, Fire, Water: Humanistic Studies of the Environment. Amherst MA.}
A second key word for this chapter: h!ra (plural h!rai) ‘season, seasonality; time; timeliness’. This word h!ra stood for natural time, natural life, natural life-cycle. The English word hour is
derived from ancient Greek h!ra. Relevant are such expressions as The hour is near.
The goddess of h!ra (plural h!rai) was H#ra (the two forms h!ra and H#ra are linguistically related to each other). She was the goddess of seasons, in charge of making everything happen on time, happen in season, and happen in a timely way.
Related to these two words h!ra and H#ra is h#r!s (singular) / h#r!es (plural), meaning ‘hero’. As we will see, the precise moment when everything comes together for the hero is the moment of death. The hero is ‘on time’ at the h"ra or ‘time’ of death.
In Passage A, we have seen Achilles thinking about his future death as glorified by the medium of kleos. In a sense, we see him “scripting” his death. And this “scripting” is all about timing. The timing of heroic death is all-important for the hero.
Here is a point of comparison taken from modern popular culture. It is a clip from the film Bladerunner, directed by Ridley Scott (1982), based on the science fiction novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (1968). The film clip centers on the moment when Roy, an artificial human, “scripts” his own death, which is meant to be natural.
{LINK “Like tears in rain. Time to die,” from Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner (1982)}
I draw attention here, for the first time, to a collection of film clips, with commentaries that accompany them, under the heading “Multimedia” on the Heroes website, which is available to those who are enrolled in the course.
We now turn to a model for Achilles in the “scripting” of his own death. This model is a hero from an earlier age, who exemplifies the perfect timing of his own death. That hero is Herakles, otherwise known by the Romanized version of his name, Hercules.
Herakles is more than a model for Achilles. He is a model for all heroes. As we will see, his story brings to life the meaning of the ancient Greek word for hero, h#r!s, and the meanings of the related words for seasonality, h!ra, and for the goddess of seasonality herself, H#ra. As we will also see, even his name tells the story: H#rakl#s means ‘he who has the kleos of H#ra’.
In the Iliad, we find an embedded micro-narrative that tells the story of Herakles as it relates to the story of Achilles in the macro-Narrative that is the Iliad. I quote the entire micro-narrative:
C. Iliad XIX 75-133
Then Agamemnon spoke, rising in his place, and not going into the middle of the assembly. “Danaan heroes,” said he, “attendants [therapontes] of Ares, it is well to listen when a man stands up to speak,
[80] and it is not seemly to interrupt him, or it will go hard even with a practiced speaker. Who can either hear or speak in an uproar? Even the finest orator will be disconcerted by it. I will expound to [Achilles] the son of Peleus, and do you other Achaeans heed me and mark me well.
[85] Often have the Achaeans spoken to me of this matter and upbraided me, but it was not I who was responsible [aitios]: Zeus, and Fate [Moira], and the Fury [Erinys] that roams in darkness struck me with derangement [at#] when we were assembled on the day that I took from Achilles the prize that had been awarded to him.
[90] What could I do? All things are in the hands of the gods, and At#, eldest of Zeus’ daughters, shuts men’s eyes to their destruction. She walks delicately, not on the solid earth, but hovers over the heads of men to make them stumble or to ensnare them.[95] Time was when she [At#, goddess of derangement] fooled Zeus himself, who they say is greatest whether of gods or men; for Hera, female though she was, beguiled him on the day when Alkmene was to bring forth mighty Herakles in the fair city of Thebes.
[100] He told it out among the gods saying, ‘Hear me all gods and goddesses, that I may speak even as I am minded; this day shall Eileithuia, helper of women who are in labor, bring a man child into the world who shall be lord over all that dwell about him
[105] who are of my blood and lineage.’ Then said Hera all crafty and full of guile, ‘You will play false, and will not hold to the finality [telos] of your word. Swear me, O Olympian, swear me a great oath, that he
[110] who shall this day fall between the feet of a woman, shall be lord over all that dwell about him who are of your blood and lineage.’ Thus she spoke, and Zeus suspected her not, but swore the great oath, to his much ruing thereafter. For Hera darted down from the high summit of Olympus,
[115] and went in haste to Achaean Argos where she knew that the noble wife of Sthenelos son
of Perseus then was. She being with child and in her seventh month, Hera brought the child to birth though there was a month still wanting, but she stayed the offspring of Alkmene, and kept back the goddesses of childbirth [Eileithuiai].
[120] Then she went to tell Zeus the son of Kronos, and said, ‘Father Zeus, lord of the lightning - I have a word for your ear. There is a fine child born this day, Eurystheus, son to Sthenelos the son of Perseus; he is of your lineage; it is well, therefore, that he should reign over the Argives.’
[125] Then Zeus was stung to the very quick with grief [akhos], and in his rage he caught At# by the hair, and swore a great oath that never should she again invade the starry heavens and Olympus, for she was the bane of all.
[130] Then he whirled her round with a twist of his hand, and flung her down from the heavens so that she fell on to the fields of mortal men; and he was ever angry with her when he saw his son groaning under the cruel labors [athloi] that Eurystheus laid upon him.”
The speaker here is Agamemnon, who is telling the story about Herakles and his inferior cousin Eurystheus. The goddess Hera accelerated the birth of Eurystheus and retarded the birth of Herakles, so that Eurystheus the inferior hero became king, entitled to give commands to the superior hero Herakles. As we see in the Herakles of Euripides, Herakles qualifies as the supreme hero of them all, the aristos ‘best’ of all humans (150; cf. 183, 209, 1306). Still, his heroic superiority to all is trumped by the social superiority of Eurystheus, who is entitled by birth to give orders to Herakles as his king. Similarly, the heroic superiority of Achilles is trumped by the social superiority of Agamemnon at the beginning of the Iliad.
The irony of this story told by Agamemnon, in micro-narrative form, is contextualized by the macro-Narrative of the story that is the Iliad. In terms of Agamemnon’s micro-narrative, the point of his story is that At# the goddess of derangement made it possible for Zeus himself to make a mistake in the story about Herakles, just as she made it possible for Agamemnon to make a mistake in the story of the Iliad. In terms of the macro-Narrative of the Iliad, however, the parallel extends much further: the mistake in the story about Herakles and Eurystheus is that the hero who was superior as a hero became socially inferior, and that is also the mistake in the story about Achilles and Agamemnon as narrated in the overall Iliad: Achilles is superior to Agamemnon as a hero, but he is socially inferior to him, and that is why Agamemnon seemed to get away with the mistake of asserting his social superiority at the expense of Achilles. Like Herakles, who is constrained by the social superiority of Eurystheus and follows his commands in performing athloi ‘labors’ (XIX 133), so also Achilles is constrained by the social superiority of Agamemnon in offering no physical resistance to the taking of Briseis, his war prize, by the inferior hero.
The performance of athloi ‘labors’ by Herakles is mentioned in passing by this micro-narrative in the Iliad (XIX 133). As we are about to see from other sources, these Labors of Herakles lead to the kleos ‘glory’ that Herakles earns as a hero, and these labors would never have been performed if Hera the goddess of seasons had not made Herakles the hero unseasonal by being born after rather than before his inferior cousin. So, Herakles owes the kleos that he earns from his Labors to Hera.
There are many different kinds of Labors performed by Herakles, as we see from an extensive
retelling by Diodorus of Sicily. Though we will not be reading this author, who flourished in the first century BCE, I summarize here some highlights in his narrative (4.7.4-4.39). One of the Labors of Herakles, as we see from Diodorus (4.14.1-2), was the foundation of the Olympics. The story says that he not only founded this major festival: he also competed in every athletic event on the prototypical occasion of the first Olympics. On that occasion, he won first prize in every Olympic event. This tradition about Herakles is the perfect illustration of a fundamental connection between the labor of a hero and the competition of an athlete at athletic events like the Olympics. As we will see later on, the hero’s labor and the athlete’s competition are the “same thing,” from the standpoint of ancient Greek concepts of the hero. The Greek word for the hero’s labor and for the athlete’s competition is the same: athlos. Our English word “athlete” is derived from this Greek word.
Before we consider further Labors performed by Herakles, I offer a paraphrase of the beginning of the story of these Labors as narrated by Diodorus of Sicily:
The supreme god and king of gods, Zeus, impregnates Alkmene, a mortal woman (4.9.2). The wife of Zeus, the goddess Hera, is jealous; she decides to intervene in the life of the hero who is about to be born, Herakles (4.9.4). If this hero had been born on schedule, on time, in time, he would have been the supreme king of his time; but Hera makes sure that Herakles is born not on schedule, not on time, not in time. Herakles’ inferior cousin, Eurystheus, is born ahead of him and thus is fated to become king instead of Herakles (4.9.4-5). During all of Herakles’ lifetime, Eurystheus persecutes him directly; Hera persecutes him indirectly. The superior hero has to spend his entire lifespan obeying the orders of the inferior king (4.9.5). The orders add up to the Labors of Herakles.
In the Classical era, as represented most famously in the relief sculptures of the metopes of the Temple of Zeus in Olympia, built in the fifth century BCE, there is a focus on a canonical number of twelve Labors performed by Herakles. The narrative of Diodorus of Sicily gives the following sequence of these Twelve Labors:
Herakles kills the Nemean Lion (4.11.3-4)
Herakles kills the Lernaean Hydra (4.11.5-6)
Herakles kills the Erymanthian Boar (4.12.1-2)
Herakles hunts down the Hind with the Golden Horn (4.13.1)
Herakles clears the Stymphalian Marsh of the birds that infested it (4.13.2)
Herakles cleans the Augean Stables (4.13.2-3)
Herakles captures the Cretan Bull alive and taking it to the Peloponnesus (4.13.4)
Herakles corrals the Horses of Diomedes, eaters of human flesh (4.15.3-4)
Herakles captures the cincture or “girdle” of the Amazon Hippolyte (4.16.1-4)
Herakles rustles the Cattle of Geryon (4.17.1-2)
Herakles descends to Hades and brings up Cerberus the Hound of Hades from the realm of darkness to the realm of light and life (4.26.1)
Herakles gathers the Golden Apples of the Hesperides (4.26.2).
In the catalogue of the Labors of Herakles as sung in praise of the hero by the chorus in the Herakles of Euripides (lines 348-439), the last of these Labors to be mentioned is the descent of Herakles to Hades (425-439); in the imagery of Euripides, and elsewhere in Greek poetry, as we will see later on, going into Hades is explicitly the experience of dying, and coming back out of Hades is implicitly the experience of resurrection (lines 143-146).
Herakles’ heroic deeds in performing these Labors and many others are the contents of the heroic song, kleos, that is sung about him. The connection of the name of Herakles with these deeds and with the medium of kleos that glorifies the hero is made explicit in the Herakles of Euripides (lines 270, 1334, 1369). This connection of the hero’s name with such deeds of kleos is also made explicit by Matris of Thebes FGH 39 F 2, as transmitted by Diodorus of Sicily 1.24.4 (where the attribution is made to Matris) and 4.10.1 (where the version of Matris is actually retold). And, as I have already noted, Herakles owes the kleos that he earns from his Labors to Hera. Hence his name H#rakl#s, which means ‘he who has the kleos of H#ra’.[1] The goddess of being on time makes sure that the hero should start off his lifespan by being not on time and that he should go through life by trying to catch up and never quite managing to do so until the very end. Herakles gets all caught up only at the final moment of his life, at the moment of death.
I continue here my paraphrase of Diodorus of Sicily:
At the final moment of Herakles’ heroic lifespan, he experiences the most painful death imaginable, climaxed by burning to death. This form of death is an ultimate test of the nervous system, by ancient Greek heroic standards. Here is how it happens. Herakles is fatally poisoned by the semen of a dying Centaur. His ex-wife Deianeira gave it to him in a phial as a “wedding present” on the occasion of the hero’s re-marriage to the girl Iole: the ex-wife had mistakenly thought it was a love-drug that could win back the love of her ex-husband (4.38.1-2). Burning up on the inside with the excruciatingly painful poison that is consuming his body from the outside, Herakles arranges with the people of Trachis to have them build for him a funeral pyre on the peak of Mount Oita, Herakles climbs up on top of the funeral pyre (4.38.3-4). He yearns to be put out of his misery, ready to die and be consumed by the fires of the funeral pyre; he calls on his friend Philoktetes to light his pyre (4.38.4).[2] At that precise moment of agonizing death, a flaming thunderbolt from his father Zeus strikes him. He goes up in flames, in a spectacular explosion of fire (4.38.4-5). In the aftermath, those who attended the primal scene find no physical trace of Herakles, not even bones (4.38.5). They go home to Trachis, but Menoitios, the father of Patroklos, will later establish a hero cult for Herakles at Opous, and the Thebans have a similar hero cult for him (4.38.1). Others, however, especially the Athenians, worship Herakles not as a hero but as a god (4.39.1-2). The rationale for this alternative custom is given by the continuation of the myth as retold by Diodorus: at the moment of his death, Herakles regains consciousness and finds himself on the top of Mount Olympus, in the company of the gods (4.39.2-3). He has awakened to find himself immortalized. He is then adopted by the theoi ‘gods’
on Mount Olympus as one of their own (the technical Greek term is apotheosis). Hera now changes identities - from Herakles’ stepmother to Herakles’ mother (4.39.2). The procedure is specified by Diodorus, and I translate literally (4.39.3): ‘Hera got into her bed and drew Herakles close to her body. She let him fall through her garments to the ground, re-enacting [= making mim#sis of] the genuine birth.’[3]
By now we can see that the name H#rakl#s ‘he who has the glory [kleos] of Hera’ marks both the medium and the message of the hero. When we first consider the meaning of the name of Herakles, our first impression is that this name is illogical: it seems to us strange that Herakles should be named after Hera - that his poetic glory or kleos should depend on Hera. After all, Herakles is persecuted by Hera throughout his heroic lifespan. And yet, without this unseasonality, without the disequilibrium brought about by the persecution of Hera, Herakles would never have achieved the equilibrium of immortality and the kleos that makes his achievements live forever in song.
At the core of the narratives about H#rakl#s is the meaning of h#r!s ‘hero’ as a cognate of H#r$, the goddess of seasonality and equilibrium, and of h!r$, a noun that actually means ‘seasonality’ in the context of designating hero cult (as in Homeric Hymn to Demeter 265).[4] The unseasonality of the h#r!s in mortal life leads to the telos or ‘fulfillment’ of seasonality in immortal life, which is achieved in the setting of hero cult. The cult epithet of Hera as teleia expresses this concept of ‘fulfillment’.[5]
Overall, the narratives about Herakles fit neatly into a model of the hero as I outline it in
§§105-110 of Introduction 3, “The Epic Hero,” on the Heroes website, under the heading Commentaries. I offer here a shortened version of the outline that I develop there.
In terms of that outline, here are three characteristics of the hero:
The hero is unseasonal.
The hero is extreme - positively (for example, ‘best’ in whatever category) or negatively (the negative aspect can be a function of the hero’s unseasonality).
The hero is antagonistic toward the god who seems to be most like the hero; antagonism does not rule out an element of attraction (often a “fatal attraction”), which is played out in a variety of ways.
All three characteristics converge in the figure of the hero Herakles:
He is made unseasonal by Hera.
His unseasonality makes it possible for him to perform his extraordinary Labors. He also commits some deeds that are morally questionable: for example, he destroys the city of Iole and kills her brothers in order to capture her as his bride - even though he is already married to Deianeira (Diodorus of Sicily 4.37.5). It is essential to keep in mind that whenever heroes commit deeds that violate moral codes, such deeds are not condoned by the heroic narrative.
He is antagonistic with Hera throughout his lifespan, but he becomes reconciled with her
through death: as we have seen, the hero becomes the virtual son of Hera by being reborn from her. As the hero’s name makes clear, he owes his heroic identity to his kleos and, ultimately, to Hera. A parallel is the antagonism of Juno, the Roman equivalent of Hera, toward the hero Aeneas in Virgil’s Aeneid.
I add here paraphrases of two relevant details from Herakles narratives as attested in other sources:
Hera finds an abandoned baby, who happens to be Herakles. She takes a fancy to the baby and breast-feeds it, but the baby bites her. This part of the narrative is reported by Diodorus of Sicily (4.9.6). Another part of the narrative is reported elsewhere: the bite of Herakles leads to a cosmic explosion of milk, a galaxy (Greek galakt- means ‘milk’) - that is, the Milky Way (Hyginus Astronomica 2.43; Eratosthenes Catasterismi 44; “Achilles” Introduction to Aratus 24.).
Herakles’ mortal mother, Alkmene, conceives another son by her mortal husband, Amphitryon, on the same night that when conceives her son Herakles by her immortal paramour, Zeus (Apollodorus 2.4.8). (This twin, Iphikles, is mortal. The other twin, Herakles, is mortal only on his mother’s side. I do not say half-mortal or half-divine in this case, and I will give my reasons later on.)
We find in the figure of Achilles the same three heroic characteristics that we found in figure of Herakles:
He is unseasonal: in Iliad XXIV 540, Achilles is explicitly described as is pan-a-(h)!r-ios ‘the most unseasonal of them all’.[6] His unseasonality is a major cause of his grief, which makes him “a man of constant sorrow.” In using this phrase, I am thinking here of the title of a traditional American folk song, first recorded by Dick Burnett, a partially blind fiddler from Kentucky. The grief over the unseasonality of Achilles is best expressed by the hero’s mother Thetis in Iliad XVIII 54-60, a passage that will figure prominently in Chapter 03.
He is extreme, mostly in a positive sense, since he is ‘best’ in many categories, and ‘best of the Achaeans’ in the Homeric Iliad; occasionally, however, he is extreme in a negative sense, as in his moments of martial fury. I will have more on such martial fury, otherwise known as “warp spasm,” in Chapter 06.
He is antagonistic to the god Apollo, to whom he bears an uncanny resemblance. I will have more to say about the antagonism of Apollo with the hero Achilles in Chapter 05.
There is another important parallel between Herakles and Achilles: the use of the word kleos in identifying Herakles as a hero is relevant to the fact that the same word is used in identifying Achilles as an epic hero in the Homeric Iliad. In the Iliad, kleos designates not only ‘glory’ but also, more specifically, the glory of the hero as conferred by epic. In Iliad IX 413, as we have seen, Achilles chooses kleos over life itself, and he owes his heroic identity to this kleos.[7]
So we end up where we started, with the hero Achilles. He chooses kleos over life itself, and he owes his heroic identity to this kleos. He achieves the major goal of the hero: to have his identity put on record through kleos. For us, a common way to express this goal is to say: “you’ll go
down in history.” For the earliest periods of ancient Greece, the equivalent of this kind of “history” is kleos. He puts his identity on permanent record through kleos.
In J.D. Salinger’s, Catcher in the Rye (1951), Holden Caulfield is given this lesson by the teacher: “The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.”
My guess is that Achilles would answer: in that case, I would rather be immature than mature. Still, as we will see, he will achieve a maturity, a seasonality, at the moment in the Iliad when he comes to terms with his own impending heroic death.
The teacher continues speaking in Salinger’s narrative: “Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them...if you want to. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.” - the highlighting is mine.
[1] On the linguistic validity of the etymology of his name, see Nagy Homeric Questions 48n79. The problem of the short a in the middle of the form H#r%kl#s can best be addressed by comparing the short a in the middle of the form Alk%thoos, the name of a hero of Megara (cf. Theognis 774) who is closely related thematically to Herakles. I owe this solution to Alexander Nikolaev.
[2] Some may wish to compare the words of Jim Morrison: “try to set the night on fire.”
[3] More in dialogues to come about the concept of mim#sis as ‘re-enactment’. [4] Nagy Pindar’s Homer (1990) 140, Greek Mythology and Poetics (1990) 136. [5] As we see for example in Aristophanes Women at the Thesmophoria 973.
[6] Nagy Homeric Questions (1996) 48.
[7] Nagy Homeric Responses (2003) 39-48.
Chapter 02. Total recall through song
Key word for this chapter: memn#mai, which means ‘I have total recall’ in special contexts and ‘I remember’ in ordinary contexts. The special contexts involve memory by way of song. I will get to the specifics later.
A. Iliad IX 527-528
I totally recall [me-mn#-mai] this action that happened a long time ago - it is not something
new -
recalling exactly how it was. I will tell it in your company - since you are all near and dear [philoi] to me.
[[In the Sourcebook, we read the more literary rendition of Samuel Butler:
I have in my mind an old story - a very old one - and you are all friends, so I will tell it.]] In the paragraphs that follow, I offer an exegesis of this passage (in the previous chapter, I
defined this word exegesis as “an ancient Greek term referring to a close reading of a given text”).
I start with the verb memn#mai, containing the root mn#-, which means ‘I remember’. When this verb takes an object in the genitive case, it means ‘I remember’ in the general sense of ‘I have memories of’. But when this verb takes an object in the accusative case, as here, it means ‘I remember’ in the special sense of ‘I remember totally’.
Phoenix, an old hero, is about to tell a story that he says he remembers totally. This story is a micro-narrative embedded in the macro-Narrative that is the Iliad. Before Phoenix tells his story, he speaks to those who are listening to the story, telling them that they are philoi ‘near and dear’ to him. Who are these ‘near and dear’ listeners? They are Achilles and his best friend, who is the hero Patroklos, as well as the heroes Ajax and Odysseus, and two heralds. The Greek word translated here as ‘near and dear’ is philoi. This word philos (that is the singular form; the plural is philoi) means ‘friend’ as a noun and ‘near and dear’ as an adjective. It is a term of endearment, an emotional term. As we will see later, this emotional term is most important for understanding the story of Phoenix.
What kind of memory does Phoenix have of the story that he is about to tell his ‘near and dear’ listeners? In the original Greek, the word here for the act of remembering is memn#mai, which can be translated as ‘I have total recall’. In order to understand the special kind of memory that is ‘total recall’, I offer two examples from modern popular culture.
The first example is the film Total Recall (1990), directed by Paul Verhoeven, featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sharon Stone, which was based on a science fiction “novelette” by Philip K. Dick, “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale,” first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (April 1966).
The second example comes from something that I quoted in the last chapter. It was a quotation from J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, where Holden Caulfield is being given a lesson by his teacher: “The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.” The teacher goes on to say: “Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them...if you want to. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.” - the highlighting is mine.
The word “history” here refers simply to keeping a record. For the moment, I highlight the idea of keeping a record.
We have an interesting way of using the word “record” these days - in an era when CD-s have replaced the old vinyl “records.” We still say “record store” when we go shopping for CD-s. I suspect it is because of the idea of memory embedded in the word “record.”
Let us pursue further the concept of keeping a record, recording, putting on record. In the earliest phases of ancient Greek song culture, the process of keeping a record of things that must be remembered, of putting things on the record, was not ordinarily done by way of writing. Writing did not become a widespread technology in the ancient Greek world till around the fifth century BCE, and even then it was confined to the uppermost strata of society. In the archaic period of Greek history (that is, from around the 8th century through the 6th century: for a 5-minute historical sketch, see Introduction 2, on the Heroes website under the heading Texts, Commentaries, More), the idea of recording was mostly a matter of memory and of techniques of memory, mnemonics. It is in this connection that we confront the mentality of total recall.
The wording total recall is meant to convey a special mentality of remembering, of putting things on record, common in traditional societies. In terms of this mentality, to remember is to re-live an experience, including someone else’s experience, including even the experiences of heroes in the remote past of the heroic age.
The process of remembering in ancient Greek song culture requires a special medium, song (which includes poetry). Such song, such singing, is an oral tradition. The Homeric Iliad derives from an oral tradition of singing, which is a process of composition-in-performance. That is, composition is an aspect of performance and vice versa. In this kind of oral tradition, there is no script, since the technology of writing is not required for composition-in-performance. In Homeric poetry, the basic medium of remembering is heroic song or kleos.
This word kleos ‘glory’, which we considered in Chapter 01, brings us back to the narrative of the old hero Phoenix, who uses this word in the same context of making his remark about his total recall:
02 B. Iliad IX 524-525
This is the way [hout!s] that we [= I, Phoenix] learned it, the glories [klea] of men of an earlier time
who were heroes [h#r!es] - whenever one of them was overcome by tempestuous anger. (I have translated these two lines here even more literally than in the version you find in the
Sourcebook.)
The word klea, the abbreviated plural form of kleos, is combined here with andr!n ‘of men’ and h#r!!n ‘of heroes [h#r!es]’. This expression klea andr!n | h#r!!n ‘the glories of men who were heroes’, or a shorter form of the expression, klea andr!n ‘the glories of men’, is used in Homeric poetry to refer to epic narrative. When Phoenix uses this expression here, he is referring to an epic narrative that he is about to tell about the hero Meleager. As we will see, this same expression klea andr!n (h#r!!n) ‘glories of men (who were heroes)’ applies not only to the epic narrative about Meleager. It applies also to the epic narrative about Achilles, which is the Iliad.
In general, the word kleos applies to Homeric poetry as performed by the master Narrator of that poetry. Etymologically, kleos is a noun derived from the verb kluein ‘hear’, and it means ‘that which is heard’. In the Iliad, the master Narrator declares that the epic he narrates is something he ‘hears’ from goddesses of poetic memory called the Muses, who know everything because they were present when everything was done and when everything was said. Here is the key wording.
02 C. Iliad II 484-487
And now, tell me, O Muses, you who live in your Olympian abodes, since you are goddesses and you were there and you know everything, but we [= the Narrator] only hear the kleos and we know nothing
- who were the chiefs and princes of the Danaans [= the Greeks]?
[[I have translated the first three lines here even more literally than in the version you find in the Sourcebook.]]
When we read this passage for the first time, our first impression may be that the Narrator is making a modest statement about the limitations of his own knowledge. In fact, however, what we are seeing here is just the opposite. The Narrator is making a most proud and boastful statement. He is boasting that his mind is directly connected to what the Muses as goddesses of memory actually saw and heard. The Muses ‘tell’ him what they saw and heard. What he narrates about heroes and even gods is exactly what the Muses saw. What he quotes from the spoken words of heroes and even of gods is exactly what the Muses heard. The Narrator’s mind is supposed to see and hear what the Muses saw and heard. His mind has the power of total recall.
The Narrator here is calling on the Muses as goddesses of memory to tell him the part of the Troy narrative known as the Catalogue of Ships. The Muses are expected to tell the Narrator exactly, and the Narrator will tell his listeners exactly. This part of the Troy narrative catalogues all the important details about which warriors came to Troy in how many ships, and so on; many modern readers get distracted and even bored when they read through the Catalogue, but it was of the greatest cultural interest and importance to the listeners of the Iliad in ancient times. So important was the Catalogue that the Narrator needed special powers of memory to get it right. That is why the Narrator here prays to the Muses, as if he had just started his overall narration. (In fact, however, he has already prayed to ‘the Muse’ at the start of the Iliad).
And these Muses, as we have just seen, are supposed to know absolutely everything. They are all-knowing, that is, omniscient. So the omniscient Muses are goddesses of total recall, and their absolute power of recall is expressed by an active form of the verb mn#- in the sense of ‘remind’ (II 492). The master Narrator of the Iliad receives from these goddesses their absolute power of total recall when he prays to them to tell him everything about the Achaean forces that
sailed to Troy (II 484, 491-492). Inspired by the omniscient Muses, the master Narrator becomes an omniscient Narrator. Although he says he will not exercise the option of telling everything in full, deciding instead to tell only the salient details by concentrating on the names of the leaders of the warriors who sailed to Troy and on the precise number of each leader’s ships (II 493), the
master Narrator insists on his power of total recall.[1] The very idea of such mental power is basic to Homeric poetry.
The Narrator is saying here that he does not have to know anything: all he has to do is to ‘hear the kleos’. Since the goddesses of memory were there when the heroic actions happened, and since they saw and heard everything, they know everything. The Narrator needs to know nothing, he needs to experience nothing. To repeat, all he has to do is to ‘hear the kleos’ from the goddesses of memory and then to narrate what he is hearing to those who are listening to him.
What the omniscient Muses see and what they hear is a total recall: they recall everything that has ever happened, whereas the Narrator only hears ‘that which is heard’, which is the kleos from the Muses.[2] The Narrator of epic depends on these goddesses to tell him exactly what they saw and to quote for him exactly what they heard.
But what about a story-within-a-story, that is, where a narrator narrates a micro-narrative within the macro-Narrative of the Iliad? In such a situation, the narrator of that micro-narrative has to reassure his listeners that he has total recall that matches the total recall of the Narrator of the macro-Narrative, which is the Iliad. This is what happens when the old hero Phoenix, in Iliad IX, begins to narrate to the hero Achilles and to the other listeners the story of the earlier hero Meleager. Phoenix is telling this story about Meleager because he wants to persuade Achilles to accept the offer of Agamemnon. That is the purpose of this narrator. As we will see, however, the purpose of the master Narrator of the Iliad is different: it goes far beyond the purpose of Phoenix.
When Phoenix says he has total recall, totally recalling the epic action he narrates, his power of memory depends on the power of the omniscient Narrator who tells the framing story of the Iliad, and that power in turn depends on the power of the omniscient Muses themselves, who are given credit for controlling the master Narrative. Phoenix has total recall because he uses the medium of poetry and because his mind is connected to the power source of poetry.
As we have seen, Phoenix refers to his story as klea andr!n | h#r!!n ‘the glories [kleos plural] of men of an earlier time who were heroes’ (IX 524-525). It is a story about the hero Meleager and his anger against his people, parallel to the framing story about the hero Achilles and his anger against his own people, the Achaeans (as we saw in Chapter 01, these people are also known as the Argives or the Danaans). The telling of the story by Phoenix is an activation of epic within epic.
Phoenix is a hero in the epic of the Homeric Iliad, and this epic is a narrative about the distant heroic past - from the standpoint of listeners who live in a present tense devoid of contemporary heroes. But Phoenix here is narrating to listeners who live in that distant heroic past tense. And his narrative-within-a-narrative is about heroes who lived in an even more distant heroic past tense.
There are close parallels between the framing epic about the anger of Achilles and the framed epic about the anger of Meleager. Just as the framed epic about Meleager is a poetic recollection of the klea ‘glories’ of heroes of the past, so too is the framing epic about Achilles. That framing epic, which is the Iliad, is a poetic recollection by the Muse whom the master Narrator invokes to sing
the story of the anger of Achilles (I 1). As the narrator of a framed epic, Phoenix does not have to invoke the goddesses of memory, the Muses, since the Narrator of the framing epic has already invoked them for him.
In performing the klea andr!n | h#r!!n ‘the glories [kleos plural] of men of an earlier time who were heroes’ (IX 524-525), Phoenix expresses himself in the medium of poetry because he is speaking inside a medium that is poetry. He is speaking in poetry just like the master Narrator who is quoting him. When Phoenix says memn#mai, he is in effect saying: I have total recall by way of speaking in the medium of poetry.
The basic rhythmical unit of this medium of poetry, which calls itself kleos or klea andr!n, is called the dactylic hexameter. Here is the basic rhythm of this unit:
u u - u u - u u - u u - u u - -.
(“-” = long syllable, “u” = short syllable)
{LINK Nagy recites Iliad I 1-13.}
Over 15,000 of these dactylic hexameter lines make up the Iliad.
When the master Narrator speaks the kleos or klea andr!n, he is speaking in dactylic hexameters. When the master Narrator quotes characters speaking, whether these characters are heroes or gods, they too are speaking the kleos or klea andr!n, and so they too are imagined as speaking in dactylic hexameters. That is the way the Muses, who saw everything and heard everything, speak the kleos or klea andr!n. Notionally, the Muses heard the heroes and gods speaking in dactylic hexameters, and then the Muses spoke these dactylic hexameters for the master Narrator to hear, so that he may speak them to his listeners.
Now we come to another example of klea andr!n ‘glories of men (heroes)’. It occurs at a slightly earlier point in the master Narrative. In Iliad IX 189, Achilles himself is pictured as singing the klea andr!n in his tent. The master Narrator does not say what the subject of this song sung by Achilles may have been. All we are told is that Achilles was singing the klea andr!n. And, at this point in the narrative, the only listener of the klea andr!n sung by Achilles is Patroklos. If it weren’t for Patroklos, Achilles would be singing to himself. Here is the key wording.
02 D. Iliad IX 185-195
When they [= Phoenix along with his fellow delegates, Odysseus and Ajax] reached the ships and tents of the Myrmidons, they found Achilles playing on a lyre, a beautiful one, of exquisite workmanship, and its cross-bar was of silver. It was part of the spoils that he had taken when he destroyed the city of Eëtion, and he was now diverting himself with it and singing the glories of men [klea andr!n]. He was alone with Patroklos, who sat facing him and said nothing, waiting till he [= Achilles] would leave off singing. Odysseus and Ajax now came in - Odysseus leading the way - and stood before him. Achilles sprang from his seat with the lyre still in his hand, and Patroklos, when he saw the guests, rose also.
What we see here is a clue about Achilles himself as a virtuoso performer of song. He is not only
the subject of songs that are the klea andr!n ‘glories of men (heroes)’. He is also the performer of such songs. And the same goes for Patroklos, the meaning of whose name is relevant, as we will see later.
In a lecture delivered by the late Albert B. Lord about this medium of heroic song, he singles out the Homeric expression klea andr!n ‘glories of men (heroes)’:
{LINK: “Albert Lord talks about heroic song.”}
Lord is comparing here the ancient Homeric medium of heroic song with media of heroic song that have survived into the twentieth century. Among these survivals is the tradition of heroic song in the South Slavic areas of the Balkans, specifically in the former Yugoslavia. Lord (who died in 1991) and his teacher Milman Parry (who died in 1935) pioneered the systematic study of oral traditions of such heroic song in the former Yugoslavia, especially in Bosnia and in parts of Serbia. Both these scholars were professors at Harvard University (Parry died a violent death at age 33, when he was still only an assistant professor at Harvard; Lord eventually succeeded Parry as professor there, and later became one of the most accomplished and respected senior professors in the history of the university). Both Parry and Lord were Classicists as well as ethnographers, and their knowledge of Homeric poetry turned out to be a valuable source of comparative insights in their study of the living oral traditions of the South Slavic peoples. For an introduction to the pathfinding research of Parry and Lord, I recommend the well-known book of Albert Lord, The Singer of Tales (Harvard University Press 1960; in 2000, there was a second edition published by Stephen Mitchell and Gregory Nagy, who together wrote a new introduction).
In the clip from Lord’s lecture mentioning the klea andr!n ‘glories of men (heroes)’, he refers to one of the greatest singers whose songs were studied by Parry and Lord, Avdo Me&edovi'. One of Avdo’s songs, recorded by Milman Parry of Harvard, contained as many as 12,000 lines.
What is a “line” in the case of South Slavic heroic songs? The basic rhythmical unit is the heroic decasyllable, and the basic rhythm of this unit is
u - u - u - u - u.
This was the rhythmical framework for the wording used by singers like Avdo in composing their heroic songs.
{LINK: “Avdo sings a song of heroes.”}
Let us return to the narrative told by Phoenix… As we saw in Passage A, the key word that introduces the narrative of Phoenix is memn#mai, which I translate as ‘I have total recall, I totally recall’.
Phoenix has total recall because he uses the medium of song and because his mind is connected to the power source of song; in fact, he has to use song, because he is inside the medium of song. To repeat, he is speaking in dactylic hexameters, just like the Narrator who quotes him. When Phoenix says memn#mai, he is in effect saying: ‘I have total recall by means of using the medium
of song’.
Similarly, as we have already seen in Chapter 01, kleos means not just glory but glory achieved by way of using the medium of song. This medium is a way of speaking in a special way, of using special speech.
I mention, in passing, Richard P. Martin’s basic finding in The Language of Heroes (Cornell UP 1989): he shows that narratives within the master Narrative of the Iliad contain markers for and about the listeners of the master Narrative.
A special way of speaking, a special speech, marks what is being performed, not just said. Earlier, at Iliad IX 524-525, Phoenix says (as we saw already):
This is the way [hout!s] that we [= I, Phoenix] learned it, the glories [klea] of men of an earlier time
who were heroes [h#r!es] - whenever one of them was overcome by tempestuous anger. The poetry and song of kleos is a performance.
So, things that we do in everyday ways, like remembering, can be done by way of song in other cultures. A culture that uses song as a speech act is what I have been calling a song culture.
The narrative that Phoenix quotes is a beautiful example of compression (on the principle of compression, see Chapter 01). The climax of this compressed narrative will be the words of a woman who is crying. Her name is Kleopatra. I now turn to this climax, as narrated by Phoenix...
E. Iliad IX 550-602
So long as Meleager was in the field things went badly for the Kouretes, and for all their numbers they could not hold their ground under the city walls; but in the course of time anger [kholos] entered Meleager in his thinking [noos], as will happen sometimes even to a sensible man. He was incensed with his mother Althaea, and therefore stayed at home with his wife, whom he had courted as a youth, fair Kleopatra, who was daughter of Marpessa daughter of Euenos, and of Id#s a man then living. It was he who took his bow and faced King Apollo himself for fair Marpessa’s sake; her father and mother then named her Alcyone, because her mother had lamented with the plaintive strains of the halcyon, a bird of much lamentation [penthos], when Phoebus Apollo had carried her off. Meleager, then, stayed at home with wife, nursing the anger which he felt by reason of his mother’s curses. His mother, grieving for the death of her brother, prayed to the gods, and beat the earth with her hands, calling upon Hades and on terrifying Persephone as she went down on her knees, and her bosom was wet with tears as she prayed that they should kill her son - and an Erinys that roams in darkness and knows no mercy heard her, from below in Erebos. Then was heard the din of battle about the gates of Calydon, and the dull thump of the battering against their walls. Now the elders [[verse 574]] of the Aetolians sought out Meleager; they sent the chief of their priests [[verse 575]], and begged him to come out and help them, promising him a great reward. They told him to choose fifty acres, the most fertile in the plain of Calydon, the one-half a vineyard and the other an open plough-land. The old warrior Oineus [[verse 581]] implored him, standing at the threshold of his room and beating the doors in
supplication. His sisters [[verse 584]] and his mother [[verse 584]] herself implored him over and over again, but he kept on refusing them all the more; those of his comrades [[verse 584]] who were nearest and dearest [philtatoi] to him also implored him, but they could not move him till the enemy was battering at the very doors of his chamber, and the Kouretes had scaled the walls and were setting fire to the city. Then at last his sorrowing wife [[verse 590]] detailed the horrors that befall those whose city is taken; she reminded him how the men are slain, and the city is given over to the flames, while the women and children are carried off into captivity; when he heard all this, his heart was touched, and he put on his armor to go forth. Thus yielding to his heart he saved the city of the Aetolians; but they now gave him nothing of those rich rewards that they had offered earlier, and though he saved the city he took nothing by it. Do not then, my near and dear one [philos], think this way; do not let an otherworldly being [daim"n] steer you in this direction. When the ships are burning it will be a harder matter to save them.
I note with great interest here the name of Kleopatra, the wife of Meleager. (This figure is not to be confused with the historical figure Kleopatra, also spelled in the Romanized form Cleopatra.) I also note with interest the second name of the wife of Meleager, which is Alcyone. In ancient Greek lore, the alcyon / halcyon is a bird that sings songs of lament over the destruction of cities.
The emotions of Achilles, which shape the macro-Narrative of the Iliad, can be understood by thinking through the emotions of Meleager, which shape the micro-narrative told by Phoenix in Iliad IX. A key to these emotions is the principle of an ascending scale of affection. This principle is activated in the Meleager narrative, which calls itself klea andr"n (IX 524), told in the midst of philoi (IX 528).
The two emotions that we see foregrounded in this narrative are terror and pity. The philosopher Aristotle (4th century) thinks that the emotions of terror (phobos) and pity (eleos) are essential for understanding tragedy. The same can be said, as we will see, for understanding the epic of the Iliad.
In this connection, it is important to consider again the meaning of philoi ‘friends, near-and-dear ones’, and this word’s links with the emotion of love.
The lament of Kleopatra highlights the emotion of sadness or sorrow or grief. The Meleager narrative explores the combinations and permutations of emotions in a hero, especially sadness, anger, and love.
In the case of sadness and love, I can show some analogies in contemporary popular media:
{LINK: “Implants, just implants.”}
{LINK: “You play beautifully.”}
Both these film clips illustrate the idea that the musical recalling of a memory is the “same thing” as the reliving of an experience, with all its emotions. If you “recall” someone else’s experience by way of song or music, then that experience and all its emotions become your own, even if they had not been originally yours.
The total recall of Phoenix in telling the story of Meleager focuses on the wife of Meleager,
named Kleopatra, and on the meaning of her name Kleopatra. This name Kleopatra in the micro- narrative will be relevant to the name of Patroklos, the best friend of Achilles, in the macro- Narrative. In order to make this point, I now present a shortened version of an argument that I make in my essay “Homer and Greek Myth,” the full text of which is available on the website.
As Achilles contemplates the decisions he has to make in the making of an epic that centers on his own epic actions, he is invited by Phoenix to contemplate the decisions made by an earlier hero in the making of an earlier epic. As we saw earlier, that hero is Meleager, who figures in an earlier epic called the klea andr!n | h#r!!n ‘the glories of men who were heroes’ (IX 524-525). The framed epic about Meleager, quoted as a direct speech by the framing epic, is introduced by way of a special word hout!s ‘thus’, signaling the activation of a special form of speech otherwise known as the ainos.[3] Technically, an ainos is a performance conveying a meaning that needs to be interpreted and then applied in moments of making moral decisions.[4]
The ainos that Phoenix tells in the Iliad, drawing on narratives concerning the hero Meleager, is intended to persuade Achilles to accept an offer made by Agamemnon. That is the short-range intention of Phoenix as a narrator narrating within the master Narration that is the Iliad. But the long-range intention of the master Narrator is quite different from the short-range intention of Phoenix. The master Narrative shows that the embedded narrative of Phoenix was misguided - that is, misguided by hindsight. If Achilles had accepted the offer of Agamemnon, as Phoenix had intended, this acceptance would have undermined the epic reputation of Achilles.[5]
So the reaction of Achilles to the ainos performed by Phoenix needs to be viewed within the framework of the master Narrative performed by the master Narrator. From the standpoint of Achilles as a character who takes shape within the plot of the overall epic that is the Iliad, the consequences of his decisions in reacting to the subplot of the epic about Meleager are still unclear at the moment when he makes these decisions. From the standpoint of the master Narrator who narrates the plot of the Iliad, on the other hand, the consequences are quite clear, since the master Narration takes shape by way of an interaction between the framed micro-narrative about the anger of Meleager and the framing macro-Narrative about the anger of Achilles. The short- range agenda of Phoenix and Achilles will be transformed into the long-range agenda of the master Narrative, which will ultimately correspond to what actually happens to Achilles in his own heroic life. In the world of epic, heroes live out their lives by living the narratives that are their lives.
The point of the story as told by Phoenix is that Achilles must identify with those who are philoi ‘near and dear’ - and must therefore rejoin his comrades in war. Phoenix himself, along with Odysseus and Ajax, is a representative of these comrades by virtue of being sent as a delegate to Achilles. More must be said about the word philos (singular) / philoi (plural), which as we have seen means ‘friend’ as a noun and ‘near and dear’ as an adjective. The translation ‘dear’ conveys the fact that this word has an important emotional component. As we will see, the meaning of the framed micro-narrative of Phoenix emerges from the framing macro-Narrative of the Iliad. As we will also see, the central theme has to do with the power of emotions, and the central character turns out to be someone who is not mentioned a single time in the framed micro-narrative: that someone is Achilles’ best friend, the hero Patroklos.
From the standpoint of Phoenix as narrator, the word philoi applies primarily to Achilles at the
moment when he begins to tell his story (IX 528). But this word applies also to the whole group of epic characters who are listening to the telling of this story. This group, as we have seen, is composed of (1) Odysseus and Ajax, who are the other two delegates besides Phoenix; (2) the two heralds who accompany the three delegates; (3) Achilles himself; and (4) Patroklos. Inside the story told by Phoenix, the comrades who approach Meleager as delegates are the philtatoi, that is, those persons who are ‘nearest and dearest’ to the hero (IX 585-587). So, from the short-range perspective of Phoenix as the narrator of the ainos about Meleager, the three comrades who approach Achilles as delegates must be the persons who are nearest and dearest to him. From the long-range perspective of the master Narrator, however, it is not Phoenix and the two other delegates but Patroklos who must be nearest and dearest to Achilles. Later on in the Iliad, after Patroklos is killed in battle, Achilles recognizes this hero as the one who was all along the philtatos, the ‘nearest and dearest’ of them all (XVII 411, 655).[6]
The story about Meleager as narrated by Phoenix is already anticipating such a long-range recognition. The micro-narrative indicates, by way of the sequence of delegates who are sent to Meleager, that hero’s ascending scale of affection: from elders [[verse 574]] to priests [[verse 575]] to father [[verse 581]] to sisters [[verse 584]] to mother [[verse 584]] to comrades [[verse 584]].[7] At first it seems as if the comrades are at the top of Meleager’s ascending scale of affection, and they are actually described by Phoenix as philtatoi, the ‘nearest and dearest’ (IX 585-587). But there is someone who is even nearer and dearer to Meleager than the comrades. In the logic of the story, that someone turns out to be the wife of Meleager (IX 588-596). In Meleager’s ascending scale of affection, the wife of the hero ultimately outranks even the comrades approaching him as delegates. Likewise in Achilles’ ascending scale of affection, there is someone who ultimately outranks the comrades approaching him as delegates. For Achilles that someone is Patroklos, who was all along the philtatos, the ‘nearest and dearest’ of them all (XVII 411, 655). The name of this hero in its full form, Patrokle#s, matches in meaning the name given to the wife of Meleager in the ainos narrated by Phoenix: she is Kleopatra (IX 556). These two names, Patrokle#s / Kleopatra, both mean ‘the one who has the glory [kleos] of the ancestors [pateres]’.[8] Both these names amount to a periphrasis of the expression klea andr!n | h#r!!n ‘the glories [kleos plural] of men of an earlier time who were heroes’ (IX 524-525), which refers to the ainos narrated by Phoenix to a group of listeners including not only the delegates approaching Achilles but also Achilles and Patroklos themselves (IX 527-528). Phoenix is presuming that all his listeners are philoi ‘near and dear’ to him (IX 528).
Even before the arrival of the delegates, Achilles himself is pictured as singing the glories of heroes, the klea andr!n (IX 189). At this moment, he is alone except for one person. With him is Patroklos, who is intently listening to him and waiting for his own turn to sing, ready to start at whatever point Achilles leaves off singing (IX 190-191). As Patroklos gets ready to continue the song sung by Achilles, the song of Achilles get ready to become the song of Patroklos. So the hero whose name conveys the very idea of klea andr!n ‘glories of men (who are heroes)’ is figured here as the personal embodiment of the klea andr!n.[9]
The ainos as told by Phoenix, to which he refers as klea andr!n (IX 524), connects with the song of Achilles, to which the master Narrator refers likewise as klea andr!n (IX 189). The ainos also connects with Patroklos as the one person who is nearest and dearest to Achilles. Patroklos is at the very top of that hero’s ascending scale of affection.
What must mean more than anything else to Achilles is not only Patroklos himself but also the actual meaning of the name Patrokle#s, which conveys the idea of the klea andr!n. For Achilles, the words klea andr!n represent the master narrative in the actual process of being narrated in the epic of the Iliad. For Achilles, it is a narrative of his own making. And it is narrative in the making.
Just as the song of Achilles is identified with the master Narrative of the Iliad, so also the style of this hero’s language is identified with the overall style of the master Narrator. In other words, the language of Achilles mirrors the language of the master Narrator. Empirical studies of the language of Homeric diction have shown that the language of Achilles is made distinct from the language of other heroes quoted in the Iliad, and this distinctness carries over into the language of the master Narrator, which is thus made distinct from the language of other narrators of epic.[10] It is as if the klea andr!n as sung by Achilles - and as heard by Patroklos - were the model for the overall klea andr!n as sung by Homer.
The ainos as told by Phoenix, to which he refers as klea andr!n (IX 524), connects with the overall klea andr!n as told by the master Narrator. The connection is made by way of poetic conventions distinguishing the ainos from epic. One of these conventions is a set of three features characterizing the rhetoric of the ainos. Unlike epic, the ainos requires three qualifications of its listeners in order to be understood:[11]
The listeners must be sophoi ‘skilled’ in understanding the message encoded in the poetry. That is, they must be mentally qualified.
They must be agathoi ‘noble’. That is, they must be morally qualified.
They must be philoi ‘near and dear’ to each other and to the one who is telling them the ainos. That is, they must be emotionally qualified. Communication is achieved through a special sense of community, that is, through recognizing “the ties that bind.”
Each of these three features of the ainos is made explicit in the lyric poetry of Pindar, which refers to itself as ainos.[12] One of these features is also made explicit in the ainos narrated by Phoenix, that is, in the klea andr!n | h#r!!n, ‘the glories [kleos plural] of men of an earlier time who were heroes’ (IX 524-525). When it comes to the emotional qualifications required for understanding the ainos spoken by Phoenix, we have already seen that the speaker refers to his listeners as philoi ‘near and dear’ to him (IX 528). So the emotional requirements of the ainos are made quite explicit. By contrast, when it comes to the moral requirements for understanding the ainos, they are merely implicit in the word philoi. The moral message as encoded in his ainos becomes explicit only at a later point, once the outcome of the master Narrative is clarified. That point is reached when Patroklos is killed while fighting for his comrades. It is only then that Achilles, for whom the story about the anger of Meleager was intended, ultimately recognizes the moral message of that story.
This kind of recognition, to borrow from the wording used in the lyric poetry of Pindar, shows that the listener has become sophos ‘skilled’ in understanding the message encoded in the ainos. In the story told by Phoenix, that message is conveyed by the figure of Kleopatra, who is nearest
and dearest to Meleager in that hero’s ascending scale of affection. In the logic of the embedded narrative, that figure promotes the moral principle of fighting for one’s comrades, just as the figure of Patroklos, who is nearest and dearest to Achilles, promotes the same principle in the logic of the master Narrative.
Patroklos not only promotes that principle: he exemplifies it through his own epic actions, thereby forfeiting his life. Then, responding to the lesson learned from the death of Patroklos, Achilles will express his willingness to forfeit his own life in order to avenge the death of Patroklos, thereby justifying the principle for which Patroklos had died (Iliad XVIII 90-126).
Plato shows his understanding of this moral principle as developed in the master Narrative of the Iliad: in the Apology (28c-d), we see a paraphrase of the relevant verses of the Iliad (XVIII
90-104), along with some quotations of the original wording. Likewise in Plato’s Symposium (179e-180a), we see another paraphrase of the same verses. In the case of this second paraphrase, however, the choice made by Achilles to forfeit his life in order to avenge the death of Patroklos appears to be conflated with another choice that faces the hero. At an earlier point in the Iliad, in the context of the so-called Embassy Scene where Achilles is speaking to Phoenix and the other delegates (IX 410-416), he says that he must decide between two k#res ‘fates’ (IX 411): either he dies at a ripe old age after a safe nostos ‘homecoming’ to Phthia or he dies young on the battlefield in Troy - and thereby wins for himself a kleos ‘glory’ that is aphthiton ‘unwilting’ (IX 413).
Plato’s apparent conflation of two choices facing Achilles turns out to be justified: the two choices are in fact one choice. In the Embassy Scene of the Iliad, when Achilles says he must choose between two k#res ‘fates’ (IX 411), either a nostos ‘homecoming’ or a kleos ‘glory’ that is aphthiton ‘unwilting’ (IX 413), he is actually not yet ready to make his choice: the two alternative fates have simply been foretold for him by his mother, the goddess Thetis (IX
410-411). Later on, after Patroklos has been killed, Achilles is facing the same choice, but by now he has made his decision. He says that there cannot be a homecoming for him (nosteîn: XVIII 90) because he must kill Hector in order to avenge the death of Patroklos, and, once he kills Hector, his own death in battle will become a certainty (XVIII 90-93), just as his mother had foretold - and as she now foretells again (XVIII 96-97). By choosing to kill Hector, Achilles chooses to die young on the battlefield, and he refers to this death as his inevitable k#r ‘fate’ (XVIII 115). As his compensation, however, he will now win kleos ‘glory’ for himself (XVIII 121).
So, ultimately, Achilles decides to choose kleos over life itself. Earlier on, however, when the choice is first formulated in the Embassy Scene, it is not yet clear which of the two k#res ‘fates’ (IX 411) will be chosen by the hero - whether it will be a nostos ‘homecoming’ or the kleos ‘glory’ that is aphthiton ‘unwilting’ (IX 413). The hero is saying that he loves life more than any property he can win for himself by fighting in Troy, and such property is defined in
terms of raiding cattle in particular and acquiring wealth in general (IX 401-408). Still earlier on, in the so-called Quarrel Scene at the very start of the Iliad, in Rhapsody I, such property is being defined in terms of the women as well as the cattle and the general wealth that the hero has already acquired in the course of raiding the Aeolic territories in the vicinity of Troy.
(The word Aeolic refers to the Greek dialect spoken on the island of Lesbos and the facing
mainland of Asia Minor, as well as the dialect spoken in Thessaly, the homeland of Achilles.)
At the start, the hero’s sense of tim# ‘honor’ is simply a function of all the property he has acquired. The prime example is Briseis, a woman whom Achilles captured in one of his raiding expeditions in the Aeolic territories of Lesbos and the facing mainland of Asia Minor: in the Quarrel Scene at the beginning of the Iliad, when Briseis is forcibly taken from Achilles by Agamemnon, she is treated merely as a war-prize, a trophy, and the hero’s loss is seen as a loss of property. And yet, though the hero’s honor is being expressed exclusively in terms of property in the Quarrel Scene of Rhapsody I, things have changed by the time Achilles speaks to Phoenix in the Embassy Scene of Rhapsody IX. By then, Achilles has rethought the loss of Briseis. By now this loss has become the loss of a personal relationship, and Achilles even says he loves Briseis as he would love a wife (IX 340-343).
So the ainos of Phoenix about Meleager, a hero who seems at first to love his wife more than he loves his own comrades, will now take on a special meaning for the hero of the master Narrative that is the Iliad. But there are vital questions that remain: does Achilles love his would-be wife more than he loves his comrades - or even more than life itself? Here is where the name of Meleager’s own wife, Kleopatra, becomes essential. As we have seen, the meaning of this character’s name is parallel to the meaning of Patrokle#s, the name of the one character who means more to Achilles than anyone else in the whole world. After Patroklos is killed, this hero is recognized as the one single character who was nearest and dearest to Achilles. Achilles now says that he has all along valued Patroklos as much as he has valued his own life (XVIII 80-82).
So the hero Ajax misses the point when he accuses Achilles of loving Briseis more than he loves his comrades (IX 622-638). Achilles loves his would-be wife the same way that Meleager loves Kleopatra, but there is a deeper meaning to be found in that hero’s love for Kleopatra, and that deeper meaning has to do with the relevance of the name of Kleopatra to Achilles. What Achilles loves more than anything else in the whole world is what the name of Kleopatra means to Meleager - and what the name of his own nearest and dearest comrade Patroklos means to him. As we have seen, these two names Patrokle#s / Kleopatra both mean ‘the one who has the glory [kleos] of the ancestors [pateres]’, and both these names amount to a periphrasis of the expression klea andr!n | h#r!!n ‘the glories [kleos plural] of men of an earlier time who were heroes’ (IX 524-525).
Just as Patroklos made the moral choice of loving his comrades more than life itself, actually giving up his life for them, so also Achilles will now make the moral choice of giving up his own life for his comrade Patroklos - and for the meaning of Patroklos. The meaning of the name of Patroklos, ‘the one who has the glory [kleos] of the ancestors [pateres]’, recapitulates the epic choice of Achilles, who ultimately opts for kleos over life itself. That is why the epic kleos chosen by Achilles must be aphthiton ‘unwilting’ forever (IX 413): the kleos of Achilles is like a flower so beautiful that it must not ever lose its divine vitality.
[1] Nagy Homer’s Text and Language (2004) 175n78; cf. 80n75.
[2] Nagy Best of the Achaeans (1979) 1§§2-4.
[3] Nagy Pindar’s Homer (1990) 7§1n4.
[4] Nagy Pindar’s Homer (1990) 7§§1-4.
[5] Nagy Homeric Questions (1996) 142-143.
[6] Nagy Best of the Achaeans (1979) 6§15.
[7] The term ascending scale of affections is explained in Nagy Best of the Achaeans (1979) 6§15.
[8] Nagy Best of the Achaeans (1979) 6§§15, 17-19.
[9] Nagy Poetry as Performance (1996) 72-73, Plato’s Rhapsody and Homer’s Music (2002) 17.
[10] Martin The Language of Heroes (1989) 225, 227, 233, 237.
[11] Nagy Pindar’s Homer (1990) 6§5.
[12] Nagy Pindar’s Homer (1990) 6§§5-8. Chapter 03: The poetics of lament
There are two key words for this chapter: akhos and penthos, and the meaning of both words is ‘grief, sorrow; public expression of grief, sorrow, by way of lamentation or keening’
A. Iliad I 188-191
The son of Peleus [= Achilles] felt grief [akhos], and his heart within his shaggy breast was divided [190] whether to draw his sword, push the others aside, and kill the son of Atreus [= Agamemnon], or to restrain himself and check his anger [kholos].
The word akhos is connected with the name of Achilles in the Iliad. And the meaning of the word akhos, which conveys intense grief, sorrow, pain, is connected with a central theme that is linked with Achilles in the Homeric Iliad: Achilles is “a man of constant sorrow.” I have already used this phrase once before, in Chapter 01, where I was thinking of the title of a traditional American folk song. I am thinking now also of an expression in Isaiah 53:3 as translated in the King James Bible: ‘a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief’. One of my major research projects over the years has been the study of this central theme of grief and sorrow as experienced by Achilles and his people, the Achaeans. Essential for such a study are the principal words that express all the
grief and sorrow, namely, akhos and its synonym penthos. We can see this theme of grief and sorrow already at the very beginning of the Iliad. As Passage A shows, Achilles experiences akhos right away, and the grief, sorrow, and pain of this akhos modulates right away into kholos, anger.
Just as the word akhos is connected with the name of Achilles, its synonym penthos is connected with the name of an Amazon called Penthesileia. The story of Penthesileia the Amazon is preserved in an ancient plot summary attributed to Proclus:
03 B. From an ancient plot-summary (by Proclus) of the lost epic Aithiopis (‘Song of the Ethiopians’)
The Amazon Penthesileia, daughter of Ares and Thracian by birth, comes to Troy as an ally of the Trojans. In the middle of her aristeia [= greatest epic moments], Achilles kills her and the Trojans arrange for her funeral. Thersites, reviling and reproaching Achilles by saying that he loved Penthesileia, is killed by Achilles.
What we read here is all that we have left, unfortunately, about Penthesileia the Amazon in this ancient plot-summary.[1]
We must ponder a basic question about the plot of this lost epic, the Aithiopis, as retold by Proclus in his plot-summary. The question is this: when Thersites says that Achilles is in love with the Amazon Penthesileia, why is Achilles angry enough to kill him? My answer is this: it would seem that Achilles is in a state of denial about having fallen in love with the beautiful and powerful Amazon whom he has just killed.
As we know from the narrative about Thersites in Iliad II, we are dealing here with a character who tells the truth about heroes, even though he tells it in a distorted and offensive way that make the offended heroes want to kill him. A close reading of the Thersites narrative in Iliad II shows that there is a kernel of truth in what he says about Agamemnon and Achilles when he speaks in public about the big quarrel between those two heroes.[2] Thersites is lucky to escape with his life for what he says here in the Iliad, but his luck finally runs out in the Aithiopis.
We know that Thersites was on to something when he mocked Achilles for falling in love with Penthesileia. We know this from the evidence of ancient vase-paintings, dating from the sixth and fifth centuries, where we see depictions of the actual moment when Achilles kills the beautiful Amazon. Here are two examples:
LINK: two vase paintings, showing the killing of the Amazon Penthesileia by Achilles [[http://www.theoi.com/image/img_penthesileia.jpg (late 6th c.) http://www.easypedia.gr/el/images/shared/0/02/
Akhilleus_Penthesileia_Staatliche_Antikensammlungen_2688.jpg (mid fifth c.)]]
These evocative paintings, which show the eye contact between Achilles and Penthesileia at the precise moment when he plunges his weapon into her beautiful body, convey a remarkable convergence of themes linked with death and sex - and we will observe many other examples of
such convergence as we proceed in our readings from ancient Greek song culture. Coming up, in Chapter 04, is an example from the lyric poetry of Sappho.
A big question remains: why would Achilles fall in love with the Amazon Penthesileia in particular? A key to the answer is the name of this Amazon, Penthesileia, which means ‘she who has penthos for the people [l!os]’. This name is a perfect parallel to the name of Achilles, the full form of which can be reconstructed linguistically as *Akhi-l$os and which is understood in Homeric poetry to mean ‘he who has akhos for the people [laos]’.[3] Not only the names of these epic characters but even the characters themselves are beatifully matched. When Achilles and Penthesileia are engaged in mortal combat, as we see in the vase paintings, their eyes meet at the precise moment when he kills her. And what Achilles sees in Penthesileia is a female reflection of his male self. All along, Penthesileia has been his other self in the feminine gender, as even her name shows, and now he has killed her. The death of Penthesileia is thus a source of grief, sorrow, and overwhelming sadness for Achilles, this man of constant sorrow. Both these epic names - and the epic characters that are tied to them - have to do with themes of lament, as signaled by the words akhos and penthos. Both these words point to the ‘grief’ or ‘sorrow’ or ‘sadness’ of lament.
What is lament? It is a traditional speech-act of crying and singing at the same time, expressing grief, sorrow, sadness. When people like you and me cry, we just cry. When people in a song culture cry, they lament. That is, they sing while they cry, they cry while they sing, and this kind of singing is crying; this kind of crying is singing. The physical aspects of crying are all integrated into the singing: the flow of tears, the choking of the voice, the convulsions of the body, and so on, are all part of the singing.
Anthropologists have collected many examples of laments that are sung and cried by persons in the depths of real grief. I could illustrate here by way of citing performances in Modern Greek contexts. There has been a great deal of ethnographic collecting of and research on laments in Modern Greek song culture. But I choose here instead to focus on a lament in the context of a historically unrelated song culture. So we are dealing here with a typological parallel.
It is Hungarian lament, sung and cried by an old widow who is mourning the deaths of his two sons in war. The lament was recorded many years ago by Béla Bartók, himself a Hungarian. Bartók was not only a celebrated composer and pianist but also a respected ethnographer and ethnomusicologist who studied the song cultures of Eastern Europe and elsewhere. He made live recordings of a wide variety of folk performances, including performances of lament. It was he who recorded the lament that I have chosen as illustration.
LINK: “A Hungarian lament.” [[first frame on the left]]
It is a well-known fact, learned from ethnographic research on laments, that these sad songs centering on the death of loved ones can switch to love songs. And not only can laments switch to love songs. The converse also happens: love songs can switch to laments, especially in the case of love songs that center not only on lovers who are lost or dead but also on the loss or death of love itself. Just as laments express sorrow and love together in the course of mourning the death of a loved one, so also love songs can readily express the same two emotions of sorrow and love together. And why should a traditional love song be sad? It is because most traditional love songs
are preoccupied with the themes of unrequited love. And, in most song cultures, love songs about unrequited love are felt to be deeply erotic.
I show here an example. It is a Hungarian love song, from the region of Transylvania, and the name of the love song is Szerelem, which means ‘love’. This song was used by the director of the film The English Patient (1996), both at the beginning of the film and also in the course of the action in the film, as for example in an intensely erotic love scene where the Hungarian character in the story of the film plays on an old “phonograph” machine a vinyl record of this love song . You will find this song next to the link for “A Hungarian lament” on the Multimedia page.
LINK: “A Hungarian Love Song.” [[third from left]] I give here the words of the first two stanzas only:
Szerelem, szerelem, | O, love love |
átkozott gyötrelem, | accursed torture |
mért nem virágoztál | why did you not blossom |
minden fatetejen? | on every treetop? |
Minden fa tetején, | On the top of every tree, |
diófa levelén. | on the leaf of a walnut tree, |
úgy szakisztott volna | so every maiden and unmarried young man |
minden leány s legény. | would have plucked it. |
We see here, when you hear it, an example of stylized crying. That is to say, the singer is not really crying, since the crying is stylized.
In most traditional song cultures, including Greek song culture, laments and love songs are performed primarily by women, and many of the formal gestures of lament are specific to women.
The performance of songs by women is a most important matter in ancient Greek song culture. And it is a most important matter to consider right now, as we study the Homeric Iliad, since the traditions of such performances pervade the Iliad. In fact, as we will see here and in chapters to come, Homeric poetry needs to be rethought in the light of the women’s song traditions that pervade it.
A moment ago, I mentioned formal gestures of lament that are specific to women. Here is an example of such a gesture in the singing of ancient Greek laments: women conventionally let down the hair while lamenting. This spontaneous but traditional gesture is an expression of loss of control and order in one’s personal life. There are also other spontaneous but traditional ways of expressing loss of control and order, such as tearing your hair, scratching your cheeks, ripping your fine clothing. In the case of letting down the hair, this ritual gesture is normally preceded by the equally spontaneous but traditional ritual gesture ripping off one’s headdress. A spectacular example is the scene in Iliad XXII when Andromache rips off her headdress, which is the most elaborate headdress to be found in Homeric poetry, before starting to sing a lament over the death of her husband Hector. By ripping off this headdress, Andromache is letting down her beautiful curly hair. In effect, what the master Narrator presents here to the mind’s eye is the complete undoing of a woman’s hair. Andromache will perform her lament, crying and singing, with her
hair completely undone: 03 C. Iliad XXII 460-477
[460] Her heart beat fast, and as she spoke she rushed from the house like a Maenad, with her waiting-women following after. When she reached the battlements and the crowd of people, she stood looking out upon the wall, and saw Hector being taken away in front of the city –
[465] the horses dragging him without heed or care over the ground towards the ships of the Achaeans. Her eyes were then shrouded as with the darkness of night and she fell fainting backwards, losing her life-breath [psukh#]. She tore the headdress from her head and flung it away, also the frontlet and the snood with its plaited band,
[470] and the veil which golden Aphrodite had given her on the day when Hector of the shining helmet took her with him from the house of Eëtion, after having given countless gifts of wooing for her sake. Her husband’s sisters and the wives of his brothers crowded round her and supported her, for she was stunned to the point of dying;
[475] when she again presently breathed and came to, she sobbed and made lament among the Trojans saying, “Woe is me, O Hector; woe, ...”
At this point, the beautiful song of lament sung by Andromache is quoted in full by the master Narrator (XXII 477-514). In order to appreciate this lament in context, we need to understand the scene of dishevelment that leads up to it, which I have studied at length in an article. Here is an abridged version of what I say about it there:[4]
When Andromache suddenly sees the corpse of Hector, dragged behind the chariot of Achilles, she falls into a swoon (XXII 466-467) while at the same time tearing off her elaborate kr#demnon ‘headdress’ (XXII 468-470). In this passionate moment, as her eyes are just about to behold the dreaded sight of her husband’s corpse, she is described as looking just like a Maenad (XXII 460: ()*+,-* ./0). Earlier in the Iliad, in an analogous context (VI 389), Andromache is pictured as ()*+1(2+3 45678) ‘looking like a woman possessed’ as she rushes toward the walls of Troy to see for herself the fate of the Trojans on the battlefield.
In this dramatic context, I draw attention to the evocative word kr#demnon ‘headdress’ (XXII 470). It refers to the overall ornamental hair-binding that holds together three separate kinds of ornamental hair-binding that serve to keep Andromache’s hair in place, under control (XXII 469). [5] When Andromache violently tears off from her head this most elaborate headdress, causing her hair to come completely undone, she is ritually miming her complete loss of control over her own fate as linked with the fate of her husband: we see here a ritually eroticized gesture that expresses her extreme sexual vulnerability as linked with the violent death and disfiguration of her husband. For Andromache to do violence to her own kr#demnon is to express the anticipated violence of her future sexual humiliation at the hands of the enemy. Pointedly, the goddess Aphrodite herself had given this kr#demnon to Andromache on her wedding day (XXII
470-471).
Such explicit association of the kr#demnon with Aphrodite reveals its erotic properties. The
undoing of a woman’s hair, caused by the undoing of her kr#demnon, produces what I will call an Aphrodisiac effect. So long as a woman’s kr#demnon is in place, her sexuality is under control just as her hair is under control. When the kr#demnon is out of place, however, her sexuality threatens to get out of control.
The lament that is sung by Andromache when she sees the corpse of Hector dragged behind the chariot of Achilles is arguably the most artistic and elaborate of all the laments quoted in Homeric poetry (XXII 477-514). It is also the most lengthy of all Homeric laments. Later on, toward the end of the Iliad, Andromache sings a lament at the funeral of Hector in Troy, and this lament too is quoted in full by the master Narrator (XXIV 725-745). And, earlier on, when Andromache speaks to her husband for the last time in a tearful farewell scene, her words correspond formally to the words of a lament that could have been sung, with adjustments, at the funeral of Hector, and these words too are quoted in full by the master Narrator (VI 407-439).
We have already read, in Proseminar 01, this first of the three laments performed by Andromache. And I will analyze it further at a later point in this chapter. But at this point I need to emphasize only one thing about it: in her first lament, Andromache is singing and crying over the death of her husband Hector even before he dies. In that case, her lament is an act of premonition.
I offer here a typological parallel to Andromache’s first lament as an act of premonition. It comes from the Korean film Chunhyang (2000), which is based on a traditional Korean pansori narrative about a righteous young woman named Chunhyang, who is of low social status but high moral principles.
LINK Chunhyang. [[First of the three.]]
In this scene, the secret husband of Chunhyang announces that he will abandon her, though only for a while, he claims. The reaction of Chunhyang is instantaneous grief. Her sorrow is mixed with feelings of love for her husband, and with feelings of fear and anger that she will lose him forever. She bursts into a lament, accompanied by ritual gestures, such as the violent tearing of her clothes, which is a ritual premonition of the violence she will endure because of her low social rank, now that her high-ranking secret husband is leaving her. This violent tearing of clothes dramatizes her sexual vulnerability in the uncertain future that now awaits her. In the plot of the Chunhyang narrative, that vulnerability will turn out to be a grim reality for this abandoned woman, whose low social status makes her become the tragic victim of predatory men of high social status. Her lament is a premonition that anticipates this reality, as she keeps on crying and singing. And the master Narrator quotes the lament of Chunhyang and she cries and sings. This way, by quoting the lament of Chunhyang, the Narrator performs his own stylized crying and singing, which is more artistic than the lament of Chunhyang. When Chunhyang is lamenting, her crying and singing is more natural, not as musical as the stylized crying and singing of the master Narrator, and her lament echoes in a kind of delayed reaction the singing of her lament as performed by the master Narrator. In the middle of her lament, the macro-Narrative of the film shows flashbacks to happy moments in the past when Chunhyang is seen making love to her secret husband. These erotic flashbacks have the effect of intensifying the sorrow of Chunhyang as she thinks back to those happy moments in the past that preceded her excruciating pain and suffering in the present. And, conversely, her sorrow intensifies the eroticism of these
flashbacks.
The macro-Narrative of the film Chunhyang actually shows the master Narrator in action. The camera shows him performing before a large audience representing a broad cross-section of ages and social status. The master Narrator is telling about the extruciating pain and suffering inflicted on Chunyhang by her high ranking tormentor, a magistrate who seeks to alienate her affections from her absent husband. The earlier lament of premonition sung by Chunhyang, accompanied by acts of ritual self-degradation like the ripping of her fine clothing, now becomes a lament of actuality, where she cries and sings over the excruciating pain that is being inflicted on her. And the lament that she sings while she is being tortured is quoted by the master Narrator himself, whose stylized crying and singing is foregrounded against the background of the natural crying and singing of Chunhyang as she endures the pain inflicted on her. Her crying and singing are echoing the stylized crying and singing of the master Narrator who is quoting her sad song:
LINK Chunhyang [[second of the three]].
Keeping in mind the laments of Chunhyang as a typological parallell, I now turn back to the first lament of Andromache in the Iliad. Here in Chapter 03, I quote only a part of this lament, where we see Andromache singing and crying over the death of her husband Hector even before he dies. As I said before, her lament here is an act of premonition ...
03 D. Iliad VI 407-416, 421-432
“Dear husband,” said she, “your valor will bring you to destruction; think of your infant son, and on my hapless self who before long shall be your widow - for the Achaeans will set upon you in a body and kill you. It would be better for me, should I lose you, to lie dead and buried, for I shall have nothing left to comfort me when you are gone, except for grief [akhos]. I have neither father nor mother now. Achilles slew my father when he destroyed Thebe the beautiful city of the Cilicians. ... I had seven brothers in my father’s house, but on the same day they all went down into the house of Hades. Achilles killed them as they were with their sheep and cattle. My mother
her who had been queen of all the land under Mount Placus - he brought here with the spoil, and freed her for a great sum, but the archer - queen Artemis took her away from the house of your father. O Hector - you who to me are father, mother, brother, and dear husband - have mercy on me; stay here at this wall; make not your child fatherless, and your wife a widow.”
As we see here in these words of lament, the word akhos ‘grief, sorrow’ is used to express the performance, the singing, of lament.
In the course of lamenting her sorrows here, Andromache makes special mention of the death of her father, whose name is Eëtion. From what she says, it is clear that her father would be at the top of her ascending scale of affection - if he were alive. But her father is dead, and so too are her seven brothers and her mother. For Andromache, all she has left is her husband Hector, who is now the entirety of her ascending scale of affections. Hector has become for Andromache her father, brothers, and mother as well as her husband. In effect, Andromache is telling Hector: you’re my everything.
The death of Eëtion, Andromache’s father, who would have been at the top of her ascending scale
of affection, deepens the irony in a passage we saw earlier, Passage D of Chapter 02, Iliad IX 185-195. Here I repeat only the relevant lines of that passage:
03 E. Iliad IX 185-191
When they [= Phoenix along with his fellow delegates, Odysseus and Ajax] reached the ships and tents of the Myrmidons, they found Achilles playing on a lyre, a beautiful one, of exquisite workmanship, and its cross-bar was of silver. It was part of the spoils that he had taken when he destroyed the city of Eëtion, and he was now diverting himself with it and singing the glories of men [klea andr!n]. He was alone with Patroklos, who sat facing him and said nothing, waiting till he [= Achilles] would leave off singing.
We see Achilles here singing the klea andr!n, the ‘glories of heroes of the past’ (Iliad IX 189) - while accompanying himself on a lyre. And the lyre that he is strumming had once belonged to Eëtion, the father of Andromache. You could say that Achilles is strumming the pain of Andromache.[6] I think of the wording in the song original sung by Roberta Flack, Killing me softly (1973): “Strumming my pain with his fingers, singing my life with his words, ...”
You have to ask yourself: what is Achilles singing about when he is singing the klea andr!n, the ‘glories of heroes of the past’ (Iliad IX 189)? The master Narrator of the macro-Narrative does not say. There is no quoting or even paraphrasing of the subject of the song sung by Achilles here. But there is a hint about that subject, and that hint is embedded in another vitally important nearby mention of klea andr!n in the Iliad. We have already seen it. It happens when Phoenix is telling the story of the hero Meleager and his wife Kleopatra, and the old man refers to his micro- narrative as klea andr!n, the ‘glories of heroes of the past’ (Iliad IX 524). And what is the subject of that micro-narrative? From the standpoint of Phoenix as the narrator, the subject is the love a hero owes to his comrades. From the standpoint of the master Narrator of the macro-Narrative that is the Iliad, however, the subject is nothing less than the meaning of Kleopatra herself, of her name, which has to do with the ‘glories of the ancestors’, the ‘glories of heroes of the past’.
The meaning of Kleopatra, as well as the meaning of the song about Kleopatra as told by
Phoenix, is relevant to the very idea of lamentation. Inside the song about Kleopatra, that is, inside the klea andr!n as performed by Phoenix, Kleopatra is actually shown performing a lament, singing it to her husband Meleager, and her song of lament is actually paraphrased in this song of and about Kleopatra (IX 590-594). In this song, that is, in the klea andr!n as performed by Phoenix (Iliad IX 524), we see that Kleopatra has a second name besides Kleopatra, and that second name is a clear signal of lamentation. That second name is Alcyone, and the meaning of that name is transparent. In ancient Greek traditions, the alcyon / halcyon is a bird that is linked with singing songs of lament, and the Iliad makes this link explicit in referring to the name Alcyone, given to the lamenting Kleopatra by her lamenting mother and father:
03 F. Iliad IX 561-564
Her father and mother then named her Alcyone, because her mother had lamented with the plaintive strains of the halcyon, a bird of much lamentation [penthos], when Phoebus Apollo had carried her off.
Can we say, then, that the klea andr!n sung by Achilles himself is the song of Kleopatra? Yes and no. It is the song of Kleopatra, but it is not only her song. It is also the song of Patroklos. As we have seen in the previous chapter, the meaning of the name of Kleopatra is also the meaning of the name of Patroklos, ‘the one who has the glory [kleos] of the ancestors [pateres]’, and this meaning recapitulates the epic choice of Achilles, who ultimately opts for kleos over life itself. That is why the epic kleos chosen by Achilles must be aphthiton ‘unwilting’ forever (IX 413): the kleos of Achilles is like a flower so beautiful that it must never lose its divine vitality. But that is also why Achilles himself needs to be lamented, mourned, since he will wilt just as a beautiful flower wilts, since he will die the death that he chose for himself. That is why Thetis, the mother of Achilles, laments him, even before he dies, as if he were a beautiful seedling. As in the case of Andromache’s first lament, the lament of Thetis here is an act of premonition
03 G. Iliad XVIII 54-62
(this is my literal translation, in Best of the Achaeans [1979] 182-183 {LINK}): Ah me, the wretch! Ah me, the mother, so sad it is, of the very best.
I gave birth to a faultless and strong son,
the very best of heroes. And he shot up like a seedling.
I nurtured him like a shoot in the choicest spot of the orchard, only to send him off on curved ships to fight at Troy.
And I will never be welcoming him
back home as returning warrior, back to the House of Peleus. And as long as he lives and sees the light of the sun,
he will have sorrow [akh-nutai].
Here is the way the wilting of Achilles is expressed in a lyric song composed by the fifth-century poet Pindar:
H. Pindar Isthmian 8.56a-60
Even when he [= Achilles] died, the songs did not leave him, but the Heliconian Maidens [= the Muses] stood by his pyre and his funeral mound, pouring forth a song of lamentation [thr#nos] that is famed far and wide. And so it was that the gods decided to hand over the worthy man, wilted [phthi-menos] in death as he was, to the songs of the goddesses [Muses].[7] And this, even now, wins as a prize the words, as the chariot-team of the Muses starts moving on its way to glorify the memory of Nikokles the boxer.
So the epic kleos chosen by Achilles is also a lyric kleos. And epic recognizes that this kleos is lyric as well as epic. As we have seen, Achilles is pictured as singing the klea andr!n ‘glories of
heroes’ (IX 189) while accompanying himself on a lyre, by which I mean a seven-stringed instrument that typifies ‘lyric’ poetry in ancient Greek song culture. As we have also seen, this precious musical instrument had been plundered by Achilles when he captured the native city of Andromache (IX 186-189). The link here with Andromache is essential, in view of the fact that this character is featured as singing three of the greatest laments in the Iliad.
As I argue in my essay “Lyric and Greek Myth” (available on the Heroes website under the heading Commentaries under the heading Texts, Commentaries, More) the song of klea andr!n ‘glories of heroes’ sung by Achilles inside the epic of the Homeric Iliad (IX 189) is like an echo of songs about love and bittersweet sorrow as heard in lyric song and poetry. In lyric, such feelings about loves and bittersweet sorrows are typically linked not only with Achilles but also with that most celebrated pair of doomed lovers in ancient Greek song culture, namely, Andromache and the man who earns the ultimate hatred and fury of Achilles in the Iliad, Hector. [8] The kleos of Achilles is a form of song that dwells on the hatred and the fury, the love and the sorrow - and on the power of song in expressing all these intensely lyrical feelings.
[1] If you want to read right now the rest of the plot-summary of this lost epic Aithiopis, concerning what happens after the death of the Amazon Penthesileia, see my translation of the whole plot-summary of the Aithiopis in the Sourcebook.
[2] Nagy Best of the Achaeans (1979) 259-264.
[3] This reconstruction is explained in Nagy Best of the Achaeans (1979) 94-117 and Homer’s Text and Language (2004) 131-137.
[4] Nagy “Did Sappho and Alcaeus ever meet?” (2007) 249-250.
[5] The three separate terms for ornamental hair-bindings here are ampux ‘frontlet’, kekruphalos ‘snood’, and anadesm# ‘headband’ (Iliad XXII 469); the overall hair-binding or ‘headdress’ that keeps it all in place is the kr#demnon (XXII 470). Similarly, Varro (On the Latin language 5.130) speaks of three separate terms for ornamental hair-bindings traditionally used by Roman matrons: lanea ‘woolen ribbon’, reticulum ‘net-cap’ or ‘snood’, and capital ‘headband’. To these three words Varro (7.44) adds a fourth, tutulus (derived from the adjective tutus ‘providing safety’), which seems to be an overall term for the generic headdress worn by brides and Vestal Virgins as well as matrons.
[6] In a forthcoming study, Masterpieces of Metonymy (2011), I argue that we see here a perfect example of metonymy.
[7] As I argue in Best of the Achaeans (1979) 176-177, the phraseology here shows that Achilles was destined to have a kleos that is a-phthi-ton ‘unwilting’, as explicitly formulated at Iliad IX 413.
[8] Nagy Homer the Preclassic (2010) II§297.
Chapter 04. Equal to a god. Introduction
As I noted in Chapter 03, the performance of songs by women is a most important matter in ancient Greek song culture. And it is a most important matter to consider as we study the Homeric Iliad, since the traditions of such performances pervade the Iliad.
It makes sense, therefore, for you to take the time to read in the Sourcebook, already at this early stage of the course, all the fragments of surviving poetry and song attributed to Sappho and Alcman. Reading these fragments will take less than half an hour altogether. Especially important are the fragments of Sappho. The earlier you acquaint yourselves with the look and feel of the traditions represented by Sappho, the better.
Sappho was a Lesbian, which means simply that she was from an island called Lesbos, which is situated off the northern coast of Asia Minor. In the song culture of this island, she was considered the primary representative of women’s songs, while a man called Alcaeus was considered the primary representative of men’s songs. According to the traditions of Lesbos, both Sappho and Alcaeus lived in the late seventh and early sixth centuries BCE. That rough date matches a reference in a song of Alcaeus (F 49.12) to a contemporary event that can be dated independently, namely, the destruction of Ascalon by Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, in 604 BCE (Alcaeus T 1).
The poetry of Sappho and Alcaeus, taken together, represents the repertoire of the myths and the rituals of the people of Lesbos as expressed in lyric song.
(Here is a quick working definition of myth and ritual together. Ritual is doing things and saying things in a special way. Myth is saying things in a special way. So ritual frames myth. I have more to say about ritual and myth in my article “The Epic Hero,” which is “Introduction 3” on the Heroes website.)
I have written about the poetry of Sappho and Alcaeus in the article “Lyric and Greek Myth,” and I offer here a short excerpt.
The poetry of Sappho and Alceaus dates back to a period when the city-states of the island of Lesbos were confederated into a single state. This federal state, the political term for which was sunoikisis (Thucydides 3.3.1), was dominated by the city of Mytilene, know as the home of Sappho and Alcaeus. There was a single communal place reserved for the festivals of this island federation, and that place was named Messon, the ‘middle space’.
In the words of Alcaeus, this federal space was called the temenos the!n ‘sacred precinct of the gods’ (F 130B.13). It was the designated place for celebrating a seasonally recurring festival, described in the words of Alcaeus as the occasion for the seasonally recurring assemblies or ‘comings together’ of the people of Lesbos (F 130B). This festival featured as its main spectacle the singing and dancing of choruses Lesbiades ‘women of Lesbos’, described as ‘exceptional in their beauty’ (130B.17 krinnomenai phuan). When I say choruses, I mean singing and dancing ensembles. The Greek word khoros refers to dancing as well as singing.
The reality of such a festival in Lesbos featuring the choral performances of women is independently verified by a scholion (which refers to a learned note found in a manuscript) attached to a passage in the Homeric Iliad (IX 130): from this scholion we learn that the name of the festival was the Kallisteia, which can be translated as ‘pageant of beauty’. In the relevant Iliadic passage as well as elsewhere in the Iliad, there are references to women from Lesbos, described as exceptional in their beauty, who were captured by Achilles in the years that preceded the final destruction of Troy (IX 128-131, 270-273). These direct references in the Iliad can be analyzed as indirect references to the festival of the Kallisteia in Lesbos.[1] Another reference to the Kallisteia is attested in a poem from the Greek Anthology (9.189), which says that this festival takes place within the temenos ‘sacred precinct’ of Hera: this festival, it also says, was the occasion for choral singing and dancing by the women of Lesbos, with Sappho herself pictured as the leader of their khoros ‘chorus’. As I already said, an ancient Greek chorus was an ensemble of singing and dancing performers.
Sappho in her songs is conventionally pictured as the lead singer of a chorus composed of the women of Lesbos, and she speaks as their main choral personality.[2] As we see in the Greek Anthology, she is figured as the lead singer of this chorus of women who sing and dance in the federal space of the people of Lesbos. Sappho’s songs are pictured as taking place within this sacred place, marked by the deictic word tuide ‘here’ (as in Sappho Song 17 line 7).
Elsewhere too, this same federal space of the people of Lesbos is marked by the deictic word tuide ‘here’ (Sappho Song 96 line 2) as the sacred place of choral performance, and the noun molpa (line 5) makes it explicit that the performance takes the form of choral singing and dancing. In archaic poetry, the verb for ‘sing and dance in a chorus’ is melpesthai.[3]
Key word for this chapter: phainetai ‘he / she appears’ OR ‘he / she appears in an epiphany’ A derivative of this word is phantasia, which in later Greek literature means ‘fantasy’, that is,
‘imagined vision’ or ‘imagination’. The English word fantasy, derived from phantasia, implies a
vision that is unreal. In earlier Greek literature, as we are about to see, there is no ‘fantasy’ about an epiphany. It is a vision that is felt as real, not unreal. An epiphany is the appearance of something divine, something that is understood to be absolutely real.
A. Song 31 of Sappho
(translation by Nagy; for a more poetic rendition, see the version of Julia Dubnoff in the Sourcebook)
phainetai moi k#nos 9sos theoisin He appears to me, that one, equal to the
gods,
emmen’ !n#r ottis enantios toi the man who, facing you,
isdanei kai pl$sion $du ph!nei- is seated and, up close, that sweet voice
of yours
s$s upakouei he listens to
kai gelais$s 9meroen to m’ # m$n and how you laugh your charming
laugh. Why, it
kardian en st#thesin eptoaisen makes my heart flutter within my breast,
!s gar es s’ id! brokhe’ !s me ph!nai- since, the moment I look at you, right
then, for me
s’ oud’ en et’ eikei to make any sound at all won’t work any more.
alla kam men gl!ssa e$ge lepton My tongue has broken down and a
delicate
d’ autika khr!i p:r upadedrom$ken - all of a sudden - fire rushes under my
skin.
oppatessi d’ oud’ en or#mm’ epirrom- With my eyes I see not a thing, and there
is a roar
beisi d’ akouai that my ears make.
kad de m’ idr!s kakkheetai tromos de Sweat pours down me and a trembling pa9san agrei khl!rotera de poias seizes all of me; paler than grass
emmi tethnak#n d’ olig! ‘pideu#s am I, and a little short of death phainom’ em’ aut[$i do I appear to me.
We see here in Song 31 of Sappho the ritual world of a wedding. The ‘he’ refers to the bridegroom, who is figured as a god at the moment of the singing of this song. It is as if a god has appeared at a wedding. In ritual terms, we see here an epiphany. The word k#nos ‘that one’, as we will see more clearly at a later point when we read Philostratus, actually signals the epiphany. The ‘you’ who is being addressed by the speaker is female: she is the bride, who is figured as a goddess in her own right at the moment of the singing of this song. The ‘I’ who is speaking, also female, is the lead singer who sings the song, and she is ‘Sappho’.
Such a female lead singer is a prima donna, to borrow a term used in the world of opera. The lead singer here speaks for the whole group that is attending the wedding. And this lead singer, this female speaker, experiences an attraction to both the bridegroom and the bride. Or, we might say that she experiences an attraction to the attraction between the two. The attraction is both esthetic and erotic. It is a totalizing attraction, creating feelings of total connectedness. And this totalizing connectedness activates all the senses of the speaker, who experiences an “erotic meltdown.” The feelings come to a climax described as just one moment away from death. That is the way the speaker ‘seems’ to herself. What is ‘seeming’ on one level is an epiphany on another level. The female speaker has an epiphany to herself. She experiences fusion with divinity, and this fusion is not only esthetic but also erotic. I think it is too simple to say that this is an auto-erotic moment: it is an auto-epiphany.
Such a moment, when the bridegroom is the god and the bride is the goddess, is signaled by an epithet, that is, by an ornamental adjective. That epithet is isos theoisin ‘equal to the gods’ in line 1
of the song.
We see a similar epithet in Song 44 of Sappho, featuring Andromache and Hector as bride and bridegroom; they are described by the epithet theoeikeloi ‘just like the gods’, and we must note that they look like gods at their wedding.
This song is an example of epic as refracted in women’s songmaking traditions.[4] 04 B. Song 44 of Sappho (“The Wedding of Hector and Andromache”)
...The herald Idaios came...a swift messenger | ...and the rest of Asia...unwilting glory (kleos aphthiton). | Hector and his companions led the dark-eyed | luxuriant Andromache from holy Thebes and...Plakia | in ships upon the salty sea. | Many golden bracelets and purple | robes..., intricately-worked ornaments, | countless silver cups and ivory. | Thus he spoke. And his dear father quickly leapt up. | And the story went to his friends through the broad city. | And the Trojans joined mules to smooth-running carriages. | And the whole band of women and...maidens got on. | Separately, the daughters of Priam... | And the unmarried men led horses beneath the chariots | and greatly...charioteers... |<...> | just like the gods [i]keloi theoi[s]| ... | ...holy | set forth into Troy... | And the sweet song of the reed mixed... | And the sound of the cymbals, and then the maidens | sang in clear tones a sacred song | and a divinely-sweet echo reached the sky... | And everywhere through the streets... | Mixing bowls and cups... | And myrrh and cassia and frankincense were mingled. | And the older women cried out elelu. | And all the men gave forth a high-pitched song, | calling on Apollo, the far-shooter, skilled in the lyre. | And they sang of Hector and Andromache, just like the gods [theoeikeloi].
There is an all-important comparison to be made here: the kleos aphthiton ‘unwilting glory’ of the bride Andromache and the bridegroom Hector in this song of Sappho is identical with the kleos aphthiton ‘unwilting glory’ of Achilles in Iliad IX 413.
04 C = 01 A. Iliad IX 410-416
My mother Thetis, goddess of the silver feet, tells me that there are two ways in which I may meet my end [telos]. If I stay here and fight, I will not have a return [nostos] alive but my glory [kleos] will be unwilting [aphthiton]: whereas if I go home my glory [kleos] will perish, but it will be a long time before the end [telos] shall take me.
Here the main hero of the Iliad leaves as his signature the kleos of his own epic, which turns out to be the Iliad. The kleos aphthiton ‘unwilting glory’ of Achilles in Iliad IX is matched by the kleos aphthiton ‘unwilting glory’ of Hector and Andromache in Song 44 of Sappho. In one case, the context is a wedding. In the other case, the context is war. At the climax of the wedding, the bride and groom are transformed into gods - at the actual moment of that climax. As we will see later, something comparable happens at the climactic moment of war. At the actual moment of that climax, the warrior is transformed into a god.
By now we are starting to see that the kleos or story of Achilles is interchangeable with the kleos
or story of Hector and his wife Andromache.
There are other matches between Achilles on one side and Hector and Andromache on the other.
Here I return to the epithet theoeikeloi ‘just like the gods’, applied to Hector and Andromache in Song 44 of Sappho. This epithet is reserved for Achilles in the Iliad. So the doomed couple and the doomed Achilles are all part of one song, one kleos. This is the kleos that Sappho’s song is recreating.
Here I return to a topic that came up in the previous chapter. It has to do with Passage D, Iliad VI 407-416, 421-432, in Chapter 03. When Andromache laments the death of her father, whose name is Eëtion, we begin to understand the deep irony of the reference to the lyre of Achilles in Passage E of Lecture 03, Iliad IX 185-191. There we see Achilles playing on the lyre that once belonged to Eëtion, the father of Andromache. He is singing and accompanying himself on the lyre, and such singing to the accompaniment of the lyre is the basic principle of what we call lyric poetry. And, as I said before, Achilles is in a way strumming the pain of Andromache. And what is the lyric poem - or, better, lyric song - that Achilles is performing? He is performing klea andr!n, the ‘glories of heroes of men of the past’ (Iliad IX 189).
There is, as we have already observed, a vitally important parallel to this performance by Achilles. When Phoenix tells Achilles the micro-narrative about the hero Meleager and his wife Kleopatra, which seems to be an epic within the epic that is the Homeric Iliad, the old man is likewise performing klea andr!n, the ‘glories of heroes of the past’ (Iliad IX 524).
Since Song 44 of Sappho is about a wedding, it is important to consider the traditional wording that was used about brides at weddings. That word is numph#, which means both ‘bride’ (as in Iliad XVIII 492) and ‘goddess’, that is, ‘nymph’ (as in Iliad XXIV 616). By implication, the ritual occasion of a wedding, as formalized in a bridal song, collapses the distinction between ‘bride’ and ‘goddess’. The same can be said about the distinction between ‘bridegroom’ and ‘god’.
The ideal bridegroom of Sappho’s songs is parallel to the ideal warrior of the Homeric Iliad. As I argue in my essay “Lyric and Greek Myth,” under the heading Commentaries, Achilles can be imagined as the ideal bridegroom and the ideal warrior in both traditions.
04 D. Further relevant extracts from Sappho
F 105a. Like a sweet-apple | turning red | high | on the tip | of the topmost branch. | Forgotten by pickers. | Not forgotten - | they couldn’t reach it.
F 105b. “Sappho compared the girl to an apple....she compared the bridegroom to Achilles, and likened the young man’s deeds to the hero’s.” - Himerius Orations 1.16.
F 115. To what shall I compare you, dear bridegroom? | To a slender shoot, I most liken you.
Thinking of the last of these three examples, F 115, I recall the lament of Thetis, Iliad XVIII
54-60, which we considered in the last chapter. In that lament, sung by the goddess even before the death of her son, Achilles is compared to a vibrant young seedling in an orchard.
Let us return to the subject of the idealized bridegroom - or let us say male lover - and the
idealized warrior. As we will see in the next passage, Song 1 of Sappho, love and war can be estheticized - and eroticized - together. The female speaker of Song 1 of Sappho becomes identified with Aphrodite and becomes her ‘ally in war’.
04 E. Song 1 of Sappho = Prayer to Aphrodite
You with pattern-woven flowers, immortal Aphrodite, |2 child of Zeus, weaver of wiles, I implore you,|3 do not devastate with aches and sorrows,|4 Mistress, my heart! |5 But come here, if ever at any other time |6 hearing my voice from afar, |7 you heeded me, and leaving the palace of your father, |8 golden, you came, |9 having harnessed the chariot; and you were carried along by beautiful |10 swift sparrows over the dark earth |11 swirling with their dense plumage from the sky through the |12 midst of the aether, |13 and straightaway they arrived. But you, O holy one, |14 smiling with your immortal looks, |15 kept asking what is it once again this time [d#ute] that has happened to me and for what reason |16 once again this time [d#ute] do I invoke you, |17 and what is it that I want more than anything to happen |18 to my frenzied heart? “Whom am I once again this time [d#ute] to persuade, |19 setting out to bring her to your love? Who is doing you, |20 Sappho, wrong? |21 For if she is fleeing now, soon she will give chase. |22 If she is not taking gifts, soon she will be giving them. |23 If she does not love, soon she will love |24 even against her will.” |25 Come to me even now, and free me from harsh |26 anxieties, and however many things |27 my heart yearns to get done, you do for me. You |28 become my ally in war.
As I argue at greater length in my article “Lyric and Greek Myth,” Sappho is being pictured here as the lead singer of a choral performance. She leads off by praying to Aphrodite to be present, that is, to manifest herself in an epiphany. The goddess is invoked from far away in the sky, which is separated from the earth by the immeasurably vast space of ‘aether’. Aphrodite is needed to fill the aching need left by the sorrows of love. And, now that she is invoked, despite the overwhelming sense of separation between the divine and the human, Aphrodite makes her presence felt in a sudden flash, in one single divine moment. The goddess appears, that is, she is now present in the sacred space of performance, and her presence becomes an epiphany for all those who are present. Then, once Aphrodite is present, she exchanges roles with the prima donna who figures as the leader of choral performance. In the part of Song 1 that we see enclosed within quotation marks in the visual formatting of modern editions (lines 18-24), the first-person ‘I’ of Sappho is now replaced by Aphrodite herself, who has been a second-person ‘you’ up to this point. We see here an exchange of roles between the first-person ‘I’ and the second-person ‘you’. The first-person ‘I’ now becomes Aphrodite, who proceeds to speak in the performing voice of Sappho to Sappho herself, who has now become the second-person ‘you’. During Aphrodite’s epiphany inside the sacred space of the people of Lesbos, a fusion of identities takes place between the goddess and the prima donna who leads the choral performance ‘here’, that is, in this sacred space.[5]
Sappho prays to Aphrodite to give her the power that the goddess has, the power to make love happen. She prays that she may ‘get done’ whatever it is that Aphrodite ‘gets done’ in the active
voice of the verb meaning ‘to get something done’, telessai (Sappho F 1 line 26), which is to be contrasted with the passive voice telesth#n applying to a passive lover who simply lets love happen (as in Sappho F 5 line 4). To be granted that power is to be the lead singer of the song that has the power to make love happen. Such is the power of song in the songs of Sappho. Such is the power of the prayer that is powered by Song 1 of Sappho.
Within the archaic context of the myths and rituals of the people of Lesbos, as framed by the sacred space of their federal precinct ‘here’ in the middle ground of their political space, Song 1 of Sappho can be seen as a prayer in the sense of a totalizing formula for authorizing choral performances of women at the festival of the Kallisteia. The seasonal recurrences of the festival are signaled by the triple deployment of the adverb d#’ute ‘once again this time’ in Sappho’s prayer. Every time in the past when Sappho has invoked Aphrodite by offering to her this prayer that we now hear, the goddess has heeded the prayer and has manifested herself in an ever-new epiphany. And now, once again this time, the goddess appears to Sappho, who will once again this time speak for the whole chorus as she speaks first for herself and then for Aphrodite and then once again this time for herself.
In the postclassical era of literary critics like Menander the Rhetorician, the description of compositions like Song 1 of Sappho as ‘prayers’ (Sappho T 47) fails to capture the meaning of an act of prayer in the context of a choral performance. The modern mind, seizing on such descriptions, is quick to infer that such ‘prayers’ must be mere literary conceits. This is to ignore the dimension of performance, which complements the dimension of composition in the lyric poetry of the archaic period. It is also to ignore the ritual background of such performance, which complements the mythological background of the composition.[6]
What appears to be a private ‘prayer’ uttered by Sappho is at the same time a public act of worship that is notionally sung and danced by the people of Lesbos as represented by a chorus of their women, legendary as they are for their beauty, and as led by the figure of Sappho as their prima donna. What appears to be the most deeply personal experience of Sappho is at the same time the most widely shared communal experience of the people of Lesbos.
For those who are interested in coincidental parallels in American popular culture, here is an example:
Life is a mystery | Everyone must stand alone | I hear you call my name and it feels like | [home] | Oh my God 4x | | When you call my name | Like a little prayer | Down on my knees | Going to take you there | In the midnight hour | I can feel your power | Just like a prayer | You know I’ll take you there. | I feel your voice | It’s like an angel sighing | I have no choice | I hear your voice | Feels like flying | I close my eyes | Oh God I think I’m falling | out of the sky | I close my eyes | Heaven help me. | Like a child | You whisper softly to me | You’re in control | Just like a child | [Now I’m dancing] | It’s like a dream | No end and no beginning | You’re here with me | It’s like a dream | Let the choir sing.
But let us return to Sappho, and to the identification of the speaker with the goddess Aphrodite in Song 1 of Sappho. It happens, as we saw, within what we moderns indicate by way of quotation marks, starting with ‘Whom am I once again this time…’ and ending with ‘… soon she will love | even against her will’. At this point, the ‘I’ of Sappho becomes the ‘I’ of Aphrodite, while the
‘you’ of Aphrodite becomes the ‘you’ of Sappho. So the lead singer of Song 1, who is the prima donna of the song, becomes a goddess at this moment. So the lead singer here is not only a prima donna. She is a diva, to borrow a another term used in the world of opera. To say it in English, the lead singer is now a goddess.
And what exactly is this moment when the lead singer becomes a goddess? This moment recurs every time the song is sung once again, as at a ritual that marks either a girl’s coming of age or her wedding. Essential for understanding this concept of recurrence in Song 1 of Sappho is the concept of repetition in ritual, as expressed by the adverb d#ute ‘once again’. Relevant are the words of Kierkegaard (Repetition, 1843): “The dialectic of repetition is easy, for that which is repeated has been - otherwise it could not be repeated - but the very fact that it has been makes the repetition into something new.” Similarly for us modern readers, every time we look back at this passage, there will be something new for us to see.
In this connection, we may also look at the epithet theoeikeloi ‘just like the gods’, which is applied to the bride and the bridegroom in Sappho’s Song 44 about the wedding of Hector and Andromache. And we may look back now at the epithet isos theoisin ‘equal to the gods’ as applied to the bridegroom in Sappho’s Song 31. In the ritual of a wedding, the bride and groom morph into goddess and god, and they stay that way until the wedding is finished, by which time they morph unto wife and husband. To quote from T. S. Eliot (The Dry Salvages, 1941), “you are the music | While the music lasts.”[7]
So, when a first-person female speaker projects her identity into this divine music by identifying with the bride, which is what happens in Song 31 of Sappho, then the first person singer becomes the bride herself.
It is relevant that the word numph#, as I noted before, means both ‘bride’ (as in Iliad XVIII 492) and ‘goddess’, that is, ‘nymph’ (as in Iliad XXIV 616). In a bridal song, as I also noted before, the distinction between ‘bride’ and ‘goddess’ is collapsed. And the same can be said about the distinction between ‘bridegroom’ and ‘god’.
Here is another example of the ritual practice of equating the prima donna - or we can also say prima ballerina - with a goddess. This time, the equation happens not at a wedding but at a ritual that marks a coming of age from girlhood to womanhood.
04 F. From the Partheneion ‘Maidens’ Song’ of Alcman
And I sing the radiance of Agido, as I look upon her like the sun, which Agido summons to shine as witness. But for me to praise her or blame her is not possible, as the illustrious khor#gos [Hagesikhora] does not allow me. For that one [Hagesikhora] appears radiantly outstanding, as when someone sets among grazing beasts a horse, well-built, a prize-winner, with thundering hooves, from out of those dreams underneath the rock.
In other words, the song ‘summons’ the sun to shine. The song equates the girl Agido with the sun. This equation of the prima donna or prima ballerina with the sun is strikingly similar to what we see in Song 16 of Sappho:
G. Song 16 of Sappho, stanza 1
oi men ipp#!n stroton oi de pesd!n oi de n$!n phais’ epi g$n melainan emmenai kalliston eg! de k#n’ ot- t! tis er$tai
Some say an army of horsemen, some of footsoldiers, some of ships, is the fairest thing on earth,
but I say it is what one loves.
This song is a good example of a priamel, which is a rhetorical device where “A” is highlighted by saying that “B” and “C” and “D” and so on cannot match it. The sequence has to be ... D C B and finally A. To cite an example in American popular music...
Some say love, it is a river, that drowns the tender weed, Some say love, it is a razor, that leaves the soul to bleed, Some say love, it is a hunger - an endless aching need,
I say love, it is a flower - and you, its only seed. LINK to Bette Midler’s song, “The Rose.”
In an article about a newly-discovered version of another song of Sappho (I refer to this new version as ;2), I offer this translation of the last line of that other song:
Sappho ;2 26:
Love [er!s] of the Sun has won for me its radiance and beauty.[8] In terms of an alternative interpretation, the translation could be ...
Love [er!s] has won for me the radiance and beauty of the Sun.
I prefer the first of these two interpretations, which makes the Sun the objective genitive of er!s ‘love’. Such a genitive construction would be parallel to the phrase ot|t! tis er$tai ‘whatever one loves’ in the song of Sappho we are now considering (F 16), where this ‘whatever’ (F 16 lines 3-4) is described as kalliston ‘the most beautiful thing’ in the whole wide world (F 16 line 3).
There are three things to compare with ‘the most beautiful thing’ in this song of Sappho (F 16), but each one of them pales in comparison to ‘whatever’ that thing is that ‘one’ loves. These three things to be compared are three radiant visions of beauty. The first of these visions is the dazzling sight of magnificent chariot-fighters in their luminous war-chariots massing for frontal assault against their terrified enemy; the second vision is of footsoldiers on the battlefield; and the third vision is of battleships at sea (F 16.1-2). But none of these three radiant visions of beauty can
match that ultimate brightness radiating from the speaker’s love-object, a beautiful diva called Anaktoria, who is mentioned later on in the same song (F 16.15-16). When Anaktoria sings and dances in the chorus, the loveliness of her steps and the brilliant light you see radiating from her looks (F 16.17-8: eraton te b$ma | k’amarukhma lampron id#n pros!p!) cannot be surpassed by anything in the whole wide world. That radiance of Anaktoria is now directly compared with the radiance of the luminous chariots and the other two luminous foils (F 16.19-20).
According to the logic of Sappho’s poetic cosmos, nothing can surpass the radiance of the sun. So the all-surpassing radiance of ‘whatever’ it is that the speaker says she loves more than anything else in the whole wide world must be the same thing as the sun.
It remains to ask what gods are models for wedded couples. Before we can consider any answer, we need to turn to the death scene of Patroklos in Iliad XVI, which is the main topic of the next chapter.
[1] Nagy Homer the Preclassic (2010) II§§289-290, 302.
[2] Nagy Pindar’s Homer (1990) 12§60.
[3] Nagy Pindar’s Homer (1990) 12§29n62 and n64.
[4] Further discussion by Nagy Homeric Questions (1996) 57.
[5] Nagy Poetry as Performance 97-103.
[6] See Yatromanolakis 2003.
[7] Eliot 1941 [1963]:199.
[8] See also Nagy Greek Mythology and Poetics (1990) GM 261-262; Pindar’s Homer (1990) 285 [10§18], and Poetry as Performance (1996) 90, 102-103.
Chapter 05. Equal to a daimôn Introduction
What happens at a climactic moment in a wedding is the equating of the mortal with the immortal. That is what we saw in Chapter 04. Now, as we will see in Chapter 05, what happens at a climactic moment in war is again the equating of the mortal with the immortal. The ritual occasion of war collapses the distinction between human and divine - but only at the precise moment when the warrior comes face-to-face with his own martial death. As we will also see, epic records that moment with the expression daimoni isos ‘equal to a daim!n [otherworldly force]’.
Key word for this chapter: daim!n (plural daimones) ‘superhuman force (= an unspecified god or hero) intervening in human life’. The word daim"n is to be contrasted with theos ‘god’ (= a
specified god).
A note on terms... Consider polytheism vs. monotheism. Also henotheism. [[The term henotheism refers to the worshipping of one divinity at a time. I think of the one-at-a-time mentality of henotheism as serial monotheism.]]
In this dialogue, we will concentrate on the epithet daimoni isos, which means ‘equal to a daim!n’ and on other epithets meaning ‘equal to the gods’. All these epithets focus on the climax of god- hero antagonism in the Iliad. At the moment of such a climax, the hero can be equated with a daim"n. This word daim"n partially conceals the identity of the god.
In the first passage we will examine, the god whose identity is partially concealed is Apollo. He is the god who is the primary divine antagonist of Achilles. In fact, Apollo will kill Achilles. We will not see it happen in the Iliad, but it does happen in other epics. One such epic is the Aithiopis, only the plot-outline of which has survived. So the death of Achilles happens not in the Iliad but beyond the Iliad. In the Iliad, however, the best friend of Achilles, Patroklos, will stand in for Achilles as the victim of Apollo. In the first focus passage, Apollo is about to kill Patroklos. Why Patroklos? As we will see, it is because Patroklos becomes the ritual substitute for Achilles. For now, however, let us concentrate on the actual antagonism between god and hero on the battlefield:
A. Iliad XVI 698-711
The sons of the Achaeans would now have taken Troy by the hands of Patroklos, for his spear flew in all directions, had not Phoebus Apollo taken his stand upon the wall to defeat his purpose and to aid the Trojans. Thrice did Patroklos charge at an angle of the high wall, and thrice did Apollo beat him back, striking his shield with his own immortal hands. When Patroklos was coming on like a daim"n for yet a fourth time, Apollo shouted to him with a terrifying voice and said, “Draw back, noble Patroklos, it is not your lot to destroy the city of the Trojan chieftains, nor yet will it be that of Achilles who is a far better man than you are.” On hearing this, Patroklos withdrew to some distance and avoided the anger [m#nis] of Apollo.
In the passage we have just read, the context gives it away: the daim"n with whom Patroklos is equated turns out to be the god Apollo himself. At the climax of god-hero antagonism here, when the hero becomes the god, that partially concealed god is Apollo. But so far we have seen only a “dress rehearsal.” The real moment of identification between hero and god comes the next time, when Patroklos does not back away from Apollo but faces him at the fourth try. In the next passage, we finally see that climactic moment of god-hero antagonism, “the real thing.”
05 B. Iliad XVI 783-806
Then Patroklos sprang like Ares with fierce intent and a terrific shout upon the Trojans, and thrice did he kill nine men; but as he was coming on like a daim"n, for a fourth time, then, O Patroklos, was the hour of your end approaching, for Phoebus [Apollo] fought you in fell earnest. Patroklos did not see him as he moved about in the crush, for he was enshrouded in thick darkness, and the god struck him from behind on his back and his broad shoulders with the flat of his hand, so that his eyes turned dizzy. Phoebus Apollo beat the helmet from off his head, and it rolled rattling off
under the horses’ feet, where its horse-hair plumes were all begrimed with dust and blood. Never indeed had that helmet fared so before, for it had served to protect the head and comely forehead of the godlike hero Achilles. ... [805] At this his mind went into derangement [at#]; his limbs failed him, and he stood as one dazed.
Here we see the ultimate moment of “fatal attraction,” signaled by the epithet ‘equal to a daim!n’; this epithet, like others meaning ‘equal to the gods’, applies to men and women at climactic ritual moments.
(We see an earlier “dress-rehearsal” in Iliad V: Diomedes as daimoni $sos ‘equal to a daim"n’ at V 438 and 459. Compare also the context of pros daimona ‘face-to-face with the daim"n’ at XVII 98.)
In all these situations, the use of the word daim"n is mystical in not naming the god - but it is ostentatiously mystical. By that I mean that the identify of the daim"n is obvious. It is Apollo.
But we also see a complication here. We notice that Patroklos is being compared not only to an unnamed god, a daim"n who turns out to be Apollo, but also to a named god, who is Ares the god of war. As a warrior, Patroklos is equal not only to Apollo at this moment. He is also equal to the war god Ares, who is god of martial fury.
We will soon see how and why Patroklos becomes the ritual substitute for Achilles in this complicated god-hero antagonism involving not one god but two, Ares and Apollo. But for now I will focus on the complication itself: why is Achilles an antagonist of both Ares and Apollo? The answer, as we will see, is that the dual antagonism of Achilles has to do with his dual status as both ideal warrior and ideal bridegroom.
Let us start with the status of Achilles as an ideal bridegroom - a topic that I explore at length in my essay “Lyric and Greek Myth,” as well as in my supplementary essay, “Homer and Greek Myth.” I offer here an abridged version of what I say there.
I start with a question that arises from what we saw in the last chapter: when a bridegroom is equated to a god, who is the god? A key to my answer has to do with the convention of imagining the bridegroom also as a hero, such as Achilles. And there are two divine models for Achilles as an ideal bridegroom: Ares and Apollo.
First we consider the god Ares as a model for the hero Achilles.
In the poetics of Sappho, two figures who fill the role of divine models for bridegrooms and brides respectively are the gods Ares and Aphrodite. In the case of Ares, he is a model for the gambros ‘bridegroom’, who is explicitly described as isos Areui ‘equal to Ares’ (Sappho F 111.5). In the case of Aphrodite, there are many instances of implicit equations of the bride with this goddess: in one song, for example, the bridegroom is said to be infused with the divine charisma of Aphrodite, evidently by way of his direct contact with the bride (Sappho F 112).
Typical of such contact with divinity is a celebrated wedding song of Sappho that we have already examined, Song 31. Let us look at it one more time:
05 C (= 04 A). Song 31 of Sappho
(translation by Nagy; for a more poetic rendition, see the version of Julia Dubnoff in the Sourcebook)
phainetai moi k#nos 9sos theoisin He appears to me, that one, equal to the
gods,
emmen’ !n#r ottis enantios toi the man who, facing you,
isdanei kai pl$sion $du ph!nei- is seated and, up close, that sweet voice
of yours
s$s upakouei he listens to
kai gelais$s 9meroen to m’ # m$n and how you laugh your charming
laugh. Why, it
kardian en st#thesin eptoaisen makes my heart flutter within my breast,
!s gar es s’ id! brokhe’ !s me ph!nai- since, the moment I look at you, right
then, for me
s’ oud’ en et’ eikei to make any sound at all won’t work any more.
alla kam men gl!ssa e$ge lepton My tongue has broken down and a
delicate
d’ autika khr!i p:r upadedrom$ken - all of a sudden - fire rushes under my
skin.
oppatessi d’ oud’ en or#mm’ epirrom- With my eyes I see not a thing, and there
is a roar
beisi d’ akouai that my ears make.
kad de m’ idr!s kakkheetai tromos de Sweat pours down me and a trembling pa9san agrei khl!rotera de poias seizes all of me; paler than grass
emmi tethnak#n d’ olig! ‘pideu#s am I, and a little short of death phainom’ em’ aut[$i do I appear to me.
It is said here that the bridegroom phainetai ‘appears’ to be isos theoisin ‘equal to the gods’. Appearances become realities, however. I say that because, as we have already seen, phainetai means not only ‘appears’ but also ‘is manifested in an epiphany’, and this epiphany is felt as real. [1] In the internal logic of this song, seeing the bridegroom as a god for a moment is just as real as seeing Sappho as a goddess for a moment in the logic of Song 1 of Sappho.
The sense of reality is evident in the wording phainetai moi k#nos isos theoisin | emmen’ !n#r ‘he appears [phainetai] to me, that one, equal to the gods, | the man who ...’. The first-person moi here in Song 31 of Sappho refers to the speaker, who is ‘Sappho’. In another song of Sappho, we find the wording phainetai woi k#nos isos theoisin ‘he appears [phainetai] to her, that one, equal
to the gods’ (F 165). In that song, the third-person woi ‘to her’ may perhaps refer to the bride. Or perhaps the speaker of this wording is imagined as Aphrodite herself.
In the first of these two songs of Sappho (F 31), the subjectivity is linked to the first-person speaker, who is the vicarious participant; in the second song (F 165), on the other hand, the subjectivity is linked to the third person, who is the immediate participant. There is a shifting of referents that accompanies the shifting of pronouns from ‘I’ to ‘she’. We saw another shifting of referents in Song 1 of Sappho, from ‘you’ to ‘I’. In that case, the shift in the ownership of pronouns involves the second-person ‘you’ of Aphrodite and the first-person ‘I’ of Sappho. During the epiphany of Aphrodite, Sappho exchanges identities with the goddess herself. It is a moment of personal fusion with Aphrodite. Similarly in the wedding song (F 31), the vicariousness of Sappho links the ‘I’ with the ‘you’ of the bride.
The exchange between the ‘I’ and the ‘you’ of Sappho and Aphrodite in Song 1 is reflected also in the wording of another song of Sappho (F 159), where Aphrodite is imagined once again as speaking to Sappho and addressing her by name. In yet another song of Sappho (F 134), the speaker says she is dreaming she has a dialogue (dialegesthai) with Aphrodite.
The erotic experience shared by the ‘he’ who is the bridegroom and by the ‘you’ who is the bride in Song 31 of Sappho is communalized in the reaction of the ‘I’ who figures as the vicarious participant in the experience. And this reaction, as we have already seen, is an epiphany in itself. In this song, the subjectivity is linked to the first-person speaker who is Sappho. When we hear phainetai moi k#nos isos theoisin ‘he appears [phainetai] to me, that one, equal to the gods’, it is the first-person speaker who is feeling the erotic sensations experienced by the bride in the
second-person and by the bridegroom in the third person. At the climax of the erotic experience as spoken by the first-person speaker, she says about her feelings: tethnak#n d’olig! ‘pideu#s phainom’ emaut$i ‘and a little short of death | do I appear [phainomai] to myself’. The verb phainomai ‘I appear’ here signals again an epiphany - an epiphany that manifests itself to the self, to the speaking ‘I’.
This appearance of the self to the self, as an epiphany, signals the divine presence of Aphrodite. In one sense, then, what is seen is the epiphany of Aphrodite, since she is the goddess of the occasion. In another sense, however, what is seen is the epiphany of the bride, whose identity fuses with that of Aphrodite at the moment of her wedding. And, in still another sense, what is seen is the epiphany of the speaking ‘I’ who identifies with Aphrodite by virtue of identifying with the ‘you’ of the bride who is Aphrodite at this very moment. For Sappho, then, as I have been arguing, what is seen is an auto-epiphany.
The epiphany of Song 31 induces a near-death experience, and such a stylized personal death is modeled on a realized mythical death. As I will now argue, death in myth is a prototype for whatever it is that the first-person speaker experiences vicariously in her interaction with the second-person bride and with the third-person bridegroom, who are respectively the vision of Aphrodite and the corresponding vision of Ares.
To start with the third person, it is essential to recall that the bridegroom is visualized as isos Areui ‘equal to Ares’ in another song of Sappho (F 111.5). Comparable to the bridegroom who gets married in lyric is the warrior who gets killed in epic. As we have just seen, he too is
visualized as isos Ar#i ‘equal to Ares’. And, as we will now see, the bridegroom can be visualized as Achilles himself in the songs of Sappho.
In the Homeric Iliad, warriors are conventionally called the therapontes of Ares as the god of war (II 110, VI 67, XV 733, XIX 78). This word therap!n (plural therapontes) means both ‘attendant’ and ‘ritual substitute’ in epic. When a warrior is killed in war, he becomes a ‘ritual substitute’ who dies for Ares by becoming identical to the war god at the moment of death; then, after death, the warrior is eligible to become a cult hero who serves as a sacralized ‘attendant’ of the war god.[2] As an epic warrior, Achilles is a therap!n ‘ritual substitute’ of Ares by virtue of becoming identical to the war god at the moment of death. In the Iliad, however, this relationship between Achilles and Ares is expressed only by way of an intermediary, who is Patroklos. This warrior is described not as the therap!n of Ares but rather as the therap!n of Achilles, and, as such, he is not only that hero’s ‘attendant’ but also his ‘ritual substitute’, since he actually dies for Achilles. So Achilles dies only indirectly as the therap!n of Ares through the intermediacy of Patroklos, who dies as the therap!n of Achilles.
As an epic warrior, Achilles also qualifies as isos Ar#i ‘equal to Ares’. This description suits Achilles in the Iliad - though it applies to him only vicariously by way of Patroklos, who takes upon himself the role of a ritual substitute for Achilles. Patroklos is actually called isos Ar#i (XI 604) at the exact moment when the story of his fatal impersonation of Achilles begins.[3]
So a missing link for understanding Song 31 of Sappho is the vision of the hero Achilles as a model warrior at the moment of his death in epic, when he, too, like the model bridegroom in lyric, is ‘equal to Ares’. This link is verified by ancient sources. As we have seen in Chapter 04, it is made explicit that Sappho conventionally imagined the model bridegroom as Achilles himself (F 105b):
05 D = 04 D. Extracts from Sappho
fr. 105a. Like a sweet-apple | turning red | high | on the tip | of the topmost branch. | Forgotten by pickers. | Not forgotten - | they couldn’t reach it.
fr. 105b. “Sappho compared the girl to an apple....she compared the bridegroom to Achilles, and likened the young man’s deeds to the hero’s.” - Himerius Orations 1.16.
fr. 115. To what shall I compare you, dear bridegroom? | To a slender shoot, I most liken you. Such a lyric convention in the songs of Sappho can be explained as an organic correlation of myth
and ritual. In the logic of myth, Achilles never becomes a model husband because War
personified cuts him down like a flower in the bloom of his youth. In the logic of ritual, on the other hand, Achilles is the perfect model for a bridegroom precisely because he is cut down in war and thus cannot ever became a husband. For love to find its self-expression in the ritual of a wedding, it needs someone to die for love.
Such a ritual need is expressed in the relationship of Eros, personified as the god of erotic love, with Aphrodite, the goddess of erotic love. As we see from an imagined dialogue between Sappho and Aphrodite in a song of Sappho mentioned earlier, the goddess says in her own words
that Eros is her therap!n (F 159). As in epic, this word in lyric means not only ‘attendant’ but also ‘ritual substitute’, that is, someone who ritually dies for the sake of the one he attends. Pictured as a pubescent (not prepubescent) boy, Eros is doomed to die for the sake of Aphrodite. In the poetics of Sappho, as later ancient sources tell us (F 172), the death of erotic Love personified is a most persistent theme.
The death of Eros could be pictured as a martial death resulting from the warfare of love. We see clearly the language of love as war in Song 1 of Sappho, where Aphrodite is invoked in prayer to become a summakhos ‘ally in battle’ for Sappho in speaking the words of lyric love poetry (1.28). Conversely, Sappho as the speaker of lyric love poetry is offering herself as an ‘ally in battle’ for Aphrodite, thus crossing over into the themes of epic.
Let us review the text of Song 1 of Sappho 05 E = 04 E.
Song 1 of Sappho = Prayer to Aphrodite:
You with pattern-woven flowers, immortal Aphrodite, | child of Zeus, weaver of wiles, I implore you,| do not devastate with aches and sorrows,| Mistress, my heart! | But come here, if ever at any other time | hearing my voice from afar, | you heeded me, and leaving the palace of your father, | golden, you came, | having harnessed the chariot; and you were carried along by beautiful | swift sparrows over the dark earth | swirling with their dense plumage from the sky through the | midst of the aether, | and straightaway they arrived. But you, O holy one, | smiling with your immortal looks, | kept asking what is it once again this time [d#ute] that has happened to me and for what reason | once again this time [d#ute] do I invoke you, | and what is it that I want more than anything to happen | to my frenzied heart? “Whom am I once again this time [d#ute] to persuade, | setting out to bring her to your love? Who is doing you, | Sappho, wrong? | For if she is fleeing now, soon she will give chase. | If she is not taking gifts, soon she will be giving them. | If she does not love, soon she will love | even against her will.” | Come to me even now, and free me from harsh | anxieties, and however many things | my heart yearns to get done, you do for me. You | become my ally in war.
Similarly in the Iliad, Aphrodite crosses over into the themes of epic by intervening in the epic action - and she gets wounded in doing so, as if she were a mortal (V 327-354).
Parallel to the wounding of the goddess Aphrodite are the two woundings of the god Ares in the Iliad: he too gets wounded as if he were a mortal (V 855-863, XXI 401-408). More than that, the woundings of Ares are in both cases described as mortal woundings, and the Iliad actually shows Ares in the act of going through the motions of a stylized martial death. Such an epic experience is for Ares a mock death (Nagy “Epic Hero” §76). Similarly, the lyric experience of Eros in dying for love can be viewed as a mock death, and such ritualized mockery is typical of “divine burlesque,” which represents one of the oldest features of Greek myth. There are striking parallels to be found in Near Eastern sources dating back to the second millennium BCE.
The stylized death of the god Ares in the Iliad is an extreme case of divine mirroring: the immortal god of war gets involved not only in the martial actions of heroes but even in their martial deaths. And he gets so involved because god and hero mirror each other at the moment of a hero’s death, which is the climax of the inherent antagonism between them (Nagy “Epic Hero” §§105, 108, 110, 115).
At the moment when he dies a warrior’s death in place of Achilles, Patroklos is vicariously experiencing such a moment of mirroring between Achilles as warrior and Ares as god of warriors: that is why Patroklos looks just like Ares at that moment, as we have seen in Passages A and B.
As mutual antagonists, hero and the god match each other in life as well as in death. In the case of Achilles, as we see from surviving traces in the epic Cycle, this hero was imagined as an irresistible lover by lovelorn girls hoping to make him their husband (Nagy “Epic Hero” §56). In the case of Ares, as we see from the second song of Demodokos in the Homeric Odyssey, this god is imagined as an irresistible lover by the goddess of sexuality herself, Aphrodite (viii
266-366).
Among other related characteristics shared by the hero Achilles and the god Ares is their superhuman speed. In the case of Achilles, his success in war is closely connected with the use of such epithets as pod!k#s ‘swift-footed’ in the Iliad. In the case of Ares, his own swiftness of foot is pictured as ideal for success in courtship as well as in warfare. In the song of Demodokos about the love affair of Ares and Aphrodite in the Odyssey, we find that one of the war god’s most irresistible attributes is his nimbleness of foot in choral lyric dancing.[4] And yet, despite his irresistible attractiveness in courting Aphrodite, the dashing young Ares will never marry. Like the dashing young Achilles, Ares is eternally the bridegroom and never the husband.
Having started with the third-person bridegroom in Song 31 of Sappho, I now continue with the second-person bride. Just as the bridegroom looks like a local cult hero, so also the bride looks like a local cult heroine. In Aeolic traditions, such heroines figured in myths about the conquests of Achilles - not only martial but also amorous conquests - in the years that preceded the destruction of Troy. These myths told of beautiful Aeolic girls of Asia Minor and the outlying island of Lesbos who had once been immune to love and thus unreachable to their frustrated suitors. But then they fall helplessly in love with Achilles - that dashing young hero who had sailed across the sea from his home in Hellas to attack the Aeolic people of Asia Minor and Lesbos.[5]
Comparable to these once-unreachable Aeolic girls is a prize apple, unreachable to the apple- pickers, which ‘blushes’ enticingly from the heights of a “shooter-branch” in a song of Sappho (F 105a). It is no coincidence that the brides of Sappho’s songs are conventionally compared to apples, as we saw earlier (F 105b, in Passage D). Like Sappho’s prize apple, these contemporary brides are imagined as unreachable. But they are unreachable only up to the moment when they take the place of Aeolic heroines who had once upon a time fallen in love with Achilles, that eternal bridegroom. These Aeolic girls of the heroic past are imagined as throwing themselves at Achilles. That is, they throw a metonymic extension of themselves at Achilles by throwing an apple at him: such a theme is attested in the bittersweet story of a lovelorn girl from the Aeolic city of Pedasos (Hesiod F 214).[6] (I will have more to say about the concept of “metonymy” at a
later point.) In the logic of myth, the love felt by such heroines is doomed from the start, and, in the end, they die for their love. In the logic of ritual, however, that same love promises to be requited. Such is the love expressed by girls pictured in the act of throwing apples at their prospective lovers in the songs of Sappho (F 214A).
Just as the hero Achilles stands in for a god at moments that center on the ritual of a wedding, so also various Aeolic heroines can stand in for a goddess. A case in point is the captive woman Briseis in the Iliad, who is overtly associated with the women of Lesbos whom Achilles captured as beauty-prizes in the years that preceded the destruction of Troy (IX 128-131, 270-273; XIX 245-246). The Iliad quotes, as it were, Briseis in the act of singing a choral lyric song of lament for the death of Patroklos (XIX 287-300); this quotation of Briseis, along with the framing narrative concerning the antiphonal response of the women attending Briseis (XIX 301-302), reenacts most accurately the morphology of a genuine choral lyric lament.[7] As she begins to sing her choral lyric song of lament for Patroklos, Briseis is likened to Aphrodite (XIX 282). In her lament, Briseis sings her bittersweet sorrow not only over the death of Patroklos but also over the death of her own fondest hope: when he was alive, Patroklos had promised to arrange for her a marriage to Achilles, but, now that he is dead, the hope of that promise is gone forever (XIX 295-300). So the Iliad pictures Patroklos as a ritual substitute for Achilles in courtship as well as in war.
In the logic of myth, from what we have seen so far, a hero’s identity at the moment of death can merge with a god’s identity. In the logic of ritual, on the other hand, such a merger of identity leads only to a stylized death.[8] Death in ritual is not physical but psychic. For example, from cross-cultural surveys of rituals of initiation as practiced in traditional societies around the world, it becomes evident that initiands who are identified with divinities at the moment of initiation are imagined as dying to their old selves as members of a given age-class and being reborn to their new selves as members of the next age-class.[9]
In the ritual of a wedding as celebrated by the songs of Sappho, there is the prospect of a happy ending as the identity of the Aeolic numpha ‘bride’ shifts from girl to goddess to woman. In the process of becoming a goddess for a moment, the bride dies to her old self as a girl and is reborn to her new self as a woman. In the corresponding myth, by contrast, there is the prospect of a sad but compellingly erotic ending to the story. The bride-to-be will never get married to the eternal bridegroom, imagined as Achilles.
The death of Achilles himself in war is the climax of his erotic charisma. In general, the martial death of heroes is eroticized as the beautiful death, la belle mort; even the body of the dead hero is eroticized - as the beautiful corpse, le beau mort (Tyrtaeus F 10).[10] Achilles is pictured as a beau mort in the Iliad, as when the goddess Thetis and her fellow Nereids lament the future death of her beloved son in war; in this context, the hero is compared to a beautiful plant that dies in full bloom (XVIII 54-60).[11] In a song of Sappho (F 105c), we see a comparable image of a beautiful plant at the moment of death (also comparable is the image of a bridegroom as a beautiful plant in F 115).
Such themes of eroticized death are relevant to the near-death experience of the ‘I’ in Song 31 of Sappho. Having started with the third-person bridegroom in this song and having continued with the second-person bride, I conclude with this first-person speaker. The woman who speaks in the
first person here is vicariously speaking for the whole group that attends the wedding. The whole group is notionally participating in the stylized deaths of the male and the female initiands - in this case, of the bridegroom and the bride.
The stylized death of the bridegroom in a wedding as described by Sappho matches the realized death of Achilles in war. Premarital death in ritual marks the transition from bridegroom to husband, while martial death in myth marks an eternal deferral of such a transition. By dying in war, Achilles becomes the very picture of the ultimate bridegroom in eternally suspended animation, forever on the verge of marrying. In the logic of ritual, what is needed for female initiands, especially for brides, is such an eternal bridegroom.[12] A comparable model of unfulfilled desire and unrequited love is the hero Hippolytus in the Hippolytus of Euripides: at the end of this drama (1423-1430), we find an anthropologically accurate description of a ritual of female initiation featuring a chorus of girls performing a lament for the death of Hippolytus as their local cult hero.[13] As this drama illustrates, the identity of the female initiand depends on the program, as it were, of the ritual of initiation. The nuptial Aphrodite and the prenuptial / postnuptial Artemis reveal different phases of erotic engagement in the life cycle of a woman, determining when she is attainable - and when she is unattainable.
In compensation for his being cut down in the bloom of his youth, Achilles is destined to have a kleos ‘glory’ that is aphthiton ‘unwilting’: that is what the hero’s mother foretells for him, as Achilles himself is quoted as saying (Iliad IX 413). As we have seen, the word kleos expresses not only the idea of prestige as conveyed by the translation ‘glory’ but also the idea of a medium that confers this prestige.[14]
And this medium of kleos is not only epic, as represented by the Homeric Iliad, but also lyric, as best represented in the historical period by the poet Pindar. In the praise poetry of Pindar, the poet proudly proclaims his mastery of the prestige conferred by kleos (as in Nemean 7.61-63).[15] As for the word aphthiton ‘unwilting’, it is used as an epithet of kleos not only in epic but also in lyric, as we see from the songs of Sappho (F 44.4) and Ibycus (F 282.47). This epithet expresses the idea that the medium of kleos is a metaphorical flower that will never stop blossoming. As the words of a song by Pindar predict, the hero who is glorified by the kleos will die and will thus stop blossoming, that is, he will ‘wilt’, phthinein, but the medium that conveys the message of death will never wilt: that medium is pictured as a choral lyric song eternally sung by the Muses as they lament the beautiful wilted flower that is Achilles, the quintessential beau mort (Isthmian 8.56a-62).[16]
05 F = 03 H. Pindar Isthmian 8.56a-60
Even when he [= Achilles] died, the songs did not leave him, but the Heliconian Maidens [= the Muses] stood by his pyre and his funeral mound, pouring forth a song of lamentation [thr#nos] that is famed far and wide. And so it was that the gods decided to hand over the worthy man, wilted [phthi-menos] in death as he was, to the songs of the goddesses [Muses].[17] And this, even now, wins as a prize the words, as the chariot-team of the Muses starts moving on its way to glorify the memory of Nikokles the boxer.
This song of the Muses is parallel to the choral lyric song that is sung by Thetis accompanied by her fellow Nereids as they lament in the Iliad the future death of her beloved son: here again, as
we saw earlier, Achilles is figured as a beautiful flower cut down in full bloom (XVIII 54-60).
05 G = 03 G. Iliad XVIII 54-62
(this is my literal translation, in Best of the Achaeans [1979] 182-183 {LINK}): Ah me, the wretch! Ah me, the mother, so sad it is, of the very best.
I gave birth to a faultless and strong son,
the very best of heroes. And he shot up like a seedling.
I nurtured him like a shoot in the choicest spot of the orchard, only to send him off on curved ships to fight at Troy.
And I will never be welcoming him
back home as returning warrior, back to the House of Peleus. And as long as he lives and sees the light of the sun,
he will have sorrow [akh-nutai].
In the Odyssey, we find a retrospective description of the lament sung by Thetis and her fellow Nereids at the actual funeral of Achilles, followed by the lament of the Muses themselves (xxiv 58-59, 60-62).
***
The idea of kleos aphthiton ‘unwilting glory’ as conferred by poetry applies not only to the epic theme of a hero’s death in war, as in the case of Achilles in the Iliad (IX 413), but also to the lyric theme of a wedding, as in the case of Hector as bridegroom and Andromache as bride in Song 44 of Sappho (line 4). The expression kleos aphthiton links the doomed warrior in epic with the wedded couple in lyric. Parallel to the linking effected by this expression is the linking effected by the god Apollo himself: he too links Achilles in epic with Hector and Andromache in lyric. The celebrants at the wedding in Song 44 of Sappho sing Apollo by invoking his epithet Paean (P$!n in the local dialect) when they celebrate Hector and Andromache as bridegroom and bride (line 33). To sing a paean is to sing a song from Lesbos, as we see from the wording of Archilochus (F 121). To sing a paean in the Iliad is to sing Apollo as Paean, though Paean is a god in his own right in more archaizing contexts of the Iliad (as at V 401 and V 899-901). Elsewhere in the Iliad, Achilles calls on the Achaeans to sing a paean, that is, to sing Apollo as Paean when they celebrate the death of Hector in war (XXII 391).
As we have already seen, there are also other linkings of the doomed warrior in epic with the
wedded couple in lyric. Achilles is theoeikelos ‘just like the gods’ as a warrior in the Iliad (I 131, XXIII 155), and so too Hector and Andromache as bridegroom and bride are theoeikeloi ‘just like the gods’ at the moment of their wedding in Song 44 of Sappho (at line 34; also i]keloi theoi[s ‘just like the gods’ at line 21). In fact, Achilles is in fact the only recipient of the epithet theoeikelos in the Homeric Iliad. So the warrior who kills Hector attracts the same epithet in epic that Hector attracts in lyric.
It remains to ask about the god with whom Achilles is identified in epic and with whom Hector and Andromache are identified in lyric. For this god, epic and lyric are undifferentiated, just as the kleos aphthiton of Achilles as warrior in epic is undifferentiated from the kleos aphthiton of Hector and Andromache as bridegroom and bride in lyric. This god is Apollo.
So here we turn from Ares to Apollo as the other divine antagonist of Achilles - and as his other divine model.
At the moment of his death, the hero Achilles is destined to confront not only the god Ares as the generic divine antagonist of warriors but also the god Apollo as his own personal divine antagonist. This personalized destiny of Achilles is explicit in the epic Cycle, that is, in the Aithiopis, but only implicit in the Iliad, where Patroklos substitutes for Achilles in his antagonism with Apollo just as he substitutes for him in his antagonism with Ares.
What makes this destiny of Achilles so personalized is his special connection with poetry, a medium signaled as kleos aphthiton ‘unwilting glory’. The god of this medium is Apollo, who is the god of poetry. And this poetry is conceived as lyric. To put it another way, this poetry is a form of epic that is not yet differentiated from lyric.[19] Apollo is the god of an older form of epic that is still sung to the accompaniment of the lyre.
Correspondingly, Achilles is the hero of such an older form of epic. In this role, he is imagined as looking exactly like Apollo - beardless and wearing long hair. Like Apollo, Achilles is the essence of a beautiful promise in the making, of a telos or ‘fulfillment’ realized only in performance, only when the song is fully performed.[20] There is a visual signature of this shared role of god and hero in the Iliad. Achilles, like Apollo, is pictured in this epic as singing to the tune of a lyre that he himself is playing (IX 186-189). As we have seen, Achilles had plundered this lyre from the Aeolic city of Thebe, ruled by the king Eëtion (IX 186-189), whom he killed when he captured that city - and who was the father of that greatest singer of lamentations in the Iliad, Andromache (VI 414-416). As I have argued, what Achilles sings to the tune of this Aeolic lyre is an echo of the loves and bittersweet sorrows heard in lyric song.[21] An example of such lyric in historical times is the song of Sappho about the wedding of Hector and Andromache (F 44): the lyric kleos aphthiton ‘unwilting glory’ of this Aeolic song (F 44.4) is cognate with the epic kleos aphthiton ‘unwilting glory’ that Achilles is promised in the Iliad (IX 413), which is linked with the epic klea andr!n ‘glories of heroes’ that Achilles is singing on the Aeolic lyre (IX 189).
I close with an Aeolic stanza, which captures what could could be described as Sappho’s own ascending scale of affection:
05 H = 04 G. Song 16 of Sappho, stanza 1
oi men ipp#!n stroton oi de pesd!n oi de n$!n phais’ epi g$n melainan emmenai kalliston eg! de k#n’ ot- t! tis er$tai
Some say an army of horsemen, some of footsoldiers, some of ships, is the fairest thing on earth,
but I say it is what one loves.
This song is a good example of a priamel, which is a rhetorical device where “A” is highlighted by saying that “B” and “C” and “D” and so on cannot match it. The sequence has to be ... D C B and finally A. To cite an example in American popular music...
Some say love, it is a river, that drowns the tender weed, Some say love, it is a razor, that leaves the soul to bleed, Some say love, it is a hunger - an endless aching need,
I say love, it is a flower - and you, its only seed. LINK to Bette Midler’s song, “The Rose.”
A preview...
Passage (I)
Thesis: daim"n is the mystical way to refer to a given god or to a given human at the moment of his/her identification with the god
Hymn to Demeter 235-236, 237-241
She nurtured him in the palace, and he grew up like a daim"n, not eating food, not sucking from the breast ... She used to anoint him with ambrosia, as if he had been born of the goddess, and she would breathe down her sweet breath on him as she held him at her bosom. At nights she would conceal him in the menos of fire, as if he were a smoldering log, and her parents were kept unaware. But they marveled at how full in bloom he came to be, and to look at him was like looking at the god.
[1] Nagy Pindar’s Homer (1990) 7§2n10.
[2] Nagy Best of the Achaeans (1979) 17§§5-6. [3] Nagy Best of the Achaeans (1979) 2§8, 17§5. [4] Nagy Homer the Preclassic (2009) I§214.
[5] Nagy Homer the Preclassic (2009) II§§49, 321.
[6] Nagy Best of the Achaeans (1979) 7§29n6.
[7] Dué 2002:70-71; Nagy Homer the Preclassic (2009) II§§303-317.
[8] Nagy Poetry as Performance (1996) 87-97.
[9] Nagy Poetry as Performance (1996) 101-103.
[10] Nagy Homer the Classic (2008) 4 section 18; Nagy Homer the Preclassic (2009) II§425
[11] Nagy Best of the Achaeans (1979) 10§11.
[12] Dué 2006:82-83.
[13] Nagy Poetry as Performance (1996) 94-96. [14] Cf. Nagy Best of the Achaeans (1979) 1§§2-4. [15] Nagy Pindar’s Homer (1990) 6§3.
[16] Nagy Pindar’s Homer (1990) 7§6.
[17] As I argue in Best of the Achaeans (1979) 176-177, the phraseology here shows that Achilles was destined to have a kleos that is a-phthi-ton ‘unwilting’, as explicitly formulated at Iliad IX 413.
[18] Nagy Best of the Achaeans (1979) 10§11.
[19] Nagy Pindar’s Homer (1990) 12§§44-45.
[20] Nagy Homer’s Text and Language (2004) 138-143.
[21] Nagy Homer the Preclassic (2009) II§297. Chapter 06: Patroklos as alter ego of Achilles
Key word for this chapter: therap"n ‘attendant, minister; ritual substitute’ (this is the definition in
the Glossary). A word related to therap"n is therapeuein ‘heal, cure’ (compare the English borrowings “therapy,” “therapeutic,” etc.).
Passage A. Iliad XVI 233-248
{Achilles is praying to Zeus}: “King Zeus,” he cried, “lord of Dodona, god of the Pelasgoi, who dwells afar, you who hold wintry Dodona in your sway, where your prophets the Selloi dwell around you with their feet unwashed and their couches made upon the ground - if you heard me when I prayed to you aforetime, and did me honor while you sent disaster on the Achaeans, grant me now the fulfillment of yet this further prayer. I shall stay here at my assembly [ag"n] of ships, but I shall send my comrade into battle at the head of many Myrmidons. Grant, O all-seeing Zeus, that victory may go with him; put your courage into his heart that Hektor may learn whether my attendant [therap!n] is man enough to fight alone, or whether his might is only then so indomitable when I myself enter the turmoil of war. Afterwards when he has chased the fight and the cry of battle from the ships, grant that he may return unharmed, with his armor and his comrades, fighters in close combat.” Thus did he pray, and all-counseling Zeus heard his prayer. Part of it he did indeed grant him - but not the whole. He granted that Patroklos should thrust back war and battle from the ships, but refused to let him come safely out of the fight.
Patroklos is the generic therap"n of Achilles, as we see from the context of Iliad XVI 165 here. Should we interpret therap"n in this context as (a) ‘attendant’ or (b) ‘ritual substitute’? (Both these definitions of therap"n are given in the Glossary.) My suggested answer is that both meanings apply. Patroklos is the ‘attendant’ of Achilles on the surface, but he is his ‘ritual’ substitute in the deeper meaning of the Master Narrative.
As we are about to see, Patroklos is $sos Ar#i ‘equal to Ares’ at XI 604. Also, as we saw the last tine, he is equated with Ares at XVI 784. And, as we also saw last time, Patroklos is daimoni
$sos ‘equal to a daim"n’ at XVI 705 and 786. As one who is ‘equal to Ares’, he is the generic warrior, the generic war hero. But there he is being ‘equal’ not only to Ares but also to Apollo, though his identification with Apollo is not fully spelled out, since the word daim"n masks the identity of the god.
As one who is also equal to Apollo at the moment of his death, Patroklos participates in a specialized god-hero relationship. By being equal to Ares at the moment of his death, Patroklos participates in a generic god-hero relationship that is typical of war heroes. In identifying with Ares / Apollo, Patroklos is experiencing something that will later be experienced by Achilles himself, who will also be identifying with Ares / Apollo at the moment of his own heroic death (not seen in the Iliad). So Patroklos is a stand-in for the main hero of the narrative, Achilles, whose specialized ritual antagonist is Apollo (Achilles, as a warrior, also has a generalized ritual antagonist, who is Ares).
Passage B. Iliad XI 599-606
Achilles saw and took note, for he was standing on the stern of his ship watching the hard stress [ponos] and struggle of the fight. He called from the ship to his comrade Patroklos, who heard him in the tent and came out looking like Ares himself [literally, $sos Ar#i ‘equal to Ares’]; here indeed was the beginning of the ill that presently befell him. “Why,” said he, “Achilles do you call
me? what do you want with me?”
Here Homeric poetry declares that the application of the epithet (ornamental adjective) ‘equal to Ares’ will doom Patroklos to death.
A generic warrior is called a therap"n of Ares. Note the expression therapontes Ar#os, for example at Iliad II 110, referring to all the warriors fighting on the Greek side: Butler translates this expression as ‘squires’ of Ares. Generically, heroes as warriors die for Ares. More specifically, however, any given hero can die for his divine antagonist.
Generically, Achilles would be a therap"n of Ares; specifically, however, we can say that he is a therap"n of Apollo, because it is Apollo who will directly kill him (see the plot summary of the epic called the Aithiopis, or ‘Song of the Aethiopians’, which is in the Sourcebook).
While the therap"n of Apollo must be Achilles, the therap"n of Achilles is, to repeat, Patroklos. For a passage where Patroklos is therap"n ‘companion-in-arms’ or ‘comrade’ of Achilles, see again XVI 165.
Patroklos must die for Achilles, who must die for Apollo. The death of Patroklos is via Ares generically but also via Apollo personally.
At the moment when Patroklos dies, he is called daimoni $sos ‘equal to a daim"n’ at XVI 705 and 786. At this precise moment he is in sacred space. Since war is ritual, the battleground is for the warrior a sacred space. Patroklos is doomed for death, and that is why he is ‘equal to a daim"n’. In the case of warriors, being godlike is to have martial fury, to experience a “warp spasm.” To experience a “warp spasm” is be beside oneself, “berserk” (this is an Old Norse concept). To be possessed. Note that Ares is not the god of war per se, but the god of martial fury.
Martial fury is relevant to the second of the three characteristics of the hero that we considered earlier, namely, that the hero is “extreme” both positively and, on special occasions, negatively. Achilles is extreme mostly in a positive sense, since he is ‘best’ in many categories, and ‘best of the Achaeans’ in the Homeric Iliad. Occasionally, however, he is extreme in a negative sense, as in his moments of martial fury.[1] In war, the warrior who is possessed by the god of war experiences this kind of fury, which is typically bestial. For example, martial fury in Greek is lussa, meaning ‘wolfish rage’.[2] Comparable is the Old Norse concept berserkr and the Old Irish concept of ríastrad ‘warp spasm’ or ‘distortion’.[3]
Here is the ritual background of the word therap"n: it was borrowed from Anatolian languages (Hittite, Luvian) sometime in the 2nd millennium BCE. The corresponding word in those Anatolian languages means ‘ritual substitute’. Someone who is very close to the king must die in place of the king, on a seasonally recurring basis.
See Nagy’s encyclopedia article “The Epic Hero,” on-line at the Heroes site.
The concept of transfert du mal: evil must be passed on, to a sacrificial victim.
In Greek visual art, Patroklos is represented as a sacrificial ram, with his throat slit open.
The Greek word pharmakon means ‘drug-cure, drug-medicine’ (compare the English borrowings “pharmacy,” “pharmacology,” etc.); there is also a related word, pharmakos, which designates a special kind of person. I ask: can you guess what kind of a person a pharmakos would be? Answer: ‘scapegoat’.
Simone Weil was a philosopher who reflected about le transfert du mal. In “Void and Compensation,” she writes about “the wish to see others suffer exactly what we are suffering.”
More from Weil:
From “Void and Compensation”: “The tendency to spread evil beyond oneself: I still have it! Beings and things are not sacred enough to me. May I never sully anything, even though I be utterly transformed into mud. To sully nothing, even in thought. Even in my worst moments I would not destroy a Greek statue or a fresco by Giotto. Why anything else then? Why, for example, a moment in the life of a human being who could have been happy for that moment.”
From the same work: “The wish to see others suffer exactly what we are suffering. It is because of this that, except in periods of social instability, the spite of those in misfortune is directed against their fellows. That is a factor making for social stability.”
From the same work: “The tendency to spread the suffering beyond ourselves. If through excessive weakness we can neither call forth pity nor do harm to others, we attack what the universe itself represents for us. Then every good or beautiful thing is like an insult.”
From “Human Personality”: “When harm is done to a man, real evil enters into him; not merely pain and suffering, but the actual horror of evil. Just as men have the power of transmitting good to one another, so they have the power to transmit evil.”
{Here is the essence of le transfert du mal. - according to Nagy}
From “Evil”: “The innocent victim who suffers knows the truth about his executioner, the executioner does not know it.”
From the same work: “A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves. That is why we are inclined to commit such acts as a way of deliverance.”
Achilles considers Patroklos to be the most philos of them all.
Review: ascending scale of affection in the Meleager narrative (the compressed narrative about Meleager is equivalent to the expanded narrative about Achilles; micronarrative vs. macronarrative). Notice that the compressed narrative (micronarrative) is called klea andr"n h#r""n ‘glories [= kleos plural] of men, heroes [h#r"es]’ at IX 524-525, and that this narrative is told in the midst of philoi (IX 528) {that is, the narrative is told to an audience who are presumed to be philoi}
Review: philos and the ascending scale of affection: elders, priests, father, sisters, mother, companions [hetairoi], {wife}
Passage C. Iliad IX 524-528
{repeated from Dialogue 1; but now different elements are being emphasized}
{Phoenix is speaking to Achilles and the other assembled heroes}: [Thus] we have heard in song the glories [klea] of heroes of old time, how they quarreled when they were roused to fury, but still they could be won over by gifts, and fair words could soothe them. I have in my mind an old story - a very old one - and you are all friends [philoi], so I will tell it.
Compare klea andrôn here in Iliad IX 524, the ‘glories of heroes of the past’, with klea andrôn in Iliad IX 189, the ‘glories of heroes of the past’. There it is Achilles himself who is singing, while accompanying himself on the lyre that once belonged to Eëtion.
The Greek word that introduces the Meleager story, hout"s ‘thus’, is a marker of a form of speech called ainos (so Eduard Fraenkel).
From here on, this word ainos will prove to be essential.
Three qualifications for understanding an ainos: sophoi/agathoi/philoi.
sophos ‘skilled’ or ‘wise’ indicates MENTAL qualification
agathos ‘good’ or ‘noble’ indicates MORAL qualification
philos ‘near-and-dear’ indicates EMOTIONAL or AFFECTIVE qualification
The “moral” of the Meleager story is that Meleager’s wife is Cleopatra = Kleopatra
The “moral” of the Meleager story for Achilles is that Achilles’ most philos companion is
Patrokl#s or Patrokle#s
What is at stake for Achilles? kleos aphthiton (IX 413)
Here are three alternative views of what is at stake for Achilles:
Love of a woman...
Passage D: Iliad IX 340-343 {Achilles is speaking}:
Are the sons of Atreus the only men in the world who love their wives? Any man of common right feeling will love and cherish her who is his own, as I this woman, with my whole heart, though she was but the prize of my spear.
[[We have come a long way from Iliad I, where Briseis was simply the property of Achilles and thus an extension of his honor.]]
Love of one’s own life...
Passage E: Iliad IX 401-408 {Achilles is speaking}:
My life [psukh#] is more to me than all the wealth of Ilion while it was yet at peace before the Achaeans went there, or than all the treasure that lies on the stone floor of Apollo’s temple beneath the cliffs of Pytho [= Delphi]. Cattle and sheep are to be had by raiding, and a man can buy both tripods and horses if he wants them, but when his life [psukh#] has once left him it can neither be bought nor raided back again.
Love of one’s comrades...
Passage F: Iliad IX 622-638
Ajax son of Telamon then said, “Odysseus, noble son of Laertes, let us be gone, for I see that our journey is vain. We must now take our answer, unwelcome though it be, to the Danaans who are waiting to receive it. Achilles is savage and remorseless; he is cruel, and cares nothing for the love his comrades lavished upon him more than on all the others. He is implacable—and yet if a man’s brother or son has been slain he will accept a fine [poin#] by way of amends from him that killed him, and the wrong-doer having paid in full remains in peace in his own locale [d#mos]; but as for you, Achilles, the gods have put a wicked unforgiving spirit in your heart, and this, all over one single girl.”
The moral problem is summed up in the micronarrative of the Shield of Achilles, where the narrative zooms in on a lawsuit involving an anomymous plaintiff and an anonymous defendant. The fundamental question here is this: what is the price of a human life?
Passage G) Iliad XVIII
Meanwhile the people were gathered in assembly, for there was a quarrel [neikos], and two men were wrangling about the blood-price [poin#] for a man who had died, the one saying to the d#mos that he had paid damages in full,
[500] and the other refusing to accept anything.
Coda...
For the mentality encoded in the names of Kleopatra and Patroklos, compare Dio Chrysostomos 12.60: “Through their longing for the divine all people have a powerful urge to worship and serve the deity from nearby. Like children that have been taken away from their father and mother, they
are filled with a strange longing and often in their dreams reach out their hands to their parents who are not there, so too do people in their love for the gods seek - and properly so because of their benefits and affinity - in all possible ways to be with them and in their company.”
[1] Nagy Best of the Achaeans (1979) 321.
[2] Lincoln 1975.
[3] For a comparison of the Old Norse and Old Irish concepts, see Sjoestedt 1940:86. See also Henry 1982. For the translation of Old Irish ríastrad as ‘warp spasm’, see Kinsella 1969. For a lively description of ‘warp spasm’, see Rees and Rees 1961:248-249.
Chapter 07. The sign of the hero.
Key word for this dialogue: s#ma, pl. s#mata ‘sign, signal, symbol; tomb, tomb of a hero’;
s#mainein (verb) ‘indicate, use a s#ma’.
This word s#ma is the “video” equivalent of the “audio” word ainos.
In order to understand more clearly the meaning of s#ma, we need to consider again the meaning of the word ainos. It is an authoritative utterance for and by a social group. In some contexts (not in the contexts we have considered so far), it can be translated as ‘praise; fable’. A deriveative of ainos is ainigma, which means ‘enigma, riddle’. We have already seen one of the clearest examples of ainos: it is the klea andr"n ‘glories of heroes’ In Iliad IX 524, referring to a narrative that is ‘totally recalled’ by Phoenix for Achilles and for the other assembled philoi who are listening. The ainos of Phoenix is signaled by what anthropologists call an “index” expression (hout" ‘thus’ at IX 524). Here is a comparable example of an “index” expression in English: “once upon a time...”
One who sees or hears a s#ma (“video”) or an ainos (“audio”) must have the following qualifications:
to be sophos ‘skilled’ or ‘wise’ - indicating a MENTAL qualification
to be agathos ‘good’ or ‘noble’ - indicating a MORAL qualification
to be philos ‘near-and-dear’ - indicating an EMOTIONAL or AFFECTIVE qualification I review here some concepts that we will need to apply all over again:
The ascending scale of affection in the micro-narrative about Meleager (which is a compressed parallel to the expanded macro-Narrative about Achilles).
This micro-narrative is called klea andr"n h#r""n ‘glories [= kleos plural] of men, heroes [h#r"es]’ (IX 524-5), which is told in the midst of philoi (IX 528). That is, the
narrative is being told to listeners who are presumed to be philoi.
The meaning of philos: as an adjective it means ‘near and dear’; as a noun it means ‘friend’.
The ascending scale of affection for Meleager in Iliad IX, as measured by the term philos: elders / priests / father / sisters / mother / companions [hetairoi] / wife
The name of Meleager’s wife: Cleopatra = Kleopatra; her name parallels in meaning the name of
Patroklos (/ Patrokl#s / Patrokle#s).
The narrative of the klea andr"n of IX 524-525 is a narrative that can be compressed into one word, one name, and that one word is the name of Patroklos (/ Patrokl#s / Patrokle#s). The name of Patroklos is the story of Patroklos. That is the story that is being told in the ‘glories of heroes’, the klea andr"n. To put it another way, the deep meaning of the story is the name of Patroklos. The story means Patroklos.
Even the fact that the names Kleopatra / Patroklos are interchangeable is itself an ainos.
In ancient Greek song culture, the act of “reading,” which may be simply the act of listening to song, can be considered an “initiation” or “ordeal,” which is a testing of the three requirements that we have been considering: that the “reader” must be sophos, agathos, and philos.
Patroklos is not just the dearest hetairos ‘companion’ of Achilles: he is his “alter ego.” The relationship between these hetairoi is represented by the Iliad as even more intimate than sexual: it operates on the mentality of being willing to die for someone else. It is as if one person were to declare to another person: “I will die for you” - and really mean it.
The “message” of the “code” of the narrative of Patroklos is this: Patroklos is for Achilles the most philos of them all (as in XVIII 80-82).
The kind of love implied by the word philos in situating Patroklos at the very top of Achilles’ ascending scale of affection is not necessarily sexual. The Iliad does not explore the relationship of Achilles and Patroklos on a sexual level, any more than it explores the relationship of Meleager and Kleopatra on a sexual level.
Having considered a case where Patroklos is the ultimate meaning of an ainos, let us now consider a case where Patroklos is the ultimate meaning of a s#ma.
I note here a relevant saying, attributed to the poet Simonides (6th/5th c. BCE): whereas a picture is silent poetry, poetry is talking pictures. In the history of filmmaking, when audio was first successfully combined with the video of the film, the word for the audio/video combination was in fact “talking pictures.” So Simonides anticipated the concept, even though the technology for the concept was invented only two and a half millennia later.
07 A. Iliad XXIII 303-348
“Antilokhos,” said Nestor, “you are young, but Zeus and Poseidon have loved you well, and have made you an excellent charioteer. I need not therefore say much by way of instruction. You are
skillful at wheeling your horses round the post, [310] but the horses themselves are very slow, and it is this that will, I fear, mar your chances. The other drivers know less than you do, but their horses are fleeter; therefore, my dear son, see if you cannot hit upon some artifice [m#tis] whereby you may insure that the prize shall not slip through your fingers. [315] The woodsman does more by skill [m#tis] than by brute force [bi#]; by skill [m#tis] the helmsman guides his storm-tossed ship over the sea [pontos], and so by skill [m#tis] one driver can beat another. [320] If a man go wide in rounding this way and that, whereas a man of craft [kerdos] may have worse horses, but he will keep them well in hand when he sees the turning-post [terma]; he knows the precise moment [325] at which to pull the rein, and keeps his eye well on the man in front of him. I will give you this certain sign [s#ma] which cannot escape your notice. There is a stump of a dead tree-oak or pine as it may be - some six feet above the ground, and not yet rotted away by rain; [330] it stands at the fork of the road; it has two white stones set one on each side, and there is a clear course all round it. It may have been a tomb [s#ma] of someone who died long ago, or it may have been used as a turning-post in days gone by; now, however, it has been fixed on by swift-footed radiant Achilles as the mark [terma] round which the chariots shall turn; hug it as close as you can, [335] but as you stand in your chariot lean over a little to the left; urge on your right-hand horse with voice and lash, and give him a loose rein, but let the left-hand horse keep so close in, [340] that the nave of your wheel shall almost graze the post; but mind the stone, or you will wound your horses and break your chariot in pieces, which would be sport for others but confusion for yourself. Therefore, my dear son, mind well what you are about, for if you can be first to round the post [345] there is no chance of any one giving you the go-by later, not even though you had Arion the horse of Adrastos, a horse which is of divine race, or the horses of Laomedon, which are the noblest in this land.”
When Nestor says to his son here, ‘I will give you this certain sign [s#ma] which cannot escape your notice’, the idea of ‘escape one’s notice’ is expressed by way of the verb-root l#th-, which means ‘mentally disconnect’. This root is found in the mythological name Lethe, which is the river of forgetfulness. More precisely, Lethe is the name of a river in the underworld that separates the living from the dead, those awake from those asleep, those conscious from those unconscious.
The idea that you must not be mentally disconnected from the s#ma ‘sign’, as we see here in Iliad XXIII 326, shows that the word s#ma has to do with a state of mind, a mentality. Just a few lines later, however, at Iliad XXIII 331, the same word refers to a ‘tomb’ or ‘grave-mark’. And this ‘tomb’ or ‘grave-mark’, as we see in this context, is used as a terma or ‘turning point’ for a chariot race. The word terma ‘turning point’, which we see in Iliad XXIII 331, can be used metaphorically to refer to turning points in one’s own life. Such a metaphorical use is preserved in the English borrowing of the word, term.
The symbolism of the left turn in a chariot race works like this... You need to be more impulsive on your right side and more restrained on your left side by whipping the horses with your right hand and reining in the horses with your left hand. This way, you are not only making the most successful left turn possible. You are also achieving a balance or equilibrium of impulsiveness and restraint at this particular moment in your life. In terms of this balance, the impulsiveness is dominant and the restraint is recessive.
I note that Antilochos does not interpret literally the s#ma or ‘sign’ given to him by his father.
Instead, he inteprets the sign metaphorically. In driving his chariot past the chariot of Menelaos, nearly “fishtailing” his competitor, Antolokhos is more impulsive than he is restrained. His action is a blend of impulsiveness and restraint that favors the impulsive side, which is the right, more than the restraining side, which is the left.
And what about ‘the grave-mark of someone who died long ago’? If there were a name to be given to ‘someone who died long ago’, what would that name be? The answer is surely: ‘an ancestor’. So the grave-mark is a fitting mark or sign for the man who carries the glory of the ancestors, Patroklos. But it will also be a fitting mark or sign for Antilokhos himself, who will give up his life by being killed in battle in place of his father Nestor at a later epic moment, beyond the Iliad (see the plot summary of the epic called the Aithiopis, or ‘Song of the Aethiopians’, which is in the Sourcebook). Once again we see the mentality of expressing a desire to die for someone else: “I will die for you.”
We should note the mysterious take-it-or-leave-it attitude of Homeric narrative here: in terms of the words said by Nestor the father to Antilokhos the son, the s#ma at Iliad XXIII 331 is either grave-mark or a turning point for a chariot race.
In the historical period, starting with the adoption of chariot-racing in the athletic “program” of the Olympics (this adoption as been dated at around 680 BCE), the turning-point of chariot-races could be conceptualized as the tomb of a hero, whose restless spirit was capable of “spooking” the horses at the most dangerous moment of the chariot-race, the left-turn around the s#ma. Race- car drivers who race in the “Indianapolis 500” have a saying about how to succeed in that race: “keep to the left and drive like hell” (Indianapolis 500). In general, we may compare the metaphor of “sudden death” in modern athletic events.
The idea of using the tomb of a hero as the turning point in a chariot race stems from the fact that the activity of athletics, like the activity of warfare, was considered to be a ritual. Moreover, the ritual activities of athletics and warfare were conceived as parallel to the mythical deeds of heroes. The same wording was used to refer to the ordeals of athletes and warriors in the rituals of athletics and war as was used to refer to the ordeals of heroes in myth. In the ritual ordeals of athletics and warfare, real people re-enacted the mythical ordeals of heroes.
There is a fusion of myth and ritual in the story about the chariot race in Iliad XXIII and about all the other athletic events that are narrated there. The athletic events in which the heroes participate here are a matter or ritual, but they are also a matter of myth, because it is the heroes of the heroic age who participate in the athletic events of Iliad XXIII, not real people in the post-heroic age who re-enact the mythical ordeals of heroes.
What makes the athletic events of Iliad XXIII different from the “real” athletic events of the historical period is that the events of Iliad XXIII appear to happen only once, whereas “real” athletic events happen on a seasonally recurring basis. We will see this concept of seasonally- recurring re-enactments when we look at the relevant passages in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter.
But appearances are deceiving. Even the athletic events narrated in the Iliad are not really “one- shot” events, since they are narrated again and again on a seasonally recurring basis at such festivals as the Panathenaia in Athens. The athletic events of Iliad XXIII are actually performed
again and again in the recycled performances of Homeric poetry at festivals.
One of the Greek words for the ritual ordeal of the athlete in the post-heroic age who re-enacts the mythical ordeal of the hero in the heroic age is aethlos or athlos. Someone who participates in such an ordeal is an athl#t#s. As we have seen earlier, this is the word that is borrowed into English as athlete.
The rituals of athletic ordeals, as we will see later, were understood to be a compensation for the myths of heroic ordeals. I recall here the formulation of Simone Weil (Dialogue 06) about the feeling that suffering needs compensation: I want you to suffer exactly the way I suffered.
The hero, whose sufferings were imagined to be larger-than-life, would have such a need for compensation. But how can you suffer exactly the way a hero suffered?
To endure such suffering, as an athlete, is to re-enact a prototypical ordeal of a hero. The Greek word for such ‘reenactment’, as we have noted already, is mim#sis.
When it comes to re-enacting the primal ordeals of heroes, there is a seemingly limitless variety of individual experiences to be matched with the individual experiences of heroes. Every individual has his or her own way of going through an ordeal, as we see in the staggering varieties of violent death in the Iliad.
A sign of this ordeal is the word psukh#, the plural of which is psukhai. It refers to the ghost of Patroklos, appearing in an epiphany to Achilles:
07 B. Iliad XXIII 57-92
As soon as they had had enough to eat and drink, the others went to their rest each in his own tent, [60] but the son of Peleus lay grieving among his Myrmidons by the shore of the sounding sea, in an open place where the waves came surging in one after another. Here a very deep slumber took hold upon him and eased the burden of his sorrows, for his limbs were weary with chasing Hector round windy Ilion. [65] Presently the sad spirit [psukh#] of unhappy Patroklos drew near him, like what he had been in stature, voice, and the light of his beaming eyes, clad, too, as he had been clad in life. The spirit hovered over his head and said-”You sleep, Achilles, and have forgotten me; [70] you loved me living, but now that I am dead you think for me no further. Bury me with all speed that I may pass the gates of Had#s; the spirits [psukhai], vain shadows of men that can labor no more, drive me away from them; they will not yet permit me to join those that are beyond the river, [75] and I wander all desolate by the wide gates of the house of Had#s. Give me now your hand I pray you, for when you have once given me my dues of fire, never shall I again come forth out of the house of Had#s. Nevermore shall we sit apart and take sweet counsel among the living; the cruel fate which was my birth-right has yawned its wide jaws around me – [80] I tell you, Achilles, you too, peer of gods, are doomed to die beneath the wall of the noble Trojans. One plea more will I make to you, if you will grant it; let not my bones be laid apart from yours, Achilles, but with them; even as we were brought up together in your own home, [85] what time Menoitios brought me to you as a child from Opoeis because by a sad spite I had killed the son of Amphidamas - not of set purpose, but in childish quarrel over the dice. The charioteer Peleus took me into his house, [90] entreated me kindly, and named me to be your
attendant [therap"n]; therefore let our bones lie in but a single urn, the two-handled golden vase given to you by your mother.”
We see this word psukh# also in the painting on the Münster Hydria. I give a preview here, and will return to the picture of this painting in the next chapter. For now I emphasize simply the fact that, in this picture as well, psukh# is a sign of the hero’s ordeal.
The use of the word s#ma as the sign of Patroklos in particular and as a sign of the ‘fathers’ or ‘ancestors’ in general is relevant to the scene where Priam appeals to Achilles to take pity and allow a funeral for the dead Hector:
07 C. Iliad XXIV 486-512
“Think of your father, O Achilles like unto the gods, who is such even as I am, on the sad threshold of old age. It may be that those who dwell near him harass him, and there is none to keep war and ruin from him. [490] Yet when he hears of you being still alive, he is glad, and his days are full of hope that he shall see his dear son come home to him from Troy; but I, wretched man that I am, had the bravest in all Troy for my sons, and there is not one of them left. [495] I had fifty sons when the Achaeans came here; nineteen of them were from a single womb, and the others were borne to me by the women of my household. The greater part of them has fierce Ares laid low, and Hector, [500] him who was alone left, him who was the guardian of the city and ourselves, him have you lately slain; therefore I am now come to the ships of the Achaeans to ransom his body from you with a great ransom. Have respect, O Achilles, for the gods; think on your own father and have compassion upon me, who am the more pitiable, [505] for I have steeled myself as no man yet has ever steeled himself before me, and have raised to my lips the hand of him who slew my son.” Thus spoke Priam, and the heart of Achilles yearned as he turned his thoughts to his father. He took the old man’s hand and moved him gently away. The two wept bitterly [510] - Priam, as he lay at Achilles’ feet, weeping for manslaughtering Hector, and Achilles now for his father and now for Patroklos, till the house was filled with their lamentation.
We see here Achilles weeping alternately for his father Peleus and for Patroklos, whose name refers to the glory of the ‘fathers’ or ‘ancestors’. The prompt that activates the hero’s emotion of sorrow here is the very act of thinking about fathers or ancestors. Achilles thinks of his own father when he sees the sorrow of another father, Priam, over the death of his son Hector.
To conclude, I return to the subject of ritual ordeals that re-enact the mythical ordeals of heroes. There is a clear example in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, where we see a myth about the establishment of an athletic ritual in compensation for the ordeal of a hero who experienced death when he was still a baby. The marker for the status of this baby as a hero is the use of the use of the expression ‘equal to a daim!n’ at the moment when the baby is ready to become a hero. That moment happens when the goddess Demeter nurtures the baby Demophon by galvanizing him in fire in order to make him exempt from death:
07 D. Hymn to Demeter 235-236, 237-241
She [= Demeter] nurtured him in the palace, and he [= Demophon] grew up like a daim"n, not eating food, not sucking from the breast ... She used to anoint him with ambrosia, as if he had
been born of the goddess, and she would breathe down her sweet breath on him as she held him at her bosom. At nights she would conceal him in the menos of fire, as if he were a smoldering log, and her parents were kept unaware. But they marveled at how full in bloom he came to be, and to look at him was like looking at the god.
The mortal mother of the baby Demophon inadvertently ruins the plan of the goddess Demeter to make Demophon exempt from death, and the goddess angrily announces that the baby will not be subject to death, like all other mortals. But there will be a compensation for the ordeal of this death, says the goddess to the mortal mother of the baby Demophon:
07 E. Homeric Hymn to Demeter 259-267
I [= Demeter] swear by the Styx, the witness of oaths that gods make, as I say this: immortal and ageless for all days would I have made your philos little boy, and I would have given him tim# that is unwilting [a-phthi-tos]. But now there is no way for him to avoid death and doom. Still, he will have an honor [tim#] that is unwilting [a-phthi-tos], for all time, because he had once sat on my knees and slept in my arms. At the right h"ra, every year, the sons of the Eleusinians will have a war, a terrible battle among each other. They will do so for all days to come.
The death of the ‘baby hero’ will be compensated by seasonally recurring athletic re-enactment, as expressed by the word tim# ‘honor’, which refers here to the honor conferred upon cult heroes in the rituals of hero-cult. In this case, the rituals take the form of athletic competitions that simulate warfare.
We see in this passage a reference to a ritual mock-battle at Eleusis, a quasi-athletic event known as the Ball#tus, which was officially held on a seasonally-recurring basis to compensate for the death of the baby cult-hero Demophon. This mock-battle seems to have been the ritual kernel of a whole complex of events known as the Eleusinian Games. Other historical parallels include the Nemean and the Isthmian Games, which were pan-Hellenic athletic events held on a seasonally- recurring basis to compensate for the deaths of two other baby cult-heroes, Arkhemoros and Melikertes respectively.
The tim# aphthitos ‘unwilting honor’ of a seasonally-recurring athletic event that the hero Demophon receives as a compensation for his death in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter can be compared with the kleos aphthiton ‘unwilting glory’ that the hero Achilles receives as a compensation for his own death in the Iliad:
07 F = 01 A. Iliad IX 410-416
My mother Thetis tells me that there are two ways in which I may meet my end [telos]. If I stay here and fight, I shall not have a return [nostos] alive but my glory [kleos] will be unwilting [aphthiton]: whereas if I go home my name [kleos] will perish, but it will be long before the end [telos] shall take me.
The kleos of the Iliad, as we will see in the next chapter, is in its own right a seasonally-recurring ritual event, since both the Iliad and the Odyssey were performed at the seasonally-recurring festival of the Panathenaia in Athens. As we will also see, there was also a seasonally-recurring
athletic event at that same festival, and this athletic event was closely linked to the poetic event of the Iliad.
Chapter 08: A psychology of signs in ancient Greek visual arts
Key word: psukh#, as used in the context of the key word for the last time, s#ma. This word psukh# refers to the life of someone who is alive and to the disembodied conveyor of someone’s identity after that someone dies.
This key word is actually the only piece of text for this time. As we saw from the previous time, psukh# is written out as ph-s-kh-e on an art object that I have been calling the Münster Hydria. The meaning of the word “hydria” is relevant to the meaning of the word psukh#. (Note the spelling: hydria, not “hydra,” which comes from a Greek word for a venomous dragon.) The word “hydria” comes from a Greek word for a vessel used for libations (= ritual pourings), on occasions that include the worship of ancestors and the worship of heroes. Libations poured from hydrias, as we will see, are relevant to the meaning of psukh#. I will concentrate on two hydrias.
One of these two hydrias was previewed the last time. It was the Münster Hydria (dated around 520 BCE). It showed a picture of Patroklos hovering over the s#ma or ‘tomb’ that was destined to be shared by the bodies of Patroklos and Achilles. And the picture is identified by the lettering that spells out psukh#. We will now concentrate on the meaning of psukh# in the context of the picture of Patroklos. Such a picture would be called in Greek a s#ma, just as the tomb of a hero is called in Greek a s#ma. And the same word s#ma can refer not only to the tomb of a hero or to a picture of the hero but also to any sign of the hero, such as the lettering that identifies the picture in the painting on the Münster Hydria. That is what I mean when I say “a psychology of signs.” The word psukh# is a marker of such psychology. And, as I said at the start, this word psukh# will be the only word that figures in this presentation of signs about the psukh# of the hero.
The other one of the two hydrias on which I will concentrate is housed in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. It is the Boston Hydria (also dated around 520 BCE).
Both the Münster Hydria and the Boston Hydria depict the athletic event that I described the last time, which is the contest of the apobatai (plural of apobat#s).
Both depictions mix the ritual of an athlete’s ordeal with the myth of a hero’s ordeal. Here, to repeat, are working definitions of “ritual” and “myth”:
Ritual is doing things in a special (sacred) way. Myth is saying things in a special (sacred) way.
Actually, ritual is not only doing things but also saying things, like myth. So, ritual frames myth.
And, as we saw earlier, the process of mim#sis as the re-enacting of an ordeal leads to a process of purification or katharsis. Here we return to the formulation of Aristotle, who links mim#sis
and katharsis in his definition of tragedy:
Tragedy is the mim#sis of a serious and complete action that has magnitude, with seasoned speech, ... by performers instead of through narrative, bringing about through pity and fear the purification [katharsis] of such emotions [pathos].
Pity is attraction, fear is repulsion. The hero as dynamic, not static.
The turn around the turning post is reenacted by Achilles, with his excessive force and restraint Achilles’ brutality is as shocking to the Greek audience as it is to us. Fear and pity.
Aristotle thought that the Iliad is a tragedy.
Note that Achilles finally gets out of the depths of brutality precisely by way of identifying with his deadliest enemy.
A father’s tears are what finally moves him. He thinks of his own father.
Here I review also the concept of mimesis, which is the process of re-enactment in sacred space. What you re-enact is myth, how you re-enact it is ritual.
Myth (including epic, which is myth in the anthropological sense of the word “myth”) is framed by ritual - the ritual of performance. You can re-enact not just by acting but even by telling or retelling.
So what do we see in the picture painted on the Münster Hydria? We see an athlete / warrior engaging in a chariot contest and we see Achilles honoring Patroklos by way of participating in that chariot contest. Achilles himself is participating in a ritual by way of driving round and round the s#ma of Patroklos.
The picture shows ritual and myth together, just as poetry shows ritual and myth together in the chariot race described at Iliad XXIII.
Emily Vermeule speaks of a “window effect” created by the picture frame of the Boston Hydria, but her comment can apply to the picture frame of the Münster Hydria as well: “The technique gives the impression that the myth is circling around in another world, outside the window frame through which the spectator views it, in endless motion which is somehow always arrested at the same place whenever we return to the window.”
I have a question about this window: as you are looking through the window, are you looking in from the outside or are you looking out from the inside?
The figure runs around a turning point (terma), a point of concentration. (Note what Nestor tells
Antilokhos in Iliad XXIII: concentrate on the s#ma. The medium of the tomb (s#ma) of the hero (or ancestor) is the message of the hero (or ancestor).
Things to look for as you compare the picture of the Münster Hydria (=M) with that of the Boston Hydria (=B):
The axis of vision centers on the s#ma in M, while the s#ma is off-center in B.
The chariot is also off-center in B. Study question: what is centered in B, and why?
The homunculus (= smaller-than-life-size body-double) has no wings in M; it does have wings in B.
The homunculus is labeled as psukh# in M and as Patroklos in B. Question: whose psukh# is the homunculus in M? Of Achilles? Of Patroklos? Of both?
Note the picture on the shield of the homunculus in both M and B.
The Greek word for ‘picture on a shield’ is s#ma.
The s#ma on the shield of a hero is supposed to symbolize his identity.
A running leg (or foot: the Greek language does not make the same distinctions between ‘leg’ and ‘foot’ that the English language does) is symbolic of which hero in the Iliad?
When there are three running legs spinning around a center (the technical Greek word for this visual device is triskeles = ‘three-legs’), the idea of superhuman running speed is implied.
The “winged lady” is still in the process of landing in B; on the other hand, she has already landed in M.
In B, The “winged lady” makes a gesture toward the portico situated on your far left. The old couple in the portico repeat the gesture. Achilles is making eye-contact with the gesture. Notice that he is not making eye-contact with the s#ma, nor with the psukh# of Patroklos. Is he getting on the chariot or getting off?
Consider the painting of the council of the gods on the upper part or “shoulder” of the Münster Hydria. We see here Zeus and Hermes (with his caduceus = his magic wand) at center left and center right, while Athena is at the right. Dionysus is at the extreme left. Note the goddess, making a gesture, between Dionysus and Zeus. Study question: how does this council of the gods compare with the council of the gods at the beginning of Iliad XXIV?
How does the action of “the winged lady” in B (and, probably, in M) compare with the action of a certain character in Iliad XXIV?
Things to look for as you compare the pictures of M and B with other pictures.
Note each image (s#ma) on each hero’s shield. Compare with the pictures of animals guarding the tomb (s#ma) of the hero.
Note the details that convey an epic event (by “epic” we mean the kind of macro-narrative represented by the Iliad) and details that convey an athletic event. Where are epic / athletic details distinct and where are they not? Compare the epic / athletic events of the Funeral Games of Patroklos in Iliad XXIII. Compare Pindar’s Pythian 8, available on the website. Where are epic / athletic details distinct and where are they not?
The rage of the hero translates into the killer instinct of the athlete. Compare the dragging of Hector’s corpse, presented as an athletic event. This detail about the “dragging” is an aetiology (myth) for the athletic event (ritual) of the chariot race featuring apobatai at the Panathenaia in Athens.
Chapter 09. Introduction to the Odyssey
09 A. Odyssey i 1-12
That man, tell me about him, O Muse, about that many-sided man who wandered far and wide after he had sacked the famous citadel of Troy. Many cities did he visit, and many were the people with whose customs and thinking [noos] he was acquainted; many pains [algea] he suffered at sea while seeking to save his own life [psukh#] and to achieve the safe homecoming [nostos] of his companions; but do what he might he could not save his men, for they perished through their own sheer recklessness in eating the cattle of the Sun-god Helios; so the god prevented them from ever reaching home. Tell me, as you have told those who came before me, about all these things, O daughter of Zeus, starting from whatsoever point you choose. [11] So now all who escaped death in battle or by shipwreck had got safely home except Odysseus, and he, though he was longing for his return [nostos] to his wife and country, was detained by the goddess Calypso, ...
The key word for this dialogue is nostos 'return, homecoming; song about homecoming; return to light and life'
The last of these meanings is mystical, having to do with ideas about immortalization after death. Our first impression is that such ideas are foreign to Homeric poetry. When we take a second look, however, we see that immortalization is a subtext, as it were, even in Homeric poetry. Immortalization is a matter of eschatology.
Eschatology has to do with thinking about afterlife - where you “end up.” In Christian eschatology, for example, the alternatives are heaven and hell. In Homeric eschatology, it must be noted, Hades is not “hell.”
As we will see more clearly later, Hades is transitional rather than eschatological. Only paradisiacal places like Elysium, the Islands of the Blessed, the White Island, and so on are eschatological.
The process of nostos can be a mode of immortalization. This theme will play out in the plot of the Odyssey, but not directly. Only on the level of metaphor.
Here is an important set of working definitions... Metaphor is literally a "borrowing" from one world into another. Metaphor is meaning by way of substitution. By contrast, metonomy is meaning by way of connection.
Metaphor works on the vertical axis of selection.
Metonym works on the horizontal axis of combination.
An example of metaphor from the last session was the Black Figure painting that shows an interchangeability of three images lined up on a vertical axis: Hector’s body, a snake, and the psukhe of Patroklos/Achilles.
An example of metonym from the last session was the Black Figure painting that shows a connection between the lamenting gesture of Iris and the lamenting gesture of Hecuba, Hector’s mother.
09 B. Odyssey i 88-95
In the meantime I will go to Ithaca, to put heart into Odysseus’ son Telemachus; I will embolden him to call the Achaeans in assembly, and speak out to the suitors of his mother Penelope, who persist in eating up any number of his sheep and oxen; I will also conduct him to Sparta and to Pylos, to see if he can hear anything about the return [nostos] of his dear father - for this will give him genuine fame [kleos] throughout humankind.
In this passage, we see that Athena is preparing Telemachus to connect with the epic of his father, which is an epic in the making.
This epic of Odysseus, this Odyssey, is a matter of both kleos and nostos. 09 C. Odyssey i 325-344
Phemios was still singing, and his hearers sat rapt in silence as he told the baneful tale of the homecoming [nostos] from Troy, and the ills Athena had laid upon the Achaeans. Penelope, daughter of Ikarios, heard his song from her room upstairs, and came down by the great staircase, not alone, but attended by two of her handmaids. When she reached the suitors she stood by one of the bearing posts that supported the roof of the halls with a staid maiden on either side of her. She held a veil, moreover, before her face, and was weeping bitterly. [337] “Phemios,” she cried, “you know many another feat of gods and heroes, such as poets love to celebrate. Sing the suitors some one of these, and let them drink their wine in silence, but cease this sad tale, for it breaks my sorrowful heart, and reminds me of my lost husband for whom I have grief [penthos] ever without ceasing, and whose name [kleos] was great over all Hellas and middle Argos.
We see from this passage that kleos without penthos is a superficial kind of epic. The Odyssey
explores the complexities of epic.
From the retrospective standpoint of the Odyssey, the moral foundations of the Iliad are questioned:
09 D. Odyssey iii 130-135
When, however, we had sacked the city of Priam, and were setting sail in our ships as the gods had dispersed us, then Zeus saw fit to vex the Argives on their homeward voyage [nostos]; for they had not all been either wise or just [dikaioi], and hence many came to a bad end through the anger [m#nis] of Zeus’ daughter Athena.
In this passage, we see that the nostoi of the Achaeans involved not only happy endings but many unhappy ones. Of all the nostoi, only the nostos of Odysseus is not yet complete. It is a story still in the making. The question is, will it have a happy ending or a sad ending?
It repays the effort to review carefully the contexts of these words: i 326 nostos of the Achaeans
i 342 penthos alaston 'grief that is unforgettable [l#th-]'
i 344 kleos of Odysseus
i 351 kleos of the "latest" happenings
In contemplating thse words, I am reminded of the title of the work by Marcel Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu.
The Odyssey “returns” to the songs of the Trojan War: 09 E. Odyssey viii 73-82
The Muse inspired Demodokos to sing the glories [kleos] of heroes. In particular it was something that had a kleos that reached all the way to the sky in its full breadth. It was [75] the quarrel [neikos] between Odysseus and Achilles, and the fierce words that they heaped on one another as they sat together at a banquet. But Agamemnon was glad in his mind [noos] that the best of the Achaeans were quarrelling with one another, for Apollo had foretold him this [80] at Pytho [= Delphi] when he crossed the stone floor to consult the oracle. Here was the beginning of the evil that by the will of Zeus started rolling down toward both Danaans and Trojans.
This passage shows us a micro-Iliad as viewed in the Odyssey.
We have independent evidence about the plots of epics about the Trojan War. A case in point is the plot summary of Proclus, Iliou Persis ("Destruction of Troy"); part of the "Epic Cycle" as summarized by Proclus; observe what Odysseus does and when.
09 F. Plot summary of Proclus, Iliou Persis:
1 The Trojans, suspicious about the horse, stand about wondering what they should do.
Some think it should be pushed off a cliff, while others think it should be burned down,
while still others say that it should be dedicated as sacred [hieros] to Athena..
5 In the end, the opinion of the third group wins out.
They turn to merriment, feasting as if they had been freed from the war.
At this point two serpents appear and destroy Laocoön and one of his sons.
Mount Ida.
At the sight of this marvel, Aeneas and his followers get upset and withdraw to
Sinon lights signal fires for the Achaeans. He had previously entered the city, using a
pretext.
10 And they [= the Achaeans], some of them sailing from Tenedos
enemies.
[toward Troy] and others of them emerging from the Wooden Horse, fall upon their
They kill many, and the city is taken by force.
Neoptolemos kills Priam, who has taken refuge at the altar of Zeus Herkeios. Menelaos finds Helen and takes her back down to the ships, after
15 slaughtering Deiphobos.
Ajax son of Oileus takes Kassandra by force, dragging her away from the wooden statue [xoanon] of Athena.
At the sight of this, the Achaeans get angry and decide to stone Ajax to death, but he takes refuge at the altar of Athena,
and so is preserved from his impending destruction.
20 The Achaeans put the city to the torch.
They slaughter Polyxena on the tomb of Achilles. Odysseus kills Astyanax,
and Neoptolemos takes Andromache as his prize. The rest of the spoils are distributed.
25 Demophon and Akamas find Aithra [the mother of Theseus], and take her with them.
Then the Achaeans sail off [from Troy],
and Athena begins to plan destruction for them at sea.
Compare this version of the epic traditions about the Trojan War with the version told by Demodokos to an audience including the yet-unidentified Odysseus:
G. Odyssey viii 499-534
The singer, starting with a prayer to the god, took up the story at the point where some of the Argives set fire to their tents and sailed away while others, hidden within the horse, were waiting with Odysseus in the Trojan place of assembly. For the Trojans themselves had drawn the horse into their fortress, and it stood there while they sat in council round it, and were in three minds as to what they should do. Some were for breaking it up then and there; others would have it dragged to the top of the rock on which the fortress stood, and then thrown it down the precipice; while yet others were for letting it remain as an offering and propitiation for the gods. And this was how they settled it in the end, for the city was doomed when it took in that horse, within which were all the bravest of the Argives waiting to bring death and destruction on the Trojans. Then he sang how the sons of the Achaeans issued from the horse, and sacked the town, breaking out from their ambuscade. He sang how they overran the city here and there and ravaged it, and how Odysseus went raging like Ares along with Menelaos to the house of Deiphobos. It was there that the fight raged most furiously, nevertheless by Athena’s help he was victorious. [521] All this he told, but Odysseus was overcome as he heard him, and his cheeks were wet with tears. He wept as a woman weeps when she throws herself on the body of her husband who has fallen before his own city and people, fighting bravely in defense of his home and children. She wails aloud and flings her arms about him as he lies gasping for breath and dying, but her enemies beat her from behind about the back and shoulders, and carry her off into slavery, to a life of labor [ponos] and sorrow, and the beauty fades from her cheeks—even so piteously did Odysseus weep, but none of those present perceived his tears except Alkinoos, who was sitting near him, and could hear the sobs and sighs that he was heaving.
The tears of the captive woman are comparable to what we read in Virgil Aeneid 1.462: sunt lacrimae rerum ‘there are tears that connect with the universe’ (note too the title of the composition by Franz Liszt).
See the Heroes website, Introduction 3, "The Epic Hero," §§47-53, which explores in depth some of the topics I list below:
We need to explore in more detail later the key words in Odyssey iii 132-135: Zeus plots lugros [baneful] nostos (132), because the Argives had no noos nor justice [dik#] (133) and they were slated for doom because of the anger [m#nis] of Athena (135).
Whereas Achilles has to choose between kleos and nostos in the Iliad, Odysseus gets both in the Odyssey.
Odyssey vs. Iliad: compare the Will of Zeus in Iliad I 5 vs. the “free will” of humans in
Odyssey i 32ff.
How have scholars explained such differences?
Two authors.
One author in different phases of life.
Questions of authorship tie into three basic theories about Homeric poetry:
Homer wrote it down
Homer dictated it
Homer is the culmination of an evolving oral epic tradition
In terms of explanation “C,” the differences between the Iliad and the Odyssey are a matter of distinct but complementary traditions, that have evolved alongside each other.
On thematic complementarity between the two epics: anger/baneful/caused suffering for Achaeans and implicitly Trojans (Iliad) vs. man/polytropic/veered many times (Odyssey)
Odysseus as off-course = off-balance. Yet another way of saying "out of synchrony."
Primary heroic identity of Odysseus has to do with nostos
(rewritten in Introduction 3):
returning king who reclaims his kingdom Excursus: king = body politic
starts from zero; from zero to hero
sailor/pilot who came home from the sea
link between #1 and #2: kubern#t#s/gubernator/governor-government (the ship of state metaphor)
returning warrior who reclaims his wife: wanderer/adventurer; a most appropriate description is soldier of fortune
seer returning from vision quest = shaman
trickster who retraces steps (cf. Paul Radin)
The son goes off on a quest to find his father in order to find his own heroic identity.
god/hero antagonism for Odysseus: Poseidon (#A), Athena (##AB), Hermes (##DE)
Poseidon as antagonist is the easiest to comprehend.
Athena... best to start with "Our Lady of Pilots" theme; key is v (end) and xiii (beginning)
A related theme: Athena installs kings, e.g. Erekhtheus in Iliad [II 547]
As for Hermes... best to start with polytropism (Odyssey x 330); Odysseus polu-tropos
(Odyssey i 1)
There is a built-in reference to Hermes in the name of Poly-phemos, son of Poseidon.
"Dress-rehearsal" for Athena's help: Telemachos narrative, genre of Mirror of Princes.
Telemachos formulates his quest in two ways:
Odyssey ii 360 I am going after the nostos of my father
Odyssey iii 83 I am going after the kleos of my father
Athena in the role of Mentes says:
Odyssey i 89 I will put menos in him [= Telemachos]
Odyssey i 320ff She put menos in him, and reminded [mn#-] him
Ment#s in Odyssey i, Ment"r in Odyssey ii.
Remember the concept of Lethe!!!
Achilles preempts Odysseus for the narrative of Troy, Ilias=Iliad.
Achilles is Best of the Achaeans because of Troy
Odysseus is Best of the Achaeans because he remarried Penelope.
Odyssey i 4: he suffered many algea; same word as in Iliad I 2. Is there a difference between the pains of the Iliad and Odyssey?
Odysseus has his cake and eats it too, nostos and kleos
He was the one who destroyed Troy, not Achilles.
But he also gets to suffer on account of both:
Chapter 10. The Homeric concepts of noos 'mind' and nostos 'return' in the Odyssey The key word for this dialogue: noos: designates the realm of consciousness, of rational
functions; 'intuition, perception'; principle that reintegrates thumos (or menos) and psukh# after death
A. Odyssey i 1-12
That man, tell me about him, O Muse, about that many-sided man who wandered far and wide after he had sacked the famous citadel of Troy. Many cities did he visit, and many were the people with whose customs and thinking [noos] he was acquainted; many pains [algea] he suffered at sea while seeking to save his own life [psukh#] and to achieve the safe homecoming [nostos] of his companions; but do what he might he could not save his men, for they perished through their own sheer recklessness in eating the cattle of the Sun-god Helios; so the god prevented them from ever reaching home. Tell me, as you have told those who came before me, about all these things, O daughter of Zeus, starting from whatsoever point you choose. [11] So now all who escaped death in battle or by shipwreck had got safely home except Odysseus, and he, though he was longing for his return [nostos] to his wife and country, was detained by the goddess Calypso, ...
I focus on these two lines:
In i 3 Odysseus saw the cities of many and came to know their/his noos
In i 5 Odysseus is seeking to win as a prize his psukh# and the nostos of his companions
The key word for this chapter, noos, is related to the key word in the previous chapter: nostos 'return, homecoming; song about homecoming; return to light and life'. Now I add another level of meaning: 'coming to' in the sense of 'return to consciousness' after either fainting or death.
In i 4, which is the verse that is sandwiched in between the verse mentioning noos and the verse mentioning nostos, we read that Odysseus suffered many algea 'pains'; same word as in Iliad i 2; cf. the modernizing word "analgesic" (e.g. aspirin).
Note the modern word that is built from a combination of algea 'pains' (as in Odyssey i 4) and nostos (as in Odyssey i 5): it is nostalgia. In Modern Greek, nostimos means what? [GN will be expecting an answer from native speakers of Modern Greek. Hint for non-Greeks: think of the word madeleine in the world of Marcel Proust, "A la recherche du temps perdu."].
With regard to the inherent sadness of the word nostalgia, compare the ethos of love songs in traditional societies: most of them are "sad."
An example: this aria from Gianni Schicchi, by Giacomo Puccini:
O mio babbino, caro, mi piace, è bello bello,
vo'andare in Porta Rossa a comperar l'anello!
Si, si, ci voglio andare! E se l'amassi indarno, andrei sul Ponte Vecchio ma per buttarmi in Arno!
Mi struggo e mi tormento, O Dio! vorrei morir!
Oh, my Daddy, dear,
I like him, he's beautiful, beautiful. I'm on my way, going to Porta Rossa to buy the wedding ring!
Yes, yes, I want to go there, And if I loved him in vain,
I will go to the Old Bridge
but only to throw myself into the Arno. I struggle and I am tormented
Oh, God! I want to die!
Back to the subject of noos... Consider the positive and the negative values built into the names Antinoos and Alkinoos: their names mean, respectively: 'he who is opposed to bringing back to light and life' and 'he who has the power to bring back to light and life'
Both words, noos and nostos, are derived from the Indo-European root *nes- 'return to light and life' (Greek is one of many Indo-European languages; other IE languages are Latin, Sanskrit, Hittite, etc.); from Indo-European languages other than Greek, we see that this root *nes- occurs in myths having to do with Morning Star / Evening Star.
The meanings of noos and nostos are relevant to the overall plot of the Homeric Odyssey.
The surface meaning of Odyssey: safe return from war, safe return from the sea.
The underlying meaning of Odyssey: safe return from death; this implicit theme is made explicit in Theognis 1123-1124:
Do not remind me of my misfortunes! The kinds of things that happened to Odysseus have happened to me too.
Odysseus, who returned, emerging from the great palace of Hades,
and who then killed the suitors with a pitiless thûmos.
The most easily perceived connection of the two words noos and nostos: Odyssey ix 82-104, about the Land of the Lotus-Eaters: if you lose the "implant" of homecoming in your mind, you cannot go home because you no longer know what home is.
Here is another negative threat to noos and nostos... Odyssey x 190-202, to which Fitzgerald refers as an “island nightmare.” In the book Best of the Achaeans, I speak of Iliadic nightmares in the Odyssey... It is about the disorientation of Odysseus and his companions. The metaphor of orientation recapitulates noos / nostos. And disorientation recapitulates the negation of noos / nostos. The disorientation is described in this passage:
10 B. Odyssey x 190-202
'My friends, we are in very great difficulties; listen therefore to me. We have no idea where the sun either sets or rises, so that we do not even know East from West. I see no way out of it; nevertheless, we must try and find one. We are certainly on an island, for I went as high as I could this morning, and saw the sea reaching all round it to the horizon; it lies low, but towards the middle I saw smoke rising from out of a thick forest of trees.' [198] Their hearts sank as they heard me, for they remembered how they had been treated by the Laestrygonian Antiphates, and by the savage ogre Polyphemus. They wept bitterly in their dismay, but there was nothing to be got by crying.
Is there a difference between the pains of the Iliad and Odyssey? For an answer, consider this passage...
10C. Odyssey iv 219-226
Then Zeus’ daughter Helen bethought her of another matter. She drugged the wine with an herb that banishes all care, sorrow, and ill humor. Whoever drinks wine thus drugged cannot shed a single tear all the rest of the day, not even though his father and mother both of them drop down dead, or he sees a brother or a son hewn in pieces before his very eyes.
In the original Greek Helen's drug is called n#penthes ('non-penthos') and is described as
a-kholon (literally, 'without kholos'; kholos = 'anger'). Note that the son of Menelaos, at the
beginning of Odyssey iv, is named Megapenth#s.
The drug n#penthes is meant to cancel the penthos of the Iliad... Here I repeat from the previous dialogue the passage about the "return" to the song of Troy:
10D. Odyssey viii 514-534
Then he [= the singer] sang how the sons of the Achaeans issued from the horse, and sacked the town, breaking out from their ambuscade. He sang how they overran the city here and there and ravaged it, and how Odysseus went raging like Ares along with Menelaos to the house of Deiphobos. It was there that the fight raged most furiously, nevertheless by Athena’s help he was victorious. [521] All this he told, but Odysseus was overcome as he heard him, and his cheeks were wet with tears. He wept as a woman weeps when she throws herself on the body of her husband who has fallen before his own city and people, fighting bravely in defense of his home and children. She wails aloud and flings her arms about him as he lies gasping for breath and dying, but her enemies beat her from behind about the back and shoulders, and carry her off into slavery, to a life of labor [ponos] and sorrow, and the beauty fades from her cheeks—even so piteously did Odysseus weep, but none of those present perceived his tears except Alkinoos, who was sitting near him, and could hear the sobs and sighs that he was heaving.
It is significant that Alki-noos, whose name means ‘he whose noos has power’, is the one who notices the grief of Odysseus. Alkinoos asks Odysseus a pointed question that keeps the focus on the themes of the Trojan War, the themes of the Iliad:
10E. Odyssey viii 567-586
Tell us also why you are made unhappy on hearing about the return of the Argive Danaans from Troy. The gods arranged all this, and sent them their misfortunes in order that future generations might have something to sing about. Did you lose some brave kinsman of your wife’s when you were before Troy? A son-in-law or father-in-law—which are the nearest relations a man has outside his own flesh and blood? Or was it some brave and kindly-natured comrade - for a good friend is as dear to a man as his own brother?
Such Iliadic themes, like the ‘good friend’ (consider Patroklos in the Iliad), are the themes of the Sirens in the Song of the Sirens:
10F. Odyssey xii 184-191
‘Come here,’ they sang, ‘renowned Odysseus, honor to the Achaean name, and listen to our two voices. No one ever sailed past us without staying to hear the enchanting sweetness of our song
—and he who listens will go on his way not only charmed, but wiser, for we know all the ills that the gods laid upon the Argives and Trojans before Troy, and can tell you everything that is going to happen over the whole world.’
The nostalgic (love song?) Song of the Sirens, xii 184-191, is replete with Iliadic agenda
So how does noos / nostos lead to orientation? Now we go back to celestial dynamics... returning to the Island Nightmare.
Celestial dynamics: sun sets into the Okeanos (Iliad VIII 485) / and rises from the Okeanos (Odyssey xix 433-434).
Similarly, the psukh# when it leaves the body “sets” into the Okeanos (Odyssey xx 63ff).
10 G. Odyssey xii 1-7
After we left behind the stream of Okeanos, and had got out into the open sea, we went on till we reached the island of Aeaea, where the Dawn has her dwelling and her place to dance, and where the risings of the sun happen.
Where it all comes together is Odyssey xiii 79-95 the nostos:
10 H. Odyssey xiii 79-95
Thereon, when they began rowing out to sea, Odysseus fell into a deep, sweet, and almost deathlike slumber. [81] The ship bounded forward on her way as a four-in-hand chariot flies over the course when the horses feel the whip. Her prow curved as it were the neck of a stallion, and a great wave of dark seething water boiled in her wake. She held steadily on her course, and even a falcon, swiftest of all birds, could not have kept pace with her. Thus, then, she cut her way through the water, carrying one who was as cunning as the gods, but who was now sleeping peacefully, forgetful of all that he had suffered both on the field of battle and by the waves of the weary sea. [93] When the bright star that heralds the approach of dawn began to show, the ship drew near to land.
Chapter 11 Notes
Key word for this dialogue: olbios ‘blessed’ (for the initiated) and ‘prosperous, happy’ (for the uninitiated). The cult hero is olbios ‘blessed’ after he or she dies. The worshipper of a hero becomes olbios ‘blessed’ by making contact with the hero.
Most relevant is a word we have considered at length already, s#ma. In Passage A, note the s#ma
of Achilles, which looks out over the Hellespont.
In Passage A, we see a retrospective glance at the Iliad - in the Odyssey.
Odyssey xxiv 35-97: "Happy [olbios] son of Peleus," answered the ghost [psukh#] of Agamemnon, "for having died at Troy far from Argos, while the bravest of the Trojans and the Achaeans fell round you fighting for your body. There you lay in the whirling clouds of dust, all huge and hugely, heedless now of your chariot-riding. ... Then, when we had borne you to the ships out of the fray, we laid you on your bed and cleansed your fair skin with warm water and with ointments. The Danaans tore their hair and wept bitterly round about you. Your mother, when she heard, came with her immortal nymphs from out of the sea, and the sound of a great wailing went forth over the waters so that the Achaeans quaked for fear. ...The daughters of the old man of the sea stood round you weeping bitterly, and clothed you in immortal raiment. The nine muses also came and lifted up their sweet voices in lament—calling and answering one another; there was not an Argive but wept for pity of the dirge they chanted. Days and nights seven and ten we mourned you, mortals and immortals, but on the eighteenth day we gave you to the flames, and many a fat sheep with many an ox did we slay in sacrifice around you. You were burnt in raiment of the gods, with rich resins and with honey, while heroes—horse and foot— clashed their armor round the pile as you were burning, with the tramp as of a great multitude. But when the flames of heaven had done their work, we gathered your white bones at daybreak and laid them in ointments and in pure wine. Your mother brought us a golden vase to hold them— gift of Dionysos, and work of Hephaistos himself; in this we mingled your bleached bones with those of Patroklos who had gone before you, and separate we enclosed also those of Antilokhos, who had been closer to you than any other of your comrades now that Patroklos was no more. [80] Over these the host of the Argives built a noble tomb [tumbos] on a point jutting out over the open Hellespont, that it might be seen from far out upon the sea by those now living and by them that shall be born hereafter. Your mother begged prizes from the gods, and offered them to be contended for in a contest [ag"n] of the noblest of the Achaeans. You must have been present at the funeral of many a hero, when the young men gird themselves and make ready to contend for prizes on the death of some great chieftain, but you never saw such prizes as silver-footed Thetis offered in your honor; for the gods loved you well. Thus even in death your kleos, Achilles, has not been lost, and your name lives evermore among all mankind. But as for me, what solace had I when the days of my fighting were done? For Zeus willed my destruction on my return [nostos],
by the hands of Aegisthus and those of my wicked wife."
I note in this passage the portrayal of Achilles as a beau mort.
For a Modern Greek parallel, compare this poem by Ritsos, which was set to music by Theodorakis, reworked by Hadzidakis
(translation by George Syrimis)
mallià zgourà pou pàno tous ta dhàhtila pernoùsa tis nìhtes pou kimòsouna ke plài sou xagripnoùsa frìdhi mou gaitanòfridho ke kontilogramèno kàmara pou to vlèma mou koùrniaze anapamèno màtia glarà pou mèsa tous antìfengan ta màkri
proinoù ouranoù ke pàskhiza min ta thambòsi dhàkri hìli mou moskomìristo pou os làlages anthìzan lithària ke xeròdhendra ki aidhònia fterougìzan
Curly hair through which my fingers I would pass, the nights you slept and next to you I kept vigil
That eyebrow for me, sword-curved eyebrow and pencil-drawn
an arch in which my gaze would nest in peace. Blue eyes in which would shine the distances
of a morning sky, and I toiled that they would not be blurred by tears. Those sweet-smelling lips for me, when you spoke there was blossoming
of stones and dried out trees, and nightingales would flutter.
In Passage B, we see a prospective glance at epic beyond our Odyssey - in the Odyssey.
Odyssey xi 90-137: Then came also the ghost [psukh#] of Theban Teiresias, with his golden scepter in his hand. He knew me and said, 'Odysseus, noble son of Laertes, why, poor man, have you left the light of day and come down to visit the dead in this sad place? Stand back from the trench and withdraw your sword that I may drink of the blood and answer your questions
truly.' [97] So I drew back, and sheathed my sword, whereon when he had drank of the blood he began with his prophecy [= words of a mantis]. [100] 'You want to know,' said he, 'about your return home [nostos], but the gods will make this hard for you. I do not think that you will escape the eye of Poseidon, who still nurses his bitter grudge against you for having blinded his son. Still, after much suffering you may get home if you can restrain yourself and your companions when your ship reaches the Thrinacian island, where you will find the sheep and cattle belonging to the sun, who sees and gives ear to everything. If you leave these flocks unharmed and think of nothing but of getting home [nostos], you may yet after much hardship reach Ithaca; but if you harm them, then I forewarn you of the destruction both of your ship and of your men. Even though you may yourself escape, you will return in bad plight after losing all your men, in another man's ship, and you will find trouble in your house, which will be overrun by high-handed people, who are devouring your substance under the pretext of paying court and making presents to your wife. [118] When you get home you will take your revenge on these suitors; and after you have killed them by force [bi#] or fraud in your own house, you must take a well-made oar and carry it on and on, till you come to a country where the people have never heard of the sea and do not even mix salt with their food, nor do they know anything about ships, and oars that are as the wings of a ship. I will give you this certain token [s#ma] which cannot escape your notice. A wayfarer will meet you and will say it must be a winnowing shovel that you have got upon your shoulder; on this you must fix the oar in the ground and sacrifice a ram, a bull, and a boar to Poseidon. Then go home and offer hecatombs to the gods in the sky one after the other. As for yourself, death shall come to you from the sea, and your life shall ebb away very gently when you are full of years and peace of mind, and your people shall be prosperous [olbioi]. All that I have said will come true.'
We see here a prophecy of the s#ma of Odysseus. His body will make his worshippers olbioi
because he will be olbios in death.
We have just seen in what we have read a “crisis” in “reading.” The word crisis is derived from...
krisis 'judgment, crisis', abstract noun derived from krinesthai 'judge, distinguish, make distinctions'; hupo-krinesthai is the way for a seer to answer a question about a vision
seen by someone else, as in the case of Penelope's dream. krit#rion = criterion for judging, distinguishing, making distinctions kritikos 'critical' (in both senses: 'crisis-related' or 'criticism-related')
Consider again Odyssey i 1-10: That man, tell me about him, O Muse, about that many-sided man who wandered far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy. Many cities did he visit, and many were the people with whose customs and thinking [noos] he was acquainted; many pains [algea] he suffered at sea while seeking to save his own life [psukh#] and to achieve the safe homecoming [nostos] of his companions; but do what he might he could not save his men, for they perished through their own sheer recklessness in eating the cattle of the Sun-god Helios; so the god prevented them from ever reaching home. Tell me, as you have told those who came before me, about all these things, O daughter of Zeus, starting from whatsoever point you choose."
Odyssey i 3 Odysseus saw the cities of many and came to know their/his noos
Odyssey i 5 Odysseus seeking to win as a prize his psukh#, plus [his nostos and] the nostos of his companions
noos of Teiresias at Odyssey xi 493-495 / nostos is first word of Teiresias at Odyssey xi 100 Compare Odyssey xi 121-137 with the different version in Odyssey xxiii 267-268: there it is made
explicit that Odysseus is to travel through the cities of humankind. The "journey of a soul" through many different cultures, with different values, is key to noos.
Compare Odyssey i 3: Odysseus, by virtue of traveling throughout the cities of humankind, comes to "know" noos. The question remains: whose noos?
Odyssey xi 126 'I will give you this certain token [s#ma], and you cannot have l#th# about it'. Compare the clip from Kurosawa's Dreams in the film archive, "A gravestone marker for a
journey of the soul."
'winnowing-shovel' at Odyssey xi 128; it is a mistake to translate as 'winnowing-fan'; a winnowing shovel looks just like an oar, but a winnowing-fan does not.
Two variant tales, collected by folklorists in early-20th-century Greece and analyzed by William F. Hansen, about St. Elias [known as the Prophet Elijah in the Hebrew bible]:
Variant 1[a]: Saint Elias was a seaman who lived a dissolute life, but he repented of what he had done and thereby detested the sea. {Variant 1[b]: because he had suffered much at sea and had often nearly drowned, he became disgusted with voyaging.} He resolved to go to a place where people know neither what the sea was nor what ships were. Putting his oar on his shoulder he set out on land, asking everyone he met what he was carrying. So long as they answered that it was an oar, he proceeded to higher and higher ground. Finally, at the top of a mountain he asked his question, and the people answered, 'a stick'. Understanding then that they had never seen an oar, he remained there with them.
Variant 2: The Prophet Elias was a fisherman who, because of terrible weather and terrific storms, became afraid of the sea. So he put an oar on his shoulder and took to the hills. When he met a man, he asked him what it was he was carrying; the man answered that it was an oar, and Elias went on. The same happened when he met a second man. But at the top of a mountain, he asked a third man, who replied, 'why, that's a stick'. Saint Elias resolved to stay there. He planted his oar in the ground, and that is why his chapels are all built on hilltops.
Variant 3: In some versions, the natives' decisive answer is not 'a stick' but 'a baker's peel' [phtyari tou phournou = "winnowing-shovel of the oven"].
Feast Day of the Prophet Elias: July 20. This date coincides, roughly, with harvesting season. It is around this time when wheat is gathered and winnowed.
There is a hero cult of Odysseus in Arcadia, where he is worshipped together with Athena as goddess of pilots and Poseidon as god of the sea (Pausanias 8.44.4); note that Arcadia is mountainous and landlocked. Of all locales in mainland Greece, it is farthest away from the sea.
Planting of winnowing-shovel on top of a mound of winnowed grain (Theocritus 7.155ff): a symbolic gesture, meaning "the harvest is accomplished = finished."
Tomb of Elpenor: Odyssey xi 75-78, xii 13-15. This s#ma 'tomb' is also a 'sign, signal, symbol' meaning "the sailor is dead."
Odyssey xix 106-114: "Lady," answered Odysseus, "who on the face of the whole earth can dare to chide with you? Your fame [kleos] reaches the firmament of heaven itself; you are like some blameless king, who upholds righteousness [= good dik#], as the monarch over a great and
valiant nation: the earth yields its wheat and barley, the trees are loaded with fruit, the ewes bring forth lambs, and the sea abounds with fish by reason of his virtues, and his people do good deeds under him.
This word dik# means 'justice' (long-range) and 'judgment' (short-range). The sign of dik# is a thriving or blooming field / garden / orchard / grove / vineyard / etc.
Supplemental passages and notes
Aristotle Poetics 1452a29ff, discussing "recognition scenes" in e.g. tragedy: "Recognition [ana-gn"-risis] is ... a change from ignorance to knowledge [gn"-sis], tending either to affection [philia] or to enmity; it determines in the direction of good or ill fortune the fates of the people involved" (tr. Margaret Hubbard).
From Odyssey xix 535-569: “Listen, then, to a dream that I have had and interpret it [= make a hupo-krisis of it] for me if you can. I have twenty geese about the house that eat mash out of a trough, and of which I am exceedingly fond. I dreamed that a great eagle came swooping down from a mountain, and dug his curved beak into the neck of each of them till he had killed them all. Presently he soared off into the sky, and left them lying dead about the yard; whereon I wept in my room till all my maids gathered round me, so piteously was I grieving because the eagle had killed my geese. Then he came back again, and perching on a projecting rafter spoke to me with human voice, and told me to leave off crying. ‘Be of good courage,’ he said, ‘daughter of Ikarios; this is no dream, but a vision of good omen that shall surely come to pass. The geese are the suitors, and I am no longer an eagle, but your own husband, who am come back to you, and who will bring these suitors to a disgraceful end.’ On this I woke, and when I looked out I saw my geese at the trough eating their mash as usual.” [554] “This dream, lady,” replied Odysseus, “can admit but of one interpretation [hupo-krisis], for had not Odysseus himself told you how it shall be fulfilled? The death of the suitors is portended, and not one single one of them will
escape.” [559] And Penelope answered, “Stranger, dreams are very curious and unaccountable things, and they do not by any means invariably come true. There are two gates through which these unsubstantial fancies proceed; the one is of horn, and the other ivory. Those that come through the gate of ivory are fatuous, but those from the gate of horn mean something to those that see them. I do not think, however, that my own dream came through the gate of horn, though I and my son should be most thankful if it proves to have done so."
Here I invoke again the key word krisis.
Again we see a crisis in reading... krisis 'judgment, crisis', abstract noun derived from krinesthai 'judge, distinguish, make distinctions'. A hupo-krisis (verb hupo-krinesthai) is an answer to a question that generates such a krisis.
After Odysseus achieves a physical nostos by literally coming home to Ithaca, he still needs to achieve a mental / moral / emotional nostos, For this to happen, the characters in the second half of the Odyssey have to connect with him on various levels. The key to this "connection" is the hero's ascending scale of affection.
The characters involved in the hero's ascending scale of affection include: his dog; his loyal servants, like Eumaios and Eurykleia; his son; his wife; his father. All these characters have to "read" the disguised Odysseus in order to recognize him. Correlated with recognition is philia.
A primary form of philia: the relationship between lovers.
The challenge of "reading" Odysseus is the challenge of "reading" the ulterior motives of his
ainoi. The ainoi that Odysseus intends for Penelope are a kind of "love song."
Compare "Cherubino's devinalh" in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. {LINK}
From Le nozze di Figaro, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte) "Cherubino's song":
voi che sapete che cosa è amor, donne vedete s'io l'ho nel cor! quello ch'io provo, vi ridirò:
è per me nuovo, capir nol so! sento un affetto pien de desir, ch'ora è diletto, ch'ora è martir, gelo e poi sento l'alma vampar, e in un momento torno a gelar. ricerco un bene fuori di me,
no so chi il tiene, o so cos' è; sospiro e gemo senza voler, palpito e fremo senza saper; non trovo pace notte né di ma pur mi piace languir così! voi che sapete...
You, who know what thing love is... My ladies, see if I have it in my heart.
That thing that I experience, to you I will retell. It's new to me, I don't know how to grasp it.
I feel a longing full of desire,
which is at one moment delight, another moment, pain.
I freeze, and then I sense the soul bursting into flame.
And, the next second, I turn back to freezing. I search for a good thing outside of me.
I don't know who holds it, or have any idea what it is.
I sigh and moan without wanting to, I throb and tremble without knowing, I don't find any peace, night or day.
But still it gives me pleasure to languish this way.
You, who know what thing love is..
In Cherubino’s song, Mozart is using a form of troubadour songmaking called the devinalh. It is meant to be understood only by the addressee / beloved of the singer / lover.
The devinalh is parallel to the ainos. Let us review the definition of ainos in the glossary: 'authoritative utterance for and by a social group; praise; fable'; ainigma 'riddle'
'praise' as in the victory-songs of Pindar
'fable' as in the Fables of Aesop
'riddle' as in the Riddle of the Sphinx, a key symbol in the Oedipus Tyrannos of Sophocles, which we will read later on.
Review from earlier dialogues... One of the clearest examples of ainos is the klea andr"n of Iliad IX 524, referring to the narrative that is "totally recalled" by Phoenix for Achilles and the other assembled philoi. The ainos here is signaled by what anthropologists call an "index" word (hout" 'thus' at Iliad IX 524). An example of an "index" expression in English: "once upon a time..."
Review the prerequisites of ainos:
sophos (plural sophoi) 'skilled, skilled in understanding special language'
agathos (plural agathoi) 'good, noble'
philos (plural philoi) 'friend' (noun); 'dear, near-and-dear, belonging to self' (adjective) = 3 qualifications (1 intellectual, 2 moral, 3 emotional) required for understanding ainos in e.g. the poetics of Pindar (his medium calls itself ainos)
Reminder: ainos is to audio as s#ma is to video.
As a code, the ainos (or s#ma) can have hidden agenda.
It can be a secret password for initiation into mysteries, for example.
The "secret password" can take the form of a song.
Odyssey xiv 508: Eumaios compliments the speech of the disguised Odysseus by calling it an
ainos
The ainos is one code, with several messages built in, only one of which is ultimately true; compare the English expression ulterior motive
anagign"skein 'recognize; read'
Compare again Aristotle Poetics 1452a29ff, discussing "recognition scenes" in e.g. tragedy (his criteria apply to epic as well): "Recognition [ana-gn"-risis] is ... a change from ignorance to knowledge [gn"-sis], tending either to affection [philia] or to enmity; it determines in the direction of good or ill fortune the fates of the people involved" (tr. Margaret Hubbard)
The "love story" of Odysseus and Penelope, which preoccupies the second half of the Odyssey,
can only be understood in terms of the process of their mutual recognition.
Reassembly of identity via reassembly of ascending scale of affections (the persons with whom you identify will ultimately identify you).
Why all the difficulty of recognizing wife and father?
Cave of Polyphemos (think of the meaning of the name), where Odysseus negates his identity:
nostos from the cave will be the key to noos
Chapter 12: “Longing for a hero”
{Before you read further, I suggest that you revisit Introduction 3, “The Epic Hero,” §§80-104}
The key word for this time is h"ra ‘season, seasonality, the right time, the perfect time’, which as we have seen is a basic concept related to the concept of the goddess H#ra, the immortal exponent of seasonality, and to the concept of the human h#r"s ‘hero’ (plural h#r"es), the mortal exponent
of seasonality.
There is a supplementary key word: pothos ‘longing, yearning, desire’
The first passage this time comes from the Heroikos (‘On Heroes’) by Philostratus (who flourished in the early 3rd century CE). For historical background, I cite the introduction by Berenson and Aitken to their edition of Philostratus On Heroes, available on the Heroes website in “Texts” under “Philostratus.” To understand the application of this background to the readings of epic and tragedy in the course, it would be advantageous to read my “Prologue” to the work. The short version of that prologue is embedded in the introduction to the student edition, where this prologue is renamed as “Preliminaries,” together with the introduction by Casey Dué; these “Preliminaries” are available on the Heroes website in “Texts” under “Philostratus.” The long version of the “Prologue” can be found as the essay “Sign of the Hero” - under “Commentaries.”
This dialogue, the Heroikos (‘On Heroes’) by Philostratus, is about the cult hero Protesilaos, who is also a character in the Homeric Iliad. The death of Protesilaos is described in Iliad II 698ff, which is Passage B below. But let us start with Passage A.
Things to look for in Passage A:
The beauty of the ‘right time’ (h"ra).
Beauty is ‘perfection’.
Beauty tied to presence of hero’s body.
Note the sympathy between the hero and the vegetation.
- poikil# : ‘varied,’ i.e never the same: the beauty and dynamism of variation.
From Philostratus On Heroes 2.6-3.6:
Phoenician: But, vinedresser, do you live a reflective way of life? Vinedresser: Yes, indeed, with the handsome Protesilaos.
Phoenician: What connection is there between you and Protesilaos, if you mean the man from Thessaly?
Vinedresser: I do mean that man, the husband of Laodameia, for he delights in hearing this epithet.
Phoenician: But what, indeed, does he do here?
Vinedresser: He lives [z#i] here, and we farm [ge"rgoumen] together. Phoenician: Has he come back to life [anabi"sis], or what has happened?
Vinedresser: He himself does not speak about his own experiences, stranger, except, of course, that he died at Troy because of Helen, but came to life again [anabi"sis] in Phthia because he loved Laodameia.
Phoenician: And yet he is said to have died after he came to life again and to have persuaded his wife to follow him.
Vinedresser: He himself also says these things. But how he returned afterwards too, he does not tell me even though I’ve wanted to find out for a long time. He is hiding, he says, some secret [aporrh#ton] of the Fates. His fellow soldiers also, who were there in Troy, still appear [phainontai] on the plain, warlike in posture and shaking the crests of their helmets.
Phoenician: By Athena, vinedresser, I don’t believe [pisteuein] it, although I wish these things were so. But if you are not attending to the plants, nor irrigating them, tell me now about these matters and what you know about Protesilaos. Indeed, you would please the heroes if I should go away believing [pisteuein].
Vinedresser: Stranger, the plants no longer need watering at midday, since it is already late autumn and the season [h"ra] itself waters them. Therefore, I have leisure to relate everything in detail. Since these matters are sacred to the gods and so important, may they not escape the notice of cultivated people! It is also better for us to sit down in the beauty of this place.
Phoenician: Lead the way; I will follow even beyond the interior of Thrace.
Vinedresser: Let us enter the vineyard, Phoenician. For you may even discover in it something to give cheer [euphrosun#] to you.
Phoenician: Let us enter, for I suppose a pleasant scent [breath] comes from the plants. Vinedresser: What do you mean? Pleasant? It is divine! The blossoms of the uncultivated trees are
fragrant, as are the fruits of those cultivated. If you ever come upon a cultivated plant with
fragrant blossoms, pluck rather the leaves, since the sweet scent comes from them.
Phoenician: How diverse [poikil#] is the beauty [h"ra] of your property, and how lush have the clusters of grapes grown! How well-arranged are all the trees, and how divine is the fragrance of the place! Indeed, I think that the walkways [dromoi] which you have left untilled are pleasing, but, vinedresser, you seem to me to live luxuriously since you use so much uncultivated land.
Vinedresser: The walkways [dromoi] are sacred, stranger, for the hero exercises [gumnazetai]
on them.
Things to look for in Passage B:
The epic micro-narrative of Protesilaos, matching the epic macro-narrative of Achilles.
What they have in common is the pothos they inspire in the hearts of those who belong to their communities. These communities feel a longing for their cult-hero.
Iliad II 695-909
[695] And those that held Phylake and the flowery meadows of Pyrasos, sanctuary of Demeter; Iton, the mother of sheep; Antron upon the sea, and Pteleon that lies upon the grass lands. Of these brave Protesilaos had been chief while he was yet alive, but he was now lying under the earth.
[700] He had left a wife behind him in Phylake to tear her cheeks in sorrow, and his house was only half finished, for he was slain by a Dardanian warrior while leaping foremost of the Achaeans upon the soil of Troy. Still, though his people yearned [had pothos] for their chieftain, they were not without a leader, for Podarkes, of the lineage of Ares, marshaled them;
[705] he was son of Iphiklos, rich in sheep, who was the son of Phylakos, and he was own brother to Protesilaos, only younger, Protesilaos being at once the elder and the more valiant. So the people were not without a leader, though they yearned [had pothos] for him whom they had lost.
As we see from this passage, the people of Protesilaos are said to have a ‘desire’ [pothos] for him (Iliad II 703, 709). As I argue in the Prologue to Philostratus On Heroes, what we see here is an indirect reference by Homeric poetry to the hero cult of Protesilaos. Notice that Protesilaos is called ‘beautiful’ or ‘handsome’ in the Philostratus passage, and that he is ‘desired’ in the Homeric passage. The cult hero Protesilaos is estheticized and even eroticized. The hero cult of Protesilaos is mentioned prominently in Herodotus Scroll IX. Much more needs to be said about that Herodotean passage in the dialogue to come. That passage illustrates the negative powers of the cult hero, activated against the opponents of dik#, vs. the positive powers activated in favor of the supporters of dik#.
The ‘perfect time’ for the epiphany of Protesilaos is the h"ra. To repeat, h"ra ‘season, seasonality, the right time, the perfect time’ is a basic concept related to the concept of the goddess
H#ra, the immortal exponent of seasonality, and to the concept of the human h#r"s ‘hero’ (plural
h#r"es), the mortal exponent of seasonality.
In Modern Greek, oréos / oréa (from ancient Greek h"ra) means ‘beautiful’. The preoccupation with the sensuous charisma and beauty of the cult hero is made explicit here. This idea of beauty is generated by the idea of the h"ra ‘seasonality’ of the hero.
Of course, the hero becomes seasonal only in death, at which point he/she becomes olbios in the sense of ‘blessed’; by metonymy, the hero’s worshippers become olbioi in the sense of ‘prosperous’ by virtue of being connected to the hero’s local earth. We saw that in the last dialogue, when we considered the stylized s#ma of Odysseus.
Let us consider again the description of Protesilaos as ‘beautiful’. The attraction is eroticized in the Heroikos. Such eroticizing corresponds to the use of the word pothos ‘desire, yearning’, as in the Iliadic passage about Protesilaos.
To work the land, ge"rgia, was considered a sacred activity; compare the title of Virgil’s classic poem on working the land, Georgics.
The reticence of the keeper of the hero’s sacred grounds is an allusion to the mysteries inherent in the hero cult of Protesilaos. To know such mysteries, one would have to be initiated into the cult.
Such myths about coming back to life are central to the mysteries of hero cult.
A second death, followed by a second resurrection, are typical elements in the myths associated with hero cults.
There can be gradations of initiation into the mysteries. It is implied that the degree of the “vinedresser’s” initiation is not as high as that of other devotees.
Only priests of the hero cult would know such highest-degree secrets.
When heroes from the heroic past appear in the world of the present, what they are doing is making epiphanies.
Notice that the man who worships the hero ‘believes in’ the hero, as it were. Here we see a non- Christian analogue to the Christian idea of pisteuein ‘believe’ (as in the Apostles’ Creed: ‘I believe in God’).
Note the metonymy of the hero’s breath and the breeze in the vineyard.
For the hero, initiation into the state of being olbios is a matter of telos, that is, a coming-full- circle. For the hero, telos is death. (Compare the last word of Christ in Christian traditions: tetelestai, which means ‘the telos has arrived’ (this expression is usually translated as ‘it is consummated’). Then the hero becomes seasonal.
For the worshipper of the hero, induction into the mysteries of the hero is a matter of telos, that is, an initiation. For the worshipper, telos is a re-enactment of death.
Things to look for in Passage C:
The xenos [ = stranger treated as a guest] receives instruction about the sacred nature of the space he has come to.
kol"nos: A prominent rock in a local landscape. Archaeologists sometimes refer to it as a ‘tumulus.’ By metonymy, kol"nos can mean the whole landscape which includes the rock.
The hero and the sacred space are connected through metonymy.
In Chapter 11, we saw that Achilles and Odysseus, as cult heroes, are each marked by an individualized s#ma. As we will see later, this visual marking is relevant to the use of an important word in the work of Philostratus:
Philostratus On Heroes 9.1-3. Listen to such stories now, my guest. Protesilaos does not lie buried at Troy but here on the Chersonesus. This large kol"nos here on the left no doubt contains him. The nymphs created these elms around the kol"nos, and they made, I suppose, the following decree concerning these trees: “Those branches turned toward Ilion will blossom early and will then immediately shed their leaves and perish before their season (this was indeed the misfortune of Protesilaos), but a tree on the other side will live and prosper.” All the trees that were not set round the grave, such as these in the grove, have strength in all their branches and flourish according to their particular nature.
As we will see in a later dialogue, the kol"nos is a prominent natural landmark that can be imagined as the s#ma of the cult hero.
Multimedia: Seferis, Arnisi
sto perigiali to krifo k’aspro san peristeri dipsasame to mesimeri ma to nero glifo
pano stin ammo tin xanthi grapsame t’onoma tis orea, pou fisixen o batis ke svistike i grafi
me ti kardia me ti pnoi
ti pothous ke ti pathos
pirame ti zoi mas - lathos -
k’allaxame zoi
The word krifo conveys the idea that we see in crypt.
The longing conveyed by dipsasame to mesimeri in stanza 1 is picked up by orea pou fisixen o batis in stanza 2 and by pirame to zoi mas lathos in stanza 3.
Further reinforceent in ti pothous ke ti pathos, what longings, what passion.
Earlier,
I mentioned
Chiffons, “He’s so fine” (1963), and note the detail about the wavy hair:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpAcQrt8-SE
George Harrison, “My sweet lord” (1970), and note especially the detail “I really want to see you, I really want to be with you... [[that is, I want your epiphany]]:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wynYMJwEPH8&feature=related
Things to look for in Passage D:
Achilles inside his s#ma on the Hellespont. His s#ma, which is a kol"nos, matches that of Protesilaos on the other side of the Hellespont.
Touching the s#ma is a metonym for touching the hero.
Philostratus On Heroes 51.12-13
This kol"nos, guest-stranger, which you see standing at the brow of the promontory [akt#], was built [ageirein (‘pile stones together’)] by the Achaeans who came together at the time when he [=
Achilles] was mixed together with Patroklos for their joint burial, having provided for himself [= Achilles] and for that one [= Patroklos] the most beautiful of funeral rites. And this is the origin of the custom of singing his name in praise when people celebrate the bonds of love between friends. Of all mortals who ever existed, he [= Achilles] was buried in the most spectacular way, what with all the gifts that Greece bestowed upon him. No longer could the Greeks consider it a beautiful thing to grow their hair long, once Achilles was gone.[1] Whatever gold or other possession each of them had brought to Troy or had taken away from the division of spoils [= spoils taken at Troy] was now collected and piled up on top of the funeral pyre, right then and there. The same thing happened also later when Neoptolemos came to Troy. He [= Achilles] received another round of glorious gifts from his son and from the Achaeans who were trying to show their gratitude [kharis] to him. Even as they were getting ready to sail away from Troy, they would keep throwing themselves on top of the place of burial and believe that they were embracing Achilles.[2]
Elsewhere in the Heroikos, in a passage describing an ancient yearly custom observed by Thessalians who sailed to Troy and performed sacrifice at the tomb of Achilles, the word kol"nos refers, once again, to the tomb of Achilles, and in this context it is used in collocation with another revealing word, s#ma ‘tomb’ (53.11).
So what we see here is the offering of garlands of blossoms for the dead Achilles:
Philostratus Heroikos 53.8-14
The Thessalian sacrificial offerings [enagismata] that came regularly to Achilles from Thessaly were decreed for the Thessalians by the oracle at Dodona. Evidently the oracle ordered the Thessalians to sail to Troy each year to sacrifice [thuein] to Achilles and to slaughter some sacrificial victims as to a god, while slaughtering other victims as for the dead. From the very beginnings, the following was the procedure: a ship sailed from Thessaly to Troy with black sails raised, bringing twice seven sacred ambassadors [the!roi], one white bull and one black bull, both tame to the touch, and wood from Mount Pelion, so that they would need nothing from the city [= New Ilion].[3] They also brought fire from Thessaly as well as water drawn from the river Sperkheios for libations. As a consequence (of these practices), the Thessalians were the first to institute the custom of using unwilting garlands [stephanoi] for the funerary rituals [k#dos plural] (in honor of Achilles), in order that, even if the wind delayed the ship, they would not wear garlands [stephanoi] that were wilted or past their season [h!ra]. And evidently they found it necessary to put into the harbor at night and, before touching land, to sing from the ship a hymn [humnos] to Thetis, which is composed of these words:
Thetis color of lapis, Thetis consort of Peleus, you who bore the great son
Achilles. The part of him that his mortal nature brought him
was the share of Troy, but the part of him that from your immortal
lineage was drawn by the child, the sea [pontos] has that part. Come, proceed to this steep tumulus [kol"nos]
in the company of Achilles (to receive) the offerings placed over the fire. Come, proceed without tears in the company of Thessaly,
you sea-blue Thetis, you consort of Peleus.
When they approached the tomb [s#ma] after the hymn [humnos], a shield was banged upon as in battle, and together with rhythmic coordination they cried alala while calling upon Achilles. When they had garlanded [stephanoûn] the summit of the tumulus [kol"nos] and dug sacrificial pits on it, they slaughtered the black bull as to one who is dead. They also called upon Patroklos to come to the feast, so as to gratify [= make kharis for] Achilles. After they slit the victim’s throat and made this sacrifice [enagizein], they evidently proceeded to go down to the ship, and, after sacrificing [thuein] the other bull on the beach again to Achilles and having begun the offering by taking from the basket and by partaking of the entrails for that sacrifice [thusia] (for they sacrificed [thuein] this sacrifice [thusia] as to a god), they sailed away toward dawn, taking the sacrificed animal so as not to feast in the enemy’s country.[4]
To make direct mental contact with a hero, the worshipper has to be initiated into the mysteries hero's cult:
Pausanias (2nd century CE) describes an initiation into the mysteries of a hero cult (9.39.5ff). It is like a blueprint. The oracle of the cult hero Trophonios is mentioned already in Herodotus (1.46), over 600 years earlier: he reports that Croesus had consulted the oracle of Trophonios, as well as the oracle of the cult hero Amphiaraos. In the description of Pausanias, notice that oikos in the context of hero cult refers to the ‘resting place’ of a cult hero.
Pausanias (2nd century CE) describes an initiation into the mysteries of a hero cult (9.39.5ff):
When a man has made up his mind to descend to the oracle of Trophonios, he first lodges in a certain building [oik#ma] for an appointed number of days, this being sacred to the Good Daim!n and to Good Fortune. While he lodges there, among other regulations for purity he abstains from hot baths, bathing only in the river Hercyna. Meat he has in plenty from the sacrifices, for he who descends sacrifices to Trophonios himself and to the children of Trophonios, to Apollo also and to Kronos, to Zeus with the epithet King [Basileus], to Hera Charioteer [H#niokhos], and to Demeter whom they name with the epithet Europa and say was the wetnurse of Trophonios. [9.35.6] At each sacrifice a diviner [mantis] is present, who looks
into the entrails of the sacrificial victim, and after an inspection prophesies to the person descending whether Trophonios will give him a kind [eumen#s] and gracious reception. The entrails of the other victims do not declare the mind of Trophonios so much as a ram, which each inquirer sacrifices over a pit [bothros] on the night he descends, calling upon Agamedes.[5] Even though the previous sacrifices have appeared propitious, no account is taken of them unless the entrails of this ram indicate the same; but if they agree, then the inquirer descends in good hope. The procedure of the descent is this. [9.39.7] First, during the night he is taken to the river Hercyna by two boys of the citizens about thirteen years old, named Hermae,[6] who after taking him there anoint him with oil and wash him. It is these who wash the descender, and do all the other necessary services as his attendant boys. After this he is taken by the priests, not at once to the oracle, but to fountains of water very near to each other. [9.39.8] Here he must drink water called the water of Forgetfulness [L#th#], that he may forget all that he has been thinking of hitherto, and afterwards he drinks of another water, the water of Memory [Mn#mosun#], which causes him to remember what he sees after his descent. After looking at the image [agalma] which they say was made by Daedalus (it is not shown by the priests save to such as are going to visit Trophonios), having seen it, worshipped it and prayed, he proceeds to the oracle, dressed in a linen tunic, with ribbons girding it, and wearing the boots of the native locale.[7] [9.39.9] The oracle is on the mountain, beyond the grove. Round it is a circular basement of white marble, the circumference of which is about that of the smallest threshing floor, while its height is just short of two cubits. On the basement stand spikes, which, like the cross-bars holding them together, are of bronze, while through them has been made a double door. Within the enclosure is a chasm [khasma] in the earth, not natural, but artificially constructed after the most accurate masonry. [9.39.10] The shape of this structure is like that of a bread-oven. Its breadth across the middle one might conjecture to be about four cubits, and its depth also could not be estimated to extend to more than eight cubits. They have made no way of descent to the bottom, but when a man comes to Trophonios, they bring him a narrow, light ladder. After going down he finds a hole between the floor and the structure. Its breadth appeared to be two spans, and its height one span. [9.39.11] The descender lies with his back on the ground, holding barley-cakes [mazai] kneaded with honey, thrusts his feet into the hole and himself follows, trying hard to get his knees into the hole. After his knees the rest of his body is at once swiftly drawn in, just as the largest and most rapid river will catch a man in its eddy and carry him under. After this those who have entered the shrine learn the future, not in one and the same way in all cases, but by sight sometimes and at other times by hearing. The return upwards is by the same mouth, the feet darting out first. [9.39.12] They say that no one who has made the descent has been killed, save only one of the bodyguards of Demetrius. But they declare that he performed none of the usual rites in the sanctuary, and that he descended, not to consult the god[8] but in the hope of stealing gold and silver from the shrine. It is said that the body of this man appeared in a different place, and was not cast out at the sacred mouth. Other tales are told about the man, but I have given the one most worthy of consideration. [9.39.13] After his ascent from Trophonios the inquirer is again taken in hand by the priests, who set him upon a chair called the Throne of Memory [Mn#mosun#], which stands not far from the shrine, and they ask of him, when seated there, all he has seen or learned. After gaining this information they then entrust him to his relatives. These lift him, paralyzed with terror and unconscious both of himself and of his surroundings, and carry him to the building [oik#ma] where he lodged before with Good Fortune and the Good Daim!n. Afterwards, however, he will recover all his faculties, and the power to laugh will return to him. [9.39.14] What I write is not hearsay; I have myself inquired of Trophonios and seen other
inquirers.
G1. In making mental contact with a cult hero, the worshipper expects to get in touch with a mind that knows everything.
G2. We will see that heroes are “psychic” about the heroic past: in other words, when worshippers in the present make contact with the consciousness of the heroes of the past, those heroes will know everything about the world of heroes, not only about their own world in the past. They thus surpass the power of poets in knowing about the world of heroes:
Philostratus On Heroes 7.4-6 At any rate, among those who critically examine Homer’s poems, who will you say reads [anagign"skein] and has insight [di-horân] into them as Protesilaos does? Indeed, my guest, before Priam and Troy there was no epic recitation [rhaps"idia], nor had anyone sung of events that had not yet taken place. There was poetry about prophetic matters and about Herakles, son of Alkm#n#, recently arranged but not yet developed fully, but Homer had not yet sung. Some say that it was when Troy was captured, others say it was a few or even eight generations later that he applied himself to poetic composition. Nevertheless, Protesilaos knows everything of Homer and sings of many Trojan events that took place after his own lifetime, and also of many Hellenic and Median events.
[1] The wording connotes an aetiology, as if the death of Achilles were the single reason that explains why Achaeans no longer wore their hair long.
[2] Translation adapted from Berenson and Aitken 2001.153.
[3] The ritually dramatized hostility between the Thessalians and the city of New Ilion seems to be a reflex of an old Thessalian connection with Sigeion as the rival city that represented the interests of Athens in the era of the Peisistratidai. As allies of Athens, the Thessalians would have been welcome as visitors to the sacred sites in the part of the Troad controlled by Sigeion in that era. In
a later era, however, after Sigeion had been destroyed by New Ilion, the Thessalians would have become personae non gratae at the sacred sites taken over by New Ilion.
[4] Translation adapted from Berenson and Aitken 2001.157, 159.
[5] Pausanias' earlier description of the myth of Trophonios (9.37.5ff): "The earth opened up and swallowed Trophonios at the point in the grove at Lebadeia where is what is called the pit [bothros] of Agamedes, and next to it is a stele." Agamedes was the brother of Trophonios. In the corresponding myth, Agamedes died when the two brothers were buried alive, while Trophonios escaped; later, he experiences the mystical process of "engulfment."
[6] "Hermae" is the plural of "Hermes."
[7] Note that the groundedness of the local hero cult is reinforced by the idea of local footwear.
[8] Note that Pausanias considers the hero in the afterlife to be a theos 'god'.
Chapter 13
Title: “Better off dead”
The key word for this time is telos. This word signals ‘initiation’ (into the mysteries). In the Glossary, telos is defined as ‘coming full circle, rounding out, fulfillment, completion, ending, end; successfully passing through an ordeal; ritual, rite’. The name Tellos in the micro-narrative we have just read is derived from the word telos. Note that the hero is defined in terms of krinein ‘judge, distinguish’, which as we have seen in the Odyssey is the power of discerning the true from the untrue.
To sum up:
telos
‘goal, fulfillment, completion, end [of life].’ OR
‘successful passing through an ordeal; initiation.’
olbios: ambiguity between insider’s and outsider’s definition
The name of Tellos is an ainos.
Notes on tim#:
‘honor, social recognition’ (for the things that a hero does)
uninitiated, and in ‘normal’ contexts)
‘cult honors, ritual performance’ (for the initiated, and in ritual contexts)
Herodotus 1.30.2-5: “Athenian xenos, we have heard much about your wisdom [sophia] and your wanderings, that you have gone all over the world philosophizing, so now I desire to ask you who is the most olbios man you have seen.” Croesus asked this question expecting the answer to be himself, but Solon, instead of flattering him, told it as it was and said, “O King, it is Tellos the Athenian.” Croesus marveled at what he had said and replied sharply, “In what way do you judge [krinein] Tellos to be the most olbios?” Solon said, “Tellos was from a prosperous polis and his children were good and noble [agathoi]. He saw them all have children of their own, and all of these survived. His life was well off by our standards, and his death was most distinguished: when the Athenians were fighting their neighbors in Eleusis, he came to help, routed the enemy, and died most beautifully. The Athenians buried him at public expense on the spot where he fell and gave him much tim#.”
For the uninitiated, the word tim# means simply ‘honor’; for the initiated, it means ‘honor given to a cult hero’.
The place-name Eleusis signals the ritual process of being initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries. More on these Mysteries later on.
Things to look for in Passage B:
The story of Kleobis and Biton is a perfect “parable” (ainos) explaining the relevance of the meaning of h"ra and H#ra to the meaning of h#r"s.
Herodotus 1.31.1-5: When Solon had provoked him by saying that the affairs of Tellos were
so olbios, Croesus asked who he thought was next, fully expecting to win second prize. Solon answered, “Kleobis and Biton.” They were Argive in genos, they had enough to live on, and on top of this they had great bodily strength. Both were prize-winning athletes [athlophoroi], and this story is told about them: There was a festival of H#ra in Argos, and their mother absolutely had to be conveyed to the sacred precinct by a team of oxen. But their oxen had not come back from the fields in time [h"ra], so the youths took the yoke upon their own shoulders under constraint of time [h"ra]. They drew the wagon, with their mother riding atop it, traveling 45 stadia until they arrived at the sacred precinct. When they had done this and had been seen by the entire gathering, their lives came to the best fulfillment [ariston telos], and in their case the god made clear that for human beings it is better to be dead than to live. The Argive men stood around the youths and congratulated them on their strength; the Argive women congratulated their mother for having such children. She was overjoyed at the feat and at the praise, so she stood before the image and prayed that the goddess might grant the best thing for humanity to her children Kleobis and Biton, who had given great tim# to the goddess. After this prayer they sacrificed and feasted. The youths then lay down in the sacred precinct and went to sleep, and they never got up again; they remained in the pose that they had assumed in reaching their telos. The Argives made and dedicated at Delphi statues of them, since they were aristoi.”
[[On the Multimedia page, we post some picture of these statues, which have been found by archaeologists. The statues are now housed in the Museum at Delphi.]]
This passage of Herodotus is a perfect “parable” (ainos) explaining the relevance of the meaning of h"ra and H#ra to the meaning of h#r"s.
Relevant is the key word for Dialogue 11: olbios ‘blessed’ (for the initiated) and ‘prosperous, happy’ (for the uninitiated). The cult hero is olbios ‘blessed’ after he or she dies. The worshipper of a cult hero becomes olbios ‘blessed’ by making contact with the hero.
For an introduction to the concept of the cult hero, see again Introduction 3, “The Epic Hero,”
§§80-104. There the direct evidence for the practice of hero cults is reviewed. There is also indirect evidence in the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey, which frequently make references to the practice of hero cult. But the Homeric references are made on the basis of an understanding that everyone knows about the practice anyway.
Let us return to the narrative about Kleobis and Biton in Passage B. The stylized death of these two young men is a dramatization of the perfect heroic moment. Significantly, these young men are sons of the priestess of H#ra herself, who is the goddess of that perfect moment.
Note this wording in Passage B: “and in their case the god made clear that for human beings it is better to be dead than to live.” For the uninitiated, this wording means that you are better off dead
that you might as well choose to be put out of your misery instead going on with life. For the initiated, this same wording means that a life after death will be better for you than the life you are living now.
Just as Tellos is a cult hero, so also are Kleobis and Biton.
Notice that cult heroes, before they became cult heroes, did not necessarily give tim# to the gods. Consider the Silver Generation in the context of the overall myth of the Five Generations of Humankind at verses 106-201 of the Hesiodic Works and Days. After the death of heroes, however, humans will give tim# to to them as cult heroes.
When a hero dies, the cult of his body compensates for that death. A case in point is the passage we are about to see, where a baby named Demophon dies and becomes a cult hero, thanks to the power of his “baby-sitter,” the Earth Mother Demeter.
So here are some things to look for:
tim# of baby-hero Demophon
The ‘mystery’ of the cult is the hero’s resurrection.
h"ra: perfect seasonality of nature as the perfect moment of initiation.
The land becomes sacred through contact with hero.
Homeric Hymn to Demeter 265-268:
260 ... immortal and ageless for all days
would I have made your philos little boy, and I would have given him an honor [tim#] that is imperishable [a-phthi-tos].
But now there is no way for him to avoid death and doom.
Still, he will have an honor [tim#] that is imperishable [a-phthi-tos], for all time,
because he had once sat
on my knees and slept in my arms.
265 At the right timely season [h"ra], every year,
the sons of the Eleusinians will have a war, a terrible battle among each other. They will do so for all days to come.
I am Demeter, the holder of honors [timai]. I am the greatest boon and joy for immortals and mortals alike.
Note that Demophon, as a cult hero, will get the tim# of cult (line 261).
In this case, the hero cult involves a seasonally-recurring athletic festival. The actual athletic event is a stylized ‘battle’ that is staged every year at Eleusis, which became the central place of initiation for citizens of the Athenian city-state. This athletic event was known as the Ball#tus, which was officially held on a seasonally-recurring basis to compensate for the death of the baby cult hero Demophon. This mock-battle seems to have been the ritual kernel of a whole complex of events known as the Eleusinian Games. Parallel institutions are the Nemean and the Isthmian Games, pan-Hellenic athletic events, which were held on a seasonally-recurring basis to compensate for the deaths of the baby cult heroes Arkhemoros and Melikertes respectively.
Just as the cult hero Demophon gets tim# ‘honor’ that is aphthitos ‘imperishable, unwilting’ in compensation for death (261), so also the epic hero Achilles gets kleos ‘glory’ that is aphthiton ‘imperishable, unwilting’ (Iliad IX 413) in compensation for death.
In the Homeric tradition, references to hero cults tend to be implicit, not explicit. That is because the religious practice of hero-cult is fundamentally a local phenomenon while the Homeric tradition is non-local or “pan-Hellenic” (that is, common to a majority of Greek speaking locales). Homeric references to olbioi - that is, to those whose local earth is in contact with the dead hero - imply hero-cult without really revealing the mysteries of the hero cult.
A case in point is the passage in the Odyssey that we considered earlier, where the psukh# of Teiresias, during its moments of consciousness made possible by the drinking of the sacrificial sheep’s blood that is poured for Teiresias by Odysseus, foretells the story of Odysseus beyond
the Odyssey as we know it. In this meta-story, we see that Odysseus dies at precisely the moment when he reaches the point of a coincidence of opposites. At that point, he will die, and there will be a hero cult connected with his body at the place of his death. Those who come into contact with the body in that place by making contact with the earth that covers him there will be olbioi - if they are righteous (see the end of the passage below):
Relevant is a passage we have already read:
Odyssey xi 119-137: When you get home you will take your revenge on these suitors; and after you have killed them by force [bi#] or fraud in your own house, you must take a well-made oar and carry it on and on, till you come to a country where the people have never heard of the sea and do not even mix salt with their food, nor do they know anything about ships, and oars that are as the wings of a ship. I will give you this certain token [s#ma] which cannot escape your notice. A wayfarer will meet you and will say it must be a winnowing shovel that you have got upon your shoulder; on this you must fix the oar in the ground and sacrifice a ram, a bull, and a boar to Poseidon. Then go home and offer hecatombs to the gods in heaven one after the other. As for yourself, death shall come to you from the sea, and your life shall ebb away very gently when you are full of years and peace of mind, and your people shall be prosperous [olbioi]. All that I have said will come true.’
As we review this passage, we need to keep in mind that all cult heroes are local and localized. Also to consider…
Cult worship reinforces seasonality of nature.
End of journey [telos] is also initiation [telos].
In this passage from the Odyssey, we see the mystical word olbios, which means ‘prosperous’ on the surface but also ‘blessed’ underneath the surface. The deeper meaning has to do with the hero’s achieving an afterlife, rendering him ‘blessed’, while his corpse renders the local population ‘prosperous’. There is a built-in metonymy in the reciprocal relationship linking the ‘blessed’ heroes and the ‘prosperous’ population that worships them.
I talked a minute ago about the moment when Odysseus dies, which happens when he reaches the point of a coincidence of opposites. What is that point? The place of the death of Odysseus will be as far away from the sea as possible. It will be where the oar that he carries on his shoulder is mistaken for a winnowing shovel. And yet, Odysseus will share the sacred space of his hero-cult
with Poseidon, god of the sea, even though this space is as far away from the sea as possible. In the historical period, as we know from the testimony of Pausanias (2nd century CE), Odysseus was actually worshipped as a cult hero in Arcadia, which is as far away from the sea as you can be in the Peloponnesus. Pausanias says that Odysseus shares his sacred space with Poseidon as god of the sea, and with Athena as goddess of sea-pilots. In the Homeric Odyssey, these two divinities are the primary and the secondary divine antagonists respectively of Odysseus.
For more on god-hero antagonism in myth and god-hero symbiosis in ritual, see Nagy, Best of the Achaeans, ch. 7.
In the Odyssey here, the detail about sacrificing to Poseidon at the point of a coincidence of opposites, where the oar of Odysseus is mistaken for a winnowing shovel, refers indirectly to the death of Odysseus at that point and to the symbiosis of Odysseus as cult hero with Poseidon as his ritual antagonist. The ostentatious usage of s#ma in this context signals both the ‘sign’ that tells about the hero’s death and, more literally, the ‘tomb’ of the hero at the place of his death. In terms of this interpretation of the prophecy of Teiresias, death came to Odysseus ‘far from the sea’ - not ‘out of the sea’. In the original Greek, the wording of the prophet is ambiguous: it could have either of the two meanings.
The idea of a hero cult, where the body of the hero hidden in the local earth becomes a talisman of fertility and prosperity to those who come into contact with that earth, can be seen positively as a realization of dik# in the long-term sense of ‘justice’.
This word dik# means ‘justice’ (long-term) and ‘judgment’ (short-term). The sign of dik# is a thriving or blooming field / garden / orchard / grove / vineyard / etc. The cult hero is an exponent of dik#. The presence of his or her body in the local earth can be viewed as the cause of vegetal thriving or blooming.
This word dik#, with its two primary metaphors of (1) the straight line and (2) the thriving cultivation, is basic to the concept of the cult hero. For a brief historical sketch of hero cults, see again Introduction no. 3.
The opposite of dik# is hubris ‘outrage’. The three categories of hubris: (1) human, e.g. Antinoos, (2) animal, (3) plant (undergrowth or overgrowth, such as excessive wood / leaf production). Metaphors of dik#: (1) straight line and (2) thriving cultivation = cultivated field / garden / orchard / grove / vineyard / etc.; hubris is the opposite, that is, (1) crooked line and (2)
failing cultivation = desert or overgrowth.
In the world of the “present,” from the standpoint of Greeks in the historical period who worship the heroes who supposedly lived in the world of the heroic past, these heroes can be imagined as kings and queens from the past. For example, one of the cult words used for worshipping a male cult hero is ‘king’ (anax).
In the world of the heroic past, from the standpoint of Greeks in the historical period, the idea of a just king, a king who is an exponent of dik#, is seen in terms of a thriving or blooming field / garden / orchard / grove / vineyard / etc.
There is a reference to this world in the words of the disguised Odysseus, addressed to his wife Penelope. This passage contains a perfect example of dik# as a sign of the cult hero.
Here we review another passage from the Odyssey:
Odyssey xix 107-114: “My lady,” answered Odysseus, “who on the face of the whole earth can dare to chide with you? Your fame [kleos] reaches the firmament of heaven itself; you are like some blameless king, who upholds righteousness [= good dik#], as the monarch over a great and valiant nation: the earth yields its wheat and barley, the trees are loaded with fruit, the ewes bring forth lambs, and the sea abounds with fish by reason of his virtues, and his people do good deeds under him.
This epic image of the just king as an exponent of dik#, standing in his blooming garden, corresponds to the religious image of the hero in hero cult, “planted” in the local “mother earth” as a talisman of fertility and prosperity for the community that worships him or her.
There is a further reference to this idea of a heroic king, in the climactic meeting between father (“ancestor”) and son (“descendant”) in the Garden of Laertes:
Odyssey xxiv: As he went down into the great orchard, ... he found his father alone, hoeing a vine. ... He went up to his father, who was bending down and digging about a plant. [244] “I see,
sir,” said Odysseus, “that you are an excellent gardener - what pains you take with it, to be sure. There is not a single plant, not a fig tree, vine, olive, pear, nor flower bed, but bears the trace of your attention.”
Odysseus’ father is the most difficult character for the hero to “read” or “recognize” - even more difficult than Penelope. In terms of the sequence of narration, the placing of Laertes’ recognition after that of Penelope suggests that the pat#r ‘father’ (the plural pateres means ‘ancestors’) is even higher in Odysseus’ ascending scale of affections than the wife. Compare the distinction of Kleopatra as a character and Kleopatra as a name. In Meleager’s ascending scale of affections, the wife Kleopatra is highest. But the meaning of her name is even higher for Achilles’s ascending scale of affections.
Again, we see Homeric poetry referring here indirectly to the practice of hero cult.
Odysseus’ father is the most difficult character for the hero to “read” or “recognize” - even more difficult than Penelope. In terms of the sequence of narration, the placing of Laertes’ recognition after that of Penelope suggests that the pat#r ‘father’ (the plural pateres means ‘ancestors’) is even higher in Odysseus’ ascending scale of affections than the wife. Compare the distinction of Kleopatra as a character and Kleopatra as a name. In Meleager’s ascending scale of affections, the wife Kleopatra is highest. But the meaning of her name is even higher for Achilles’s ascending scale of affections.
Again, we see Homeric poetry referring here indirectly to the practice of hero cult.
[[What follows is a discussion that is meant to supplement the dialogue that has taken place.]]
The heroes of hero cult are not only immortalized in paradise-like settings; they can also "come back" into the everyday world on special occasions, called "epiphanies." Sometimes the epiphany is metonymic, that is, that a sign of the hero appears instead of the hero himself (or herself). The word s#ma in the sense of 'tomb' indicates the hero as connected simultaneously to (1) a local resting place for his or her body in the local "mother earth" and (2) a paradise-like setting beyond everyday time and place. The same word s#ma in the sense of 'sign' indicates an epiphany of the hero or of something connected to the hero. The meaning of the hero is indicated by the word s#mainein, which means literally 'mean' or 'mean in a special way.
We start with a “miracle” connected with the cult hero Protesilaos.
Here are some things to look for:
The hero communicates a message about justice (dik#) through a s#ma ‘sign.’
The s#ma hinges on the word tarikhos, which has a double meaning : both ‘preserved food’ (secular) and ‘preserved body’ (sacred).
In Egyptian religion (as expressed by the Greek language), the prototypical tarikhos is Osiris. In traditions connected with the hero Orpheus, the soul is imprisoned in the s#ma of the s"ma
(body).
Herodotus 9.120. The people of the Chersonesus say that a portent happened to one of the guards while he was roasting salted fish [tarikhoi]: the salted fish on the fire began to jump and writhe just like newly-caught fish. A crowd gathered in amazement, but when Artayktes saw the portent he called to the man roasting the salted fish and said, “Athenian xenos, have no fear of this portent; it has not been sent to you. Instead Protesilaos of Elaious indicates [s#mainein] to me that even when dead and dried [tarikhos] he holds power from the gods to punish one who treats him without dik#.
Here the dead Protesilaos sends a meaning (s#mainein). The question is, for whom is the meaning intended? The Persian "villain," Artayktes, says that the meaning is intended only for him. But the real question is, does Herodotus intend the meaning for Greeks as well?
The "meaning" of the hero here is a combination of the "miracle" of the resurrection of the dead fish and the riddling use of the word tarikhos (derived probably from Hittite or Luvian), which can refer both to preserved fish and to preserved human bodies. "Preserved" in the everyday sense would refer to the salting or drying of fish in order to keep them from putrefaction. Similarly, it can refer to the mummifying of the corpse, again in order to keep it from putrefaction. In the sacred sense of the Egyptian mysteries of Osiris, however, "preservation" refers to resurrection after death, and the key to the mystery of resurrection is the ritual of mummification. For Herodotus, this sacred sense of tarikhos was comparable to the mysteries of resurrection in hero cult.
For such deeper meaning, the Greek conceptualization is that of a "higher" meaning. The word s#mainein is conventionally used to designate communication by someone whose perspective is from a higher vantage point than everyone else.
The one with the highest vantage point of them all is Apollo, god of intelligence; as a sun-god, he has an intellect that towers over the whole universe. That is why Heraclitus can say of him:
Heraclitus 22 B 93 DK:
The Lord [= Apollo] whose oracle is in Delphi neither says nor conceals: he indicates [s#mainein].
Apollo communicates [s#mainein] from the vantage point of the sun: he is all-seeing.
s#mainein means ‘say’ in the language of scouts who are ‘sent up hill’ on missions of reconnaissance.
When Herodotus first "quotes" the oracle of Apollo, the god says:
Herodotus 1.47:
I know [oida] the number of the sands and the measure of the sea. I understand the mute and I hear the one who does not speak. The smell has come to my senses of a hard-shelled tortoise, boiling with meat of lamb, where bronze is spread below, bronze set above.
[[Note by GN: Boiled lamb is a typical offering to cult heroes; boiled tortoise is meant to be a strange additional ingredient.]]
Here we see that the surface narrative of Herodotus is concerned with human events; underneath the surface, however, it is concerned with the workings of the natural and cosmic order. The history is conveyed by the main framing narrative. The workings of the natural and cosmic order are conveyed by the framed narrative of Apollo's utterances and heroes' meanings. The agents of this order are cult heroes, who in death are completely in synchronization with nature and the
cosmos. That is why Protesilaos in death can be an agent of the natural and cosmic order, which comes from the gods. He rewards the just and punishes the unjust. He is thus the agent of dik#.
To sum up:
Herodotus quotes Apollo and thereby emulates the god’s solar vantage point. Also, he emulates the ground-level vantage point of the hero who travels ‘the pathways of words.’
oida: “I have seen, therefore I know”; related to historia ‘history, inquiry’ activated through vision.
Herodotus himself uses the same language to describe the way he too communicates:
Herodotus 1.5: Concerning these things, I am not going to say that they were so or otherwise, but I will indicate [s#mainein] the one who I myself know [oida] first began unjust deeds against the Hellenes. I will go on further in my account, treating equally of great and small cities of humankind, for many of those that were great in the past have become small, and those that were great in my day were formerly small. Knowing that human good fortune [eudaimonia] never remains in the same state, I will mention both equally.
To sum up:
The historian as one who has seen and, therefore, knows (oida) can indicate (s#mainein) what is morally true by way of his moral authority as a historian.
Unlike the singer who says what he hears (kleos) from the Muse, the historian says (s#mainein) what he sees (historia) from his own experience and ultimately from the vision of Apollo.
Even the "historical" framing narratives of Herodotus are full of "lofty" speech suggestive of hero cult. A case in point is his use of the word oikos, which in everyday speech means 'house' but in the language of hero cults means 'abode' of a cult hero. One the surface, the Persian "villain" appropriated the "house" of a Greek man. Underneath the surface, he violated the sacred abode of a cult hero:
Herodotus 9.116:
Xerxes’ governor Artayktes, a Persian and a clever and impious man, was turannos of this province. He had deceived the king in his march on Athens by robbing from Elaious the property of Protesilaos son of Iphiklos. The grave of Protesilaos is at Elaious in the Chersonese, with a sacred precinct around it. There were many goods there: gold and silver bowls, bronze, apparel, and other dedicated offerings, all of which Artayktes carried off by the king’s gift. He deceived Xerxes by saying, “Master, there is here the house [oikos] of a Hellene who waged war against your land, but he met with dik# and was killed. Give me his oikos so that all may know not to wage war against your land.” He thought he would easily persuade Xerxes to give him a man’s oikos by saying this, since Xerxes had no suspicion of what he really thought. When he said that Protesilaos waged war against the king’s land, he had in mind that the Persians consider all Asia to belong to them and to their successive kings. So the king made him the gift, and he carried the goods from Elaious to Sestos, planting and farming the sacred precinct. Whenever he came to Elaious, he would even have sex with women in the sanctuary.
To sum up:
The historian is an indicator of what is justice (dik#).
The narrative hinges on double meanings in the case of oikos and the words for “planting and farming.”
Only the initiated can understand double meanings as conveyed by the medium of ainos.
Further review:
Notes on Mozart’s Magic Flute:
International anthem of initiation into the mysteries of Freemasonry
Its ‘charter myth’ is the MYSTERIUM of resurrection after the ordeal of death. Modeled on the resurrection of the Egyptian god Osiris.
Greek musterion is saying ‘and non-saying’ in sacred contexts.
Pausanias (2nd century CE) describes an initiation into the mysteries of a hero cult (9.39.5ff):
When a man has made up his mind to descend to the oracle of Trophonios, he first lodges in a certain building [oik#ma] for an appointed number of days, this being sacred to the Good
Daim!n and to Good Fortune. While he lodges there, among other regulations for purity he abstains from hot baths, bathing only in the river Hercyna. Meat he has in plenty from the sacrifices, for he who descends sacrifices to Trophonios himself and to the children of Trophonios, to Apollo also and to Kronos, to Zeus with the epithet King [Basileus], to Hera Charioteer [H#niokhos], and to Demeter whom they name with the epithet Europa and say was the wetnurse of Trophonios. [9.35.6] At each sacrifice a diviner [mantis] is present, who looks into the entrails of the sacrificial victim, and after an inspection prophesies to the person descending whether Trophonios will give him a kind [eumen#s] and gracious reception. The entrails of the other victims do not declare the mind of Trophonios so much as a ram, which each inquirer sacrifices over a pit [bothros] on the night he descends, calling upon Agamedes.[1] Even though the previous sacrifices have appeared propitious, no account is taken of them unless the entrails of this ram indicate the same; but if they agree, then the inquirer descends in good hope. The procedure of the descent is this. [9.39.7] First, during the night he is taken to the river Hercyna by two boys of the citizens about thirteen years old, named Hermae,[2] who after taking him there anoint him with oil and wash him. It is these who wash the descender, and do all the other necessary services as his attendant boys. After this he is taken by the priests, not at once to the oracle, but to fountains of water very near to each other. [9.39.8] Here he must drink water called the water of Forgetfulness [L#th#], that he may forget all that he has been thinking of hitherto, and afterwards he drinks of another water, the water of Memory [Mn#mosun#], which causes him to remember what he sees after his descent. After looking at the image [agalma] which they say was made by Daedalus (it is not shown by the priests save to such as are going to visit Trophonios), having seen it, worshipped it and prayed, he proceeds to the oracle, dressed in a linen tunic, with ribbons girding it, and wearing the boots of the native locale.[3] [9.39.9] The oracle is on the mountain, beyond the grove. Round it is a circular basement of white marble, the circumference of which is about that of the smallest threshing floor, while its height is just short of two cubits. On the basement stand spikes, which, like the cross-bars holding them together, are of bronze, while through them has been made a double door. Within the enclosure is a chasm [khasma] in the earth, not natural, but artificially constructed after the most accurate masonry. [9.39.10] The shape of this structure is like that of a bread-oven. Its breadth across the middle one might conjecture to be about four cubits, and its depth also could not be estimated to extend to more than eight cubits. They have made no way of descent to the bottom, but when a man comes to Trophonios, they bring him a narrow, light ladder. After going down he finds a hole between the floor and the structure. Its breadth appeared to be two spans, and its height one span. [9.39.11] The descender lies with his back on the ground, holding barley-cakes [mazai] kneaded with honey, thrusts his feet into the hole and himself follows, trying hard to get his knees into the hole. After his knees the rest of his body is at once swiftly drawn in, just as the largest and most rapid river will catch a man in its eddy and carry him under. After this those who have entered the shrine learn the future, not in one and the same way in all cases, but by sight sometimes and at other times by hearing. The return upwards is by the same mouth, the feet darting out first. [9.39.12] They say that no one who has made the descent has been killed, save only one of the bodyguards of Demetrius. But they declare that he performed none of the usual rites in the sanctuary, and that he descended, not to consult the god[4] but in the hope of stealing gold and silver from the shrine. It is said that the body of this man appeared in a different place, and was not cast out at the sacred mouth. Other tales are told about the man, but I have given the one most worthy of consideration. [9.39.13] After his ascent from Trophonios the inquirer is again taken in hand by the priests, who set him upon a chair called the Throne of Memory [Mn#mosun#],
which stands not far from the shrine, and they ask of him, when seated there, all he has seen or learned. After gaining this information they then entrust him to his relatives. These lift him, paralyzed with terror and unconscious both of himself and of his surroundings, and carry him to the building [oik#ma] where he lodged before with Good Fortune and the Good Daim!n. Afterwards, however, he will recover all his faculties, and the power to laugh will return to him. [9.39.14] What I write is not hearsay; I have myself inquired of Trophonios and seen other inquirers.
J1. In making mental contact with a cult hero, the worshipper expects to get in touch with a mind that knows everything.
J2. We will see that heroes are “psychic” about the heroic past: in other words, when worshippers in the present make contact with the consciousness of the heroes of the past, those heroes will know everything about the world of heroes, not only about their own world in the past. They thus surpass the power of poets in knowing about the world of heroes:
Philostratus On Heroes 7.4-6 At any rate, among those who critically examine Homer’s poems, who will you say reads [anagign"skein] and has insight [di-horân] into them as Protesilaos does? Indeed, my guest, before Priam and Troy there was no epic recitation [rhaps"idia], nor had anyone sung of events that had not yet taken place. There was poetry about prophetic matters and about Herakles, son of Alkm#n#, recently arranged but not yet developed fully, but Homer had not yet sung. Some say that it was when Troy was captured, others say it was a few or even eight generations later that he applied himself to poetic composition. Nevertheless, Protesilaos knows everything of Homer and sings of many Trojan events that took place after his own lifetime, and also of many Hellenic and Median events.
[1] Pausanias' earlier description of the myth of Trophonios (9.37.5ff): "The earth opened up and swallowed Trophonios at the point in the grove at Lebadeia where is what is called the pit [bothros] of Agamedes, and next to it is a stele." Agamedes was the brother of Trophonios. In the corresponding myth, Agamedes died when the two brothers were buried alive, while Trophonios escaped; later, he experiences the mystical process of "engulfment."
[2] "Hermae" is the plural of "Hermes."
[3] Note that the groundedness of the local hero cult is reinforced by the idea of local footwear.
[4] Note that Pausanias considers the hero in the afterlife to be a theos 'god'.
Chapter 14
Champions of dik# ‘justice’
The key word is dik# ‘justice’ (long-range), ‘judgment’ (short-range)
The opposite of this word is hubris ‘outrage’.
In the sphere of humans, hubris is manifested in excessive behavior that violates morality, as in the case of the suitor Antinoos in the Odyssey
In the sphere of animals, it is manifested in excessive violence or sex
In the sphere of plants, it is manifested in unbalanced and excessive growth of some aspects of the given plant - at the expense of other aspects. For example, excessive production of wood or leaf in an apple tree results in a deficient production of apples. For another example: when a lettuce “gone to seed,” it fails to produce leaves.
Here is a picture of “Natasha’s hybristic lettuce.”
Metaphorically, dik# can be pictured as
a straight line or
a flourishing garden / orchard / grove / field / etc.;
hubris is the opposite, pictured as
a crooked line or
a sterile land, where the sterility is caused either by overgrowth or by undergrowth
So, the opposition between dik# and hubris is matched by a metaphorical opposition between the flourishing of cultivated land and the notional sterility of, say, a desert or a jungle.
As for the metaphorical opposition between a straight and a crooked line, the moral implications are evident in a wide range of cultures. In English, for example, people who are “crooked” in speech are “not straight,” that is, they are “not direct.”
The concept of “direct” is very useful for our purposes, because the most basic meaning of Greek dik# is ‘direction, directness’.
Generally, Homeric poetry does not address the problem of justice, that is, of what is right vs. wrong, what is truth vs. what are lies. (Note that “truth” tends to be viewed in the singular while “lies” tend to be viewed in the plural.)
A very instructive example of the tension between dik# as ‘justice’ in the long term and ‘judgment’ in the short term is the litigation scene portrayed as a central picture worked into the cosmic artifact known as the Shield of Achilles in Rhapsody XVIII of the Iliad. At XVIII 508, we see a contest or debate that centers on the question of the ‘straightest’ possible formulation of dik# - in the context of a neikos ‘quarrel’, as mentioned in XVIII 497. Notice that the people who have to make up their mind about the big question of justice in the Iliad are described as a crowd of people standing around the central scene of the litigation. That crowd can be imagined as the audience, as it were, of Homeric poetry. Have another look at my essay on the Shield of Achilles, available on the “Heroes” website.
Another instructive example is a passage we have already considered in Rhapsody xix of the Odyssey. At xix 106-114, we see a picture of a king in a flourishing field. (I am deliberately using the English word ‘field’ here. Like the Greek word agros, this English word ‘field’ can refer either to nature or to culture, cultivation.) The kleos of Penelope, says Odysseus in disguise, will reach the heavens like that of a king who upholds good dik# (eudiki$s, accusative plural, at verse 111), so that the earth flourishes and the people prosper.
We may compare the image embedded in the prophecy of Teiresias to Odysseus in Odyssey xi 136-137: the people around you will be olbioi. As I noted earlier, we see here a picture of Odysseus himself as a stylized cult hero whose body finds its resting place in a flourishing field. Nature and culture are fused in this setting of agriculture. As we saw earlier, the silhouette of a mound topped by an oar or winnowing shovel can mean two things at the same time: “this is the mound that is the tomb of a sailor who died” and “this is the mound that is the accumulation of grain that is harvested from a flourishing field.” When “the sailor is dead,” “the harvest is complete.” In this context, we may also compare the garden of Laertes in Odyssey xxiv.
Cult heroes are fused with the seasonality of agriculture
Cult heroes are the phulakes ‘guardians’ of dik#, as we are about to see in Hesiod Works and Days 122-126, 172-173.
Before we proceed in earnest to Hesiodic poetry, we should consider a rare example of dik#
in the absolutized sense of ‘justice’ in Homeric poetry. When Nestor speaks of the aftermath of the Trojan War, in Odyssey iii 132-135, he notes that Zeus planned a nostos that is lugros ‘baneful’ for the Achaeans (verse 132). Why? Because the ‘Argives’ had no sense of noos and no dik# (verse 133), and, consequently, they were doomed to be punished by the m#nis of Athena (135).
In this context, we should recall the significance of the name of the chief of the suitors, Antinoos. This figure is literally ‘antithetical to noos’. He is extrinsically noble but intrinsically base. He is socioeconomically noble but morally base. Odysseus, by contrast, is intrinsically noble though he is extrinsically base. He is morally noble though he is socioeconomically base. His baseness is exteriorized when he is reduced to the lowest level of the socioeconomic hierarchy of his own society at the time of his arrival back home in Ithaca.
As we saw earlier, it takes noos to bring together the 1) intellectual, 2) moral, 3) emotional aspects of understanding the “meaning” of a hero.
With that said, we are ready to move on to Hesiodic poetry. Basically, Hesiod is the hero of the speech-act
A case in point is Focus Passage A. For this text, I choose the first ten verses of the Hesiodic Works and Days. As we see from these verses, the meaning of dik# in *both* the short-term sense of ‘judgment’ *and* the long-term sense of ‘justice’ is fused in the figure of Zeus. Only for Zeus is a ‘judgment’ the same thing as ‘justice’. And that model is about to be extended to the figure of Hesiod himself. As we read in Works and Days verses 9-10, the dik# of Zeus is in action while Hesiod talks to Perses. So the action of Zeus is the speech of Hesiod. That is how Hesiod becomes the ultimate master of the speech act.
Passage (A) Hesiod Works and Days 1-10
Muses of Pieria, you who make kleos with your songs, come and tell of Zeus, making a song about your father,
on account of whom there are mortals both unworthy of talk and worthy, both worth speaking of and not—all on account of great Zeus.
Easily he gives power, and just as easily he ruins the powerful.
Easily he diminishes the distinguished, and magnifies the undistinguished. Easily he makes straight the crooked and withers the overweening
—Zeus, the one who thunders on high, who lives in the highest abode.
Heed me, seeing and hearing as you do, and with dik# make straight the divine laws [themis plural].
10 While you do that, I am ready to tell genuine [et#tuma] things to Perses.
Hesiod becomes a hero by virtue of becoming the ultimate master of the speech act, as we see from a comparison of the beginning of the Hesiodic Works and Days and the beginning of the Hesiodic Theogony.
In Works and Days 9-10, we see that Zeus ‘sorts out’ (as expressed by the verb of krisis) what is ‘divine law’ (themis) and what is not, and he accomplishes this ‘sorting out’ by way of his dik# ‘judgment’ - while Hesiod speaks to Perses. The speaking of Hesiod, as a speech act, takes place in the context of a neikos ‘quarrel’, Works and Days 35, between Hesiod as the righteous brother and Perses as the unrighteous brother.
We now turn to Focus Passage B, Theogony 85-87. At verses 85-86, we see how an ideal king ‘sorts out’ (krisis) what is ‘divine law’ (themis) and what is not, and he accomplishes this ‘sorting out’ by way of his dik# ‘judgment’. But doing so, the ideal king can bring to an end a great neikos ‘quarrel’, as we see at verse 87.
Passage (B) Hesiod Theogony 65-97:
And they {the Muses}, sending forth a lovely voice,
sing and dance and make kleos for the norms [nomoi] and accustomed ways of all the immortals, as they send forth a lovely voice.
Anyway, back then, they went to Olympus, glorying in their beautiful voice with immortal song. And the dark earth resounded all around them
as they sang, and the lovely steppings of their feet made a sound from below as they proceeded towards their father, the one who is king in the sky,
with sole possession of the thunder and the gleaming thunderbolt,
having defeated, with his power [kratos], Kronos his father. Each thing was well
arranged by him, as he assigned the norms and marked out the honors [timai][1] for the immortals.
These things, then, the Muses sang, they who have abodes in Olympus, the nine daughters begotten by great Zeus,
Kleio {Clio} and Euterpe and Thaleia {Thalia, ‘Festivity’} and Melpomene and Terpsichore and Erato and Polyhymnia and Ourania {Urania}
and Kalliope {Calliope}. That one {Calliope} is the most important of them all, for she accompanies revered kings.
Whosoever among sky-nourished kings is given honor [tim#] by these daughters of great Zeus and is beheld by them when he is born,
for such a man they pour sweet dew upon his tongue, and from his mouth flow sweet words. The people,
all of them, look towards him as he sorts out the divine ordinances [themis plural] by way of straight judgments [dikai]. And he, speaking without stumbling
and with his powers of understanding, can even put an end to a great quarrel [neikos].[2]
It is for this reason that there are kings, kings with good thinking [phrenes], namely, because they can easily turn right around the {wrong} things that are done to people who are wronged in
the assembly [agora].
They can do it by persuasion, using soft words.
And when he {such a king} goes to a gathering [ag"n], the people turn to him as if he were a god,
with his gentle command of respect [aid"s], and he stands out among the assembled. Such is the sacred gift of the Muses for humankind.
For it is because of the Muses and far-shooting Apollo
that there are singers {poets} and players of the lyre [kitharis] on this earth.
And it is because of Zeus that there are kings. Blessed [olbios] is he whom the Muses love. And a sweet voice [aud#] flows from his mouth.
There is one thing that is missing in this picture of an ideal king. And this thing that is missing can be described as a significant absence. The one thing that is missing is a sk#ptron ‘scepter’. Someone else already has the scepter. Hesiod himself receives it in Theogony 30. The Muses themselves give Hesiod a sk#ptron ‘scepter’ in Theogony 30.
This gift given by the Muses is a symbol of the authorization inherent in the poetic form of the Theogony. From an anthropological point of view, a theogony is a speech-act of authorization. But Hesiod’s theogony authorizes not kings. Rather, it authorizes Hesiod himself as an overarching representative of authority. Hesiod is a master of truth, absolute truth: that is the essence of the word al#thea at Theogony 28.
So, both in the Theogony and in the Works and Days, Hesiod figures as the absolute master of the speech act, as the master of the absolute truth. His status as cult hero is based on this mastery. Hesiod is programmed by the Theogony and by the Works and Days to become such a cult hero.
So too in Works and Days, Hesiod is ultimately authorized - in this case, by virtue of making kings obsolete.
The kings take the side of Perses by making a crooked dik# ‘judgment’ in Works and Days
39/249/269.
The narrative of Hesiod is the narrative of a crooked line becoming a straight line. By the time we reach verse 275 of the Hesiodic Works and Days, dik# has shifted from a relativized concept of ‘judgment’ to become an absolutized concept of ‘justice’.
I return here to the metaphorical opposition of a straight line vs. a crooked line, dik# vs. hubris, and to the metaphorical opposition of a flourishing field vs. a sterile field. I should add that, in the technical language of agriculture, the two metaphors converge. For a gardener, for example, the Greek way to refer to the ‘pruning’ of a plant is to use words having to do with
‘straightening’ (ithunein, etc.).
These metaphors are applicable in the master narrative of the Homeric Odyssey, which can be viewed as a story about a crooked line trying to become a straight one. I note that that the story of the Odyssey finishes in an orchard.
Similarly in the Hesiodic Works and Days, the embedded master narrative starts with the disequilibrium of injustice and moves towards the equilibrium of justice.
In response to the injustice of the unrighteous Perses and the crooked kings, the righteous Hesiod engages in a complex speech act that can be divided into four main parts:
First comes the story of Prometheus and Pandora (verses 42-105), which is all about the work ethic. The “work ethic” here is understood in terms of agriculture, which in turn is understood as a sacred activity that stays in rhythm with the natural life cycle.
Second comes the story of the Five Generations of Humankind (verses 106-201). The symbolism of the number five in this story centers on the idea of a cycle.
Essentially, Generations 1 and 2 stand for the positive and negative images of the hero as pictured in hero cults; Generations 3 and 4 stand for the negative and positive images of the hero as pictured in poetry; Generation 5 is the composite, the here-and-now. Comparable symbols are the Five Peoples in Indic traditions (and the related idea of five directions - north / south / east / west / “here”); also the Five “Provinces” of Ireland. The metaphor of metals correlated with the sequence of Five Generations of Humankind - gold / silver / bronze / / iron - is symbolic of human degeneration. The decreasing of value in this sequence is made possible by leaving blank the fourth space in the sequence of spaces occupied by gold / silver / bronze / / iron. The same blank fourth space makes it possible to set up the dichotomies of better and worse, worse and better for Generations 1 and 2, 3 and 4, in that 4 could not be a “better” if there were an explicit metal occupying the blank fourth space which would have to be worse than Bronze, not better.
Summary:
Generations 1 and 2: positive and negative images of the hero in hero cults Generations 3 and 4: negative and positive images of the hero in poetry Generation 5 is the composite, the here-and-now.
Third comes the ainos of the Hawk and the Nightingale (202-212); the “moral” of this fable is implied in what follows (275-278), where we hear that beasts, unlike humans, habitually devour each other.
Fourth comes an apocalyptic vision of absolute dik#, culminating with a city of dik#
(225-237) juxtaposed with a city of hubris (238-247)
After these four micronarratives, the logic of the overall macronarrative takes hold. The man of dik# will get rich (280-281), while the man of hubris will lose it all (325-326). And, in fact, the unrighteous brother Perses loses it all (396).
There are parallels in the poetry of Theognis, which we will examine in future dialogues. Here I give two examples, which should be considered “previews” of themes that link the first half of this course on heroes with the second half.
Passage (C) Theognis 213-218
My thumos! Keep turning and showing a new side of your versatile nature in each encounter with every philos.
214 Keep mixing your temperament to match that of each philos.
Have the temperament of a complex octopus,
216 who always looks like whatever rock he has just clung to.
Now be like this; then, at another time, become someone else in your coloring.
218 It is true to say that sophia is better than being atropos.
The last word in this passage, a-tropos is all-important. It means 'having no versatility, having no power to turn'; cf. Odysseus at Odyssey i 1 as polu-tropos ‘having much versatility, having many ways to turn’. Such themes are relevant to the description of Odysseus as polu-tropos in Odyssey i 1. This word, meaning ‘turning many different ways’, is applied to Odysseus because this hero can change his identity to match wherever he is. He can be different things to different people by literally turning himself into a different person. As we see from the verses of Theognis (213-218), the octopus as pictured as such a personality, since this animal can change its color to match wherever it is.
Like Odysseus, the figure of Theognis is extrinsically base but intrinsically noble, as we will see in a later dialogue when we examine further passages from Theognis (such as verses 649-652; also verses 1197-1202, where he complains of his loss of property). In the poetry of Theognis, he complains of failing to achieve justice in his own lifetime. Beyond his lifetime, however, the prospects are different. Once dead, the hero can return as a ghost, revenant (especially in
337-350). This theme is evident elsewhere as well in Theognis (1123-1124).
Passage (D) Theognis 1123-1125:
Do not remind me of my misfortunes! The kinds of things that happened to Odysseus have happened to me too.
1124 Odysseus, who returned, emerging from the great palace of Hades, and who then killed the suitors with a pitiless thumos.
Appendix: The image of the hero in the city state.
The key word here, related to the key word for the overall dialogue, is kosmos ‘cosmos; constitution; beauty of song’ (also ‘beauty of adornment’)
Passage A) Theognis 667-682
If I had the wealth, Simonides, that I used to have,
668 I would not be distressed as I am now at being together with the agathoi.
But now my possessions have passed me by, even though I was aware, and I am speechless
670 because of my lack of wealth, though I am aware of one single thing much better than many other things:
that we are now being carried along, with white sails lowered, 672 beyond the pontos of Melos, through the dark night,
and they refuse to bail, and the sea washes over
674 both sides of the ship. It is a difficult thing for anyone
to be saved, what with the things they are doing. They have deposed the helmsman [kubern#t#s],
676 the noble [esthlos] one, who was standing guard, with expertise.
They seize wealth by force [bia], and order [kosmos] has been destroyed.
678 There is no longer an equitable division of possessions, aimed at the collective interest, but the carriers of merchandise rule, and the kakoi are on top of the agathoi.
Let these things be allusive utterances [ainigma pl.] hidden by me for the agathoi. 682 One could be aware of even future misfortune, if one is sophos.
In the historical period, starting with ca. 600 B.C.E., we of course find no ultimate city of dik#, no ultimate city of hubris. Those two cities exist only in the apocalyptic vision of the Hesiodic Works and Days.
But we do find heroes of justice, as venerated in individual city states.
These heroes are viewed as lawgivers or quasi-lawgivers. They are heroes of dik# like Hesiod, but they are venerated on a local level.
Each such hero, as a lawmaker, is viewed by each city as the author of the given city’s
customary laws. In the myths about lawmakers, such authorship is correlated with some kind of fundamental crisis that afflicts the given city.
Here are three of the most celebrated lawmakers in local traditions: in Sparta: Lycurgus
in Athens: Solon
in Megara: Theognis
What makes these cities in historical times most different from these same cities in “heroic” times is the obsolescence of kings. Kings have been eliminated in most cities, with the notable exception of Sparta.
Even in Sparta, the institution of kingship was really a “constitutional” monarchy; the real form of government in Sparta was an oligarchy. As for “unconstitutional” monarchies in the historical period, a prime example was Syracuse. Of course the idea that the kings of Syracuse were “unconstitutional” stems not from them but from their political enemies.
(Here I introduce briefly a point to which I will return in a later dialogue. The kings of Syracuse called themselves turannoi ‘tyrants’. This term was not negative, as far as a king like Hieron of Syracuse was concerned. There are other historical examples of one-man rule, however, where the one-man ruler preferred to be called neither turannos ‘tyrant’ nor even basileus ‘king’ One such example is Peisistratos of Athens. I will have more to say about him later.)
To return to the main point I am making now ... In the city states of the historical period, there were basically three alternative forms of government: A) tyranny B) oligarchy C) democracy
In the fifth century, prominent examples are A) Syracuse, B) Sparta, C) Athens.
As for the city of Megara in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, all three forms of government existed at one time or another.
The poetry attributed to Theognis relates to all three forms of government.
Megara was once a great and powerful city, as we see from the verses of Theognis (11-14) implying that the Trojan Expedition was launched from there. Megara was the metropolis or ‘mother city’ of Byzantium.
The concept of the city is encoded in the verses of Theognis (15-18), containing the key formula ‘whatever is beautiful is philon’. This formula captures the essence of the meaning of kosmos.
This word kosmos can refer to A) the universe as a “cosmos,” that is, as a macrocosm; B) the constitution of a city as a microcosm of the universe; C) a song as an expression of both macrocosm and microcosm.
As we learn from Herodotus, the city state of Sparta had a constitution that was called the kosmos by the Spartans. I parallel idea is at work in the formula ‘I cannot please all’, as spoken by Theognis (verse 24), where the justness of the words of Theognis is equated with the justness of Zeus in regulating the universe (which includes the regulation of weather). Similarly Solon #2: ‘I cannot please all’.
In Theognis (39-52) we see a foil for the city: it is the sinister fertility of a city that is ‘pregnant’ with hubris, and giving birth to a turannos. Conventionally, hubris is a sign of sterility; so the image of fertility is sinister here, signaling the opposite of the just city.
Focus Passage B)
I fear, son of Polypaos, that hubris will destroy this polis
542 —the same hubris that destroyed the Centaurs, eaters of raw flesh.
I must render this dik#, Kyrnos, along the straight line of a carpenter’s rule and square,
544 and I must give to both sides their equitable share, with the help of seers, portents, and burning sacrifice,
546 so that I may not incur shameful blame for veering.
We see a more explicit expression of this theme elsewhere in Theognis (1081-1082).
Such themes recur in our later readings, especially in Aeschylus Agamemnon and Sophocles
Oedipus Tyrannus.
Such themes are relevant to the description of Odysseus as polutropos in Odyssey i 1. This word, meaning ‘turning many different ways’, is applied to Odysseus because this hero can change his identity to match wherever he is. He can be different things to different people by literally turning himself into a different person. As we see from the verses of Theognis (213-218), the octopus as pictured as such a personality, since this animal can change its color to match wherever it is.
Like Odysseus, the figure of Theognis is extrinsically base but intrinsically noble (as in verses 649-652). We may compare a passage from Theognis (1197-1202) where he complains of his loss of property.
In a related passage of Theognis (337-350), he complains of failing to achieve justice in his own lifetime. Beyond his lifetime, however, the prospects are different. Once dead, the hero can
return as a ghost, revenant. This theme is evident elsewhere as well in Theognis (1123-1124).
This theme of the revenant applies to Odysseus at the beginning of Odyssey xx. This theme also helps account for the horrific deeds of the hero when he punishes the suitors and their collaborators. Such horror is typical of the hero as revenant.
Elsewhere in Theognis (1197-1202), we see further ramifications of the theme of the hero’s anger over the violation of his property in his absence.
In a passage from Theognis that I have already quoted (667-682), the metaphor of the ship of state is explicit. And the ‘helmsman’ or ‘pilot’ of this ship, its kubern#t#s, is an exponent of dik# who speaks by way of an ainigma (there is another important reference to the metaphor of the kubern#t#s at verses 855-856). This theme of Theognis as pilot in the verses of Theognis is comparable to the theme of Odysseus as pilot in the Odyssey.
In Theognis (541-546), hubris is pictured as the destruction of a city (cf. also verses 1103-1104); in this connection, I draw attention to the hubris of Centaurs, eaters of raw meat;
comparable is the implicit hubris of Achilles in his own bestial moments. In this same passage from Theognis (541-546), note the emphasis placed on the ritual correctness of sacrifice, and on the role of the lawgiver as presiding over the sacrifice (cf. also verses 805-810). I stress the ritual as well as ethical correctness or ‘straightness’ of the dik# of the hero as lawmaker. Comparable to this figure of the hero is the Indic construct of Manu the Lawgiver, who is a paragon of ritual as well as ethical correctness.
I return to the theme of the hero’s anger over the violation of his property in his absence. In one passage of Theognis (1197-1202) this loss is blamed on a dangerous sea-voyage. Relevant is the s#ma ‘sign’ of the crane. The riddling message is this: “stop sailing and start ploughing.”
I close by drawing attention to a riddle in Theognis (1209-1210) about Aithon the exile. This name is related to the name chosen by Odysseus in one of his “Cretan lies.”
[1] West Th. commentary p. 180 translates ‘provinces’ or ‘spheres of influence’, citing some very interesting illustrations of this sense.
[2] Compare the context of neikos at Works and Days 35. Dialogue 15 notes
This dialogue introduces a new phase of the course: it is about the reshaping of heroes in Greek tragedy.
The case in point here is Agamemnon in the epic Iliad and in the tragedy Agamemnon.
I emphasize the evolution of tragedy in the historical context of the feast of City Dionysia: for a compressed summary of the essential background, read Nagy on Athenian state theater, in the Sourcebook.
1. key word: at# veering, aberration, derangement; disaster; punishment for disaster.
Notice the cause-and-effect ambivalence: at# can be the result of damage or its cause; at# is a key concept in tragedy; compare hamartia, sometimes translated as ‘flaw’.
1a. The basic metaphor of at#: being blown off course while sailing a ship
1b. The basic metaphor of hamartia: missing the mark while shooting at a target
1c. Some background...
Aeschylus was a pioneer of tragedy.
An interesting detail about him: he fought in the battle of Marathon, in the year 490 BCE. One of his early works is the Persai, produced in 472; the khor#gos was Pericles (by hindsight, Pericles is the chief exponent of democracy in the Classical period of the 5th century).
Another work of Aeschylus was the Seven against Thebes, produced in the year 467. Most famous is his trilogy of the Oresteia (Agamemnon, Libation-Bearers, Eumenides), produced in the year 458.
Aeschylus visited the tyrant Hieron in Syracuse sometime after 472; he produced there the
Aitnaiai and a re-performance of the Persai.
1d. Tyrants in Athens (Peisistratidai) pioneered theater, democracy inherited it. 1e. key concept in tragedy: turannos as king or tyrant
1f. Aeschylus is a pioneer in introducing epic themes into theater, specifically tragedy, at the feast of the City Dionysia; case in point, Agamemnon
1g. In Iliad XIX, Agamemnon the king says that he is not guilty; he says that at# made him do it
(verses 87-89). In the case of Achilles, Phoenix tells him in Iliad IX 512 that at# is the punishment for someone who rejects the emotion of pity.
1h. But the Iliad never passes judgment on Agamemnon - or on Achilles. 1i. Agamemnon is afflicted with at#; how about Achilles?
1j. chain of evil as background for the Oresteia trilogy: Thyestes (father of Aegisthus) makes a corrupt sacrifice in order to win kingship; Thyestes seduces the wife of his brother Atreus (father of Agamemnon and Menelaos); Atreus has revenge by tricking Thyestes into eating his own children; Agamemnon kills his own daughter, and this killing is what starts the winds that will propel the fleet of the Achaeans to Troy; after Troy is destroyed by the Achaeans, Agamemnon forces the Trojan princess Cassandra to be his bedmate; meanwhile, “back at the ranch,” Clytemnestra accepts Aegisthus as her bedmate; Clytemnestra helps Aegisthus kill Agamemnon when he comes home; Orestes kills Clytemnestra and Aegisthus when he comes home from exile.
Aeschylus, Agamemnon 720 ff:
Chorus: (strophe 2) Even so [hout"] a man reared in his house a lion’s whelp, robbed of its mother’s milk yet still desiring the breast. Gentle it was [720] in the prelude [= before the time of telos] of its life, kindly to children, and a delight to the old. Much did it get, held in arms like a nursling child, with its [725] bright eye turned toward his hand, and fawning under compulsion of its belly’s need. (antistrophe 2) But brought to full growth by time it demonstrated the nature it had from its parents. Unbidden, in return [kharis] for its fostering, [730] it prepared a feast with a slaughter of destruction [at"] inflicted on the flocks; so that the house was defiled with blood, and they that lived there could not control their anguish, and great was the carnage far and wide. [735] A priest of Derangement [at"], by order of a god, it was reared in the house.
1k. The word hout" ‘even so’ that introduces this story signals an ainos. Compare hout" at Iliad
IX 524 introducing the story of Meleager.
1l. Compare Herodotus Book 6 (not in Sourcebook), where the mother of Pericles dreams that she gives birth to a lion cub.
1m. We see here the telos of viciousness.
Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1ff:
Watchman: I ask the gods for release from these ordeals [ponoi] of mine, throughout this long year’s watch, in which, lying upon the palace roof of the descendants of Atreus, upon my bent arm, like a dog, I have learned to know well the gathering of the night’s stars, those radiant potentates conspicuous in the firmament, [5] bringers of winter and summer to mankind. So now I am still watching for the signal [sumbolon] of the flame, the gleaming fire that is to bring news from Troy [10] and tidings of its capture. … [20] But tonight may there come a happy release from these ordeals [ponoi] of mine! May the fire with its glad tidings flash through the gloom! Oh welcome, you blaze in the night, a light as if of day, you harbinger of the setting up [kata- stasis] of many khoroi in Argos in thanksgiving for this glad event! [25] Iou! Iou! To Agamemnon’s Queen I thus make a signal [s#main"] to rise from her bed, and as quickly as she can to utter in a proper way [euph#me"] in her palace halls a shout of ololu in welcome of this fire, if the city of Ilion [30] truly is taken, as this beacon unmistakably announces. And I will join the khoros in a prelude upon my own account. … [35] For the rest I stay silent; a great ox stands upon my tongue - yet the house itself, could it but speak, might tell a plain enough tale; since, for my part, by my own choice I have words for those who know, and to those who do not know, I am without memory.
2a. The word euph#me" means ‘utter in a proper way’ or ‘be silent’ for those who are initiated when it is applied in a sacred context; it means ‘be silent’ when it is applied in a non-sacred context.
2b. Notice that tragedy stylizes itself here as khoros.
Richard Douglas Abrams writes to GN on April 7, 2006:
As regards the signal fires, the following from my notes on Paris may be of interest.
“A rather fascinating communication system connected the Louvre's royal occupants, with distant cities. Claude Chappe's semaphore system allowed communication between the Louvre and Lille, 130 miles distant, in 2 minutes and Calais in 3. Bordeaux and Lyon were similarly communicated with.
The system was introduced in 1792 and was used until 1854. The tour of St. Sulpice was the first relay point. A statue of Chappe was erected on the corner of Rue du Bac and Boulevard St. Germain after the Morse system replaced the Telegraphe Aerien. The Nazis removed it in 1942
along with 200 other statues, which were melted down for the manufacture of shell casings.”
Aeschylus, Agamemnon 40ff:
Chorus: This is now the tenth year since Priam’s mighty adversary, King Menelaos, and with him King Agamemnon, the mighty pair of Atreus’ sons, joined in honor of throne and scepter by Zeus, [45] set forth from this land with an army of a thousand ships manned by Argives, a warrior force to champion their cause. Loud rang the battle-cry they uttered in their rage, just as eagles scream which, [50] in lonely grief for their brood, rowing with the oars of their wings, wheel high over their nests, because they have wasted the toil [ponos] of guarding their nurslings’ nest. [55] But some one of the powers supreme - Apollo perhaps or Pan, or Zeus - hears the shrill wailing scream of the clamorous birds, these sojourners in his realm, and against the transgressors sends an Erinys at last though late. [60] Even so Zeus, whose power is over all, Zeus lord of xenoi, sends the sons of Atreus against Alexander, so that for the sake of a woman with many a husband he may inflict many and wearying struggles - when the knee is pressed in the dust and [65] the spear is splintered in the onset - on Danaans and on Trojans alike. The case now stands where it stands - it moves to fulfillment [telos] at its destined end. Not by offerings burned in secret, not by secret libations, [70] not by tears, shall man soften the stubborn wrath of unsanctified sacrifices.
3a. An Erinys (pl. Erinyes) is a Fury, a superhuman personification of the vengeful anger stored up in those who died. The Erinyes represent a collectivized way of imagining the angry spirits of the dead. When someone dies angry, there is unfinished business to be processed after death.
3b. Who is the nestling? In the immediate context, the metaphor points to Helen.
Aeschylus, Agamemnon 105ff:
Chorus: (strophe 1) I have the authority to proclaim the augury of power [kratos] given on their way to [105] princely men - since my age still breathes Persuasion upon me from the gods, the strength of song - how the twin-throned power [kratos] of the Achaeans, [110] the single-minded captains of Hellas’ youth, with avenging spear and arm against the Teucrian land, was sent off by the inspiriting omen appearing to the kings of the ships - kingly birds, [115] one black, one white of tail, near the palace, on the spear-hand, in a conspicuous place, devouring a hare with offspring unborn caught in the last effort to escape.
Sing the song of woe, the song of woe, but may the good prevail!
(antistrophe 1) Then the wise seer of the host, noticing how the two warlike sons of Atreus were two in temper, recognized the devourers of the hare as the leaders of the army, and [125] thus interpreted the portent and spoke: “In time those who here issue forth shall seize Priam’s town, and fate shall violently ravage before its towered walls all the public store of cattle. [130] Only may no jealous god-sent wrath glower upon the embattled host, the mighty bit forged for Troy’s mouth, and strike it before it reaches its goal! [135] For, in her pity, holy Artemis is angry at the winged hounds of her father, for they sacrifice a wretched timorous thing, together with her young, before she has brought them forth. An abomination to her is the eagles’ feast.”
Sing the song of woe, the song of woe, but may the good prevail!
(epode) [140] “Although, O Lovely One, you are so gracious to the tender whelps of fierce lions, and take delight in the suckling young of every wild creature that roams the field, promise that the issue be brought to pass in accordance with these signs [sumbola], portents [145] auspicious yet filled with ill. And I implore Paean, the healer, that she may not raise adverse gales with long delay to stay the Danaan fleet from putting forth, urging another sacrifice, one that knows no law, unsuited for feast, worker of family strife, dissolving wife’s reverence for husband. For there abides m#nis - [155] terrible, not to be suppressed, a treacherous guardian of the home, a wrath that never forgets and that exacts vengeance for a child.” Such utterances of doom, derived from auguries on the march, together with many blessings, did Kalkhas proclaim to the royal house; and in accord with this,
Sing the song of woe, the song of woe, but may the good prevail!
(strophe 2) [160] Zeus, whoever he may be - if by this name it pleases him to be invoked, by this name I call to him - as I weigh all things in the balance, I have nothing to compare [165] save “Zeus,” if in truth I must cast aside this vain burden from my heart. …But whoever, heartily taking thought beforehand, sings a victory song for Zeus, [175] he shall gain wisdom altogether. Zeus, who sets mortals on the path to understanding, Zeus, who has established this as a fixed law: “Learning comes by suffering [pathos].” But even as the ordeal [ponos], bringing memory of pain, drips over the mind in sleep, [180] so equilibrium [being s"phr"n] comes to men, whether they want it or not. Violent, it seems to me, is the kharis of daimones enthroned upon their awesome seats.
4a When Agamemnon and Menelaos are pictured as birds who are robbed of the nestling in their nest, they are exponents of dik#; when Agamemnon and Menelaos are pictured as birds devouring a pregnant hare, then they are exponents of the opposite of dik#.
And Artemis is angry.
Angry at whom or at what?
So far, she is angry at a timeless metaphor. Notice that she is sympathetic to the young of predatory lions, not only to the young of animals that are preyed upon.
4b. Kalkhas the seer interprets the sign: Troy will be taken.
4c. Compare the sign of the snake eating 9 nestlings in Iliad II: again, we see here the themes of fertility/destruction.
4d. at# is double-edged: destruction of Troy is both dik# and hubris. 4e. The m#nis is a cosmic sanction.
4f. A sumbolon ‘signal’ is a “piece of the puzzle.”
Aeschylus, Agamemnon 960ff:
Clytemnestra: There is the sea - and who shall drain it dry? - producing stain of abundant purple, costly as silver [960] and ever fresh, with which to dye our clothes; and of these our house, through the gods, has ample store; it knows no poverty. Vestments enough I would have devoted to be trampled underfoot had it been so ordered in the seat of oracles [965] when I was devising a ransom for your life [psukh#]. For if the root still lives, leaves come again to the house and spread their over-reaching shade against the scorching dog star Sirius; so, now that you have come to hearth and home, it signals [s#main"] that warmth has come in wintertime; [970] and again, when Zeus makes wine from the bitter grape, then immediately there is coolness in the house when its rightful lord occupies his halls.
5a. The purple fabric is not a “red carpet.” It is not meant to be stepped on. Just the opposite. To step on the purple fabric is to show one’s disregard of the bounties of nature. It is an arrogant act of wasting all the work of weaving and dyeing the fabric.
Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1179ff.:
Cassandra: And now, no more shall my prophecy peer forth from behind a veil like a new- wedded bride; [1180] but it will rush upon me clear as a fresh wind blowing against the sun’s uprising so as to dash against its rays, like a wave, a woe far mightier than mine. No more by riddles [ainigma pl.] will I put knowledge in your phrenes.
6a. Cassandra’s prophetic voice is equating the stoppage of winds with the stoppage of vision - of prophetic vision. As she prepares to die, the wind starts blowing again. The wind starts returning just as the clarity of vision starts returning.
Agamemnon 1309ff.:
This house stinks of blood-dripping slaughter. ... [1310] It is like a breath from a charnel house.
... Yet once more I would like to speak, but not a dirge. I pray to the sun, in the presence of his latest light, that my enemies may at the same time pay to my avengers a bloody penalty for 1325 slaughtering a slave, an easy prey. Alas for human fortune! When prosperous, a mere shadow can overturn it; if misfortune strikes, the dash of a wet sponge blots out the drawing. 1330 And this last I deem far more pitiable.
7a. If Cassandra is referring to her own misfortune, then the blotting out of Cassandra, as if she were a two-dimensional sketch rather than a three-dimensional person, is an act that will call for further vengeance.
Dialogue 16 notes
1. Key word: tim#, pl. timai ‘honor; honor paid to a otherworldly force by way of cult’.
Aeschylus Eumenides 856-869
[Athena is speaking:] And you, if you have a seat of tim# [855] at the house of Erekhtheus, will be honored by a multitude of men and women and you will have more honor than you would ever have from other mortals. So do not set on my land whetstones that hone my peoples’ desire for bloodshed, harmful to young hearts, crazed with passions not of wine; and do not make my people like fighting-cocks so that they kill each other in bold, internecine war. Let there be war from abroad, and without stint, wars that bring a fierce desire for good kleos; but I say there will be no bird-fights in my abode [oikos]. I make it possible for you to choose to do good and to be treated [paskh"] well and with good tim#, to share in this land that is most phil# to the gods.
1a. The Erinyes are being promised a tim# that is analogous to the tim# received by the dead in the cult of the dead (“ancestor worship”) or in the cult of heroes. Those two kinds of cult are morphologically analogous. You can even say that the cult of heroes is a stylized form of the cult of the dead.
1b. In the passage we have just read, the analogy is made explicit with the mention of the hero- cult of Erekhtheus. Erekhtheus was the chief cult-hero of Athens, as we saw already when we read Iliad II 547.
Aeschylus Libation-Bearers 84-99
[Electra is speaking:] You handmaidens who set our house in order, [85] since you are here as my attendants in this rite of supplication, give me your counsel on this: what should I say while I pour these offerings of sorrow? How shall I find gracious words, how shall I entreat my father? Shall I say that I bring these offerings to a philos husband from a phil# wife—from my own mother? I do not have the assurance for that, nor do I know what I should say as I pour this mixed offering onto my father’s tomb. Or shall I speak the words that men are accustomed [nomos] to use: “To those who send these honors may he return benefits” - a gift, indeed, to match their evil?
Or, in silence and dishonor, even as my father perished, shall I pour them out for the earth to drink and then retrace my steps, like one who carries refuse away from a rite, hurling the vessel from me with averted eyes?
2a. Here Electra, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, is attempting to perform a ritual in the context of the cult of the dead. She is performing the ritual in order to give tim# to her father Agamemnon, but she is not sure about the rules of the ritual. She is morally correct but she has not yet learned to be ritually correct. She knows that her mother is not morally correct, because she had actually killed her husband, Electra’s father. So evidently Clytemnestra does not “mean it” when she sends her daughter Electra to perform rituals of the cult of the dead.
2b. By implication, what is happening is a stylized hero-cult in the making.
Aeschylus Libation-Bearers 118-130
[Electra] What should I say? Instruct my inexperience, prescribe the form. [Chorus] - Pray that some daim"n or some mortal may come to them— [Electra] As judge or as avenger, do you mean?
[Chorus] - Say in plain speech, “One who will take life for life.” [Electra] And is it right for me to ask this of the gods?
[Chorus] - How could it not be right to repay an enemy with ills?
[Electra] Supreme herald [k#rux] of the realm above and the realm below, O Hermes of the nether world, come to my aid, summon to me the daimones beneath the earth to hear my prayers, spirits that watch over my father’s house, and Earth herself, who gives birth to all things, and having nurtured them receives their increase in turn. And meanwhile, as I pour these lustral offerings to the dead, I invoke my father.
3a. Electra is starting to “get the hang of it,” as she prays to Hermes, mediator of relationships between the living and the dead. She performs the right kind of pouring of libations and the right kind of wording that goes with the libations.
Aeschylus Libation Bearers 399-404
[Electra] Hear, O Earth, and you powers below with your tim#!
[Chorus] And it is the eternal law [nomos] that drops of blood spilled on the ground demand yet more blood. Murder cries out on the Fury [Erinys], which from those killed before brings one at#
in the wake of another at#.
4a. Again we see the Erinys as the personification of the anger stored up by someone who died angry. The anger is “unfinished business” that has to get finished somehow. But the finishing never seems to happen: it is a chain of evil: ‘one at# in the wake of another at#’.
Aeschylus Libation Bearers 575-578
[Orestes is speaking:] I will skewer him with my swift sword and lay him dead. The fury [Erinys] that has no fill of slaughter shall, for her third and crowning drink, drink unmixed blood!
5a. The killing of Aegisthus by Orestes is being imagined in advance. The shedding of the blood of Aegisthus is verbalized as a libation of blood, without any other liquid of libation mixed in. In the cult of the dead, the libation would be the a libation of the blood of a sacrificial animal. Here the blood is that of Aegisthus himself.
Aeschylus Eumenides 696-710
[Athena is speaking] I advise my citizens not to support and respect anarchy or tyrannical oppression, and not to drive all fear out of the city. For who among mortal men, if he fears nothing, behaves with dik#? [700] If you with dik# fear reverence, you will have a defense for your land and the salvation [s"t#ria] of your polis, such as none of mankind has, either among the Scythians or in Pelops’ realm. I establish this tribunal, and it will be untouched by desire for profit [kerdos], worthy of reverence, quick to anger, a guard of the land, awake on behalf of those who sleep. I have given you advice [par-ainesis], my citizens, at length about the future; but now you must rise, take a ballot, and make a decision [diagn"sis] about the case [dik#] under the sacred obligation of your oath. The word has been spoken.
6a. Athena, goddess of synthesis, has just made possible the first vote of the first jury in the first
trial by jury. This moment inaugurates, in terms of the myth created by the drama, the beginning of the polis - which is imagined as the beginning of civilization as defined by the polis. Remember the formulation of Aristotle: a human being reaches his full potential as an organism of the polis.
Aeschylus Eumenides 794-807, 824-836
Be persuaded by me not to bear the decision with heavy grief. [795] For you are not defeated; the trial [dik#] resulted in an equal vote, which is in truth [al#theia] no blight on your tim#, since clear testimony from Zeus was available, and the one who spoke the oracle gave evidence proving that Orestes should not suffer harm, despite his actions. Do not be angry, do not hurl your heavy rage on this land, do not make the land fruitless, letting loose your heart’s poison with its fierce sharpness that eats away the seeds. For I do promise you with all dik# that you shall have sanctuaries and sacred hollows in this land of dik#, where you will sit on bright thrones at your hearths, worshipped with tim# by the citizens here.
…
You are not without tim#, goddesses, so do not be moved by your excessive rage [825] to make the land cursed for mortals. I also rely on Zeus - what need is there to mention that? - and I alone of the gods know the keys to the house where his thunderbolt is kept safe. But there is no need of it. So be obedient to me and do not make empty threats against the land; do not threaten that all things bearing fruit will not prosper. Calm the dark waves of your bitter passion, now that you are honored with reverence and abide [oike"] together with me; when you have the first-fruits of this great land as burnt sacrifices on behalf of children and of conjugal rites [telos pl.], you will approve [ep-aine"] my words forever.
7a. Athena, goddess of synthesis, has synthesized the anger of the Erinyes into the social force that makes it possible to achieve justice under the rule of law. The angry spirits of the Erinyes, analogous to the spirits of cult heroes when they are angry at the unjust, are being accommodated under the umbrella of dik# ‘justice’ as established in the polis. The imagery of fertility and prosperity, as conferred by the cult hero upon the just, is here applied to the social institution of trial by jury, which replaces the “tribal” and “pre-polis” system of the vendetta.
Aeschylus Eumenides 903-915
Sing hymns that are not about evil victory, but hymns of the land and the waters of the sea [pontos] [905] and the heavens; and sing that the gusts of wind will blow over this land in the sun, and that the fruit of the earth and offspring of the beasts of the field will flourish abundantly for my citizens and will not fail in the course of time, and that there will be the salvation [s"t#ria] of human seed. May you be ready to weed out those who do not worship well; for I, like a gardener, cherish the race [genos] of these dikaioi people, exempt as it is from sorrow [penthos]. These are your duties. I will not stand for it if this polis, which is victorious in well-known martial contests [ag"nes], is not honored among mortals.
8a. In the image of Athena the ‘gardener’, the synthesis that is Athens, the notionally perfect society, becomes complete. This imagery is derived directly from the symbolic world of hero cult. As the goddess of synthesis, she teaches Athenians a hymn to synthesis. It is really a hymn to herself.
Dialogue 17: on Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus. The powers of the cult-hero in death.
Key word: kol"nos is a prominent rock in a local landscape, ‘shining’ or ‘white’ from afar. By metonymy, it can mean the whole landscape, as in the case of the grove that is entered by the wretch Oedipus. By further metonymy, Colonus / Kol"nos, a district of Athens, was named after this prominent landmark.
review Philostratus, On Heroes 9.1-3 Listen to such stories now, my guest [xenos]. Protesilaos does not lie buried at Troy but here on the Chersonesus. This large kol"nos here on the left no doubt contains him. The nymphs created these elms around the kol"nos, and they made, I suppose, the following decree concerning these trees: “Those branches turned toward Ilion will blossom early and will then immediately shed their leaves and perish before their season (this was indeed the misfortune of Protesilaos), but a tree on the other side will live and prosper.” All the trees that were not set round the grave, such as these in the grove, have strength in all their branches and flourish according to their particular nature.
A1. Scenarios for immortalization (See Best of the Achaeans Ch.10@20-@50, especially @41 and @50n2):
white rock, jumping off from e.g. Ino
engulfment by earth e.g. Amphiaraos
thunderbolt, being struck by e.g. Herakles
thuella, being spirited away by e.g. Phaethon, Hesiod Theogony 986-991;
nostos e.g. Memnon to Land of Aithiopes
A2. For background on hero cults, it is useful to consider these references of Herodotus (the underlines indicate specially important cases):
Erekhtheus the Autochthon of Athens; Aiakidai ; Adrastos; Artachaees; Astrabakos; Herakles; Hesiod and Homer; Kleobis and Biton; Kyrnos; Lycurgus as Lawgiver; Miltiades; Onesilaos; Orestes; Philippos; Phylakos and Autonoos; Protesilaos; Solon as Lawgiver; Talthybios; Tellos; Timesios.
A3. Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus: Kol!nos as arg#ta ‘shining’ at 670, hippot#n at 59, euhippou kh"ras 668-669; Thorikios petros 1595, where Oedipus sits down for the last time, to be purified; the entire temenos, e.g. 136, is sacred to
Poseidon, 55;
Demeter, 1600, eukhloou;
Erinues, 39ff; = Eumenides at 42, 86
A4. Areion is son of Poseidon and Demeter Erinus: Pausanias 8.25.5 A5. Cf. Skironites, begotten by Poseidon at Kolonos: see Sourcebook.
A6. Cf. the association of Xanthos the god-horse with the Erinus at Iliad XIX 408ff.
Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus 668ff [the speaker of the chorus is speaking to Oedipus, addressing him as a xenos]
Xenos, in this land of fine horses you have come to earth’s fairest home, the shining Colonus [Kol"nos] {670} Here the nightingale, a constant guest, trills her clear note under the trees of green glades, dwelling amid the wine-dark ivy {675} and the god’s inviolate foliage, rich in
berries and fruit, unvisited by sun, unvexed by the wind of any storm. Here the reveller Dionysus ever walks the ground, {680} companion of the nymphs that nursed him. And, fed on heavenly dew, the narcissus blooms day by day with its fair clusters; it is the ancient garland of the Great Goddesses. {685} And the crocus blooms with a golden gleam. Nor do the ever-flowing springs diminish, from which the waters of Cephisus wander, and each day with pure {690} current it moves over the plains of the land’s swelling bosom, giving fertility. Nor have the khoroi of the Muses shunned this place, nor Aphrodite of the golden rein. And there is a thing such as I have not heard of on Asian ground, {695} nor as ever yet born in the great Dorian isle of Pelops: a plant unconquered, self-renewing, causing terror to destroying enemies. {700} It greatly flourishes in this land—the gray-leafed olive, nurturer of children. Youth can not harm it by the ravages of his hand, nor can any who lives with old age. For the sleepless eye {705} of Zeus Morios [guard of the sacred olive trees], watches over it, and gray-eyed Athena. And I have another praise [ainos] to tell for this polis our mother, {710} the gift of a great daim"n, a glory most great: the might of horses, the might of colts, and the might of the sea. For you, son of Cronus, lord Poseidon, have set her on the throne of this pride, {715} by establishing first in our roads the bit that cures the rage of horses. And the shapely oar, well-fitted for the sea, in flying past the land leaps to follow the hundred-footed Nereids.
B1. The “Great Goddesses” are the Erinyes. B2. Note their garlands.
Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus 1638ff: Immediately Oedipus felt for his children with blind hands, and said: {1640} “Children, you must bear up nobly in your phrenes and depart from this place; do not consider it right [dikaion] to look upon what is not themis, or to hear such speech as you may not hear. Go in haste; let only Theseus be entitled to remain to learn of those things that are done [dra"].” 1645 So he spoke, and every one of us listened; with streaming tears and mourning we followed the maidens away. But when we had gone off, very soon we looked back and saw that Oedipus was nowhere any more and our lord [= Theseus] was alone, {1650} holding his hand in front of his face to screen his eyes, as if he had seen some terrifying sight, one that no one could endure to behold. And then after a short time, {1655} we saw him adore together the earth and Olympus of the gods in the same prayer. But by what fate Oedipus perished, no man can tell, except Theseus alone. It was no fiery thunderbolt of the god that removed him, {1660} nor any rising of a gust of wind [thuella] from the pontos; it was either an escort from the gods, or else the dark world of the dead gaped open, with good intention [noos], to receive him. The man passed away without lamentation or sickness or suffering, and beyond all mortal men he was wondrous.
C1. We see here references to five different ways of immortalization. Two of the five ways are only implicit. One is the nostos - which applies not so much to Oedipus as to Sophocles himself. The other is the white rock, which is really the place itself. The idea of jumping off the white rock
that is Kol!nos is only a notional jump - diving into the notional depths below.
C2. The word dra" means ‘do’ or ‘perform ritual, sacrifice’. Corresponding to dra", which is “active,” there is paskh" ‘have things done to one, suffer’. A derivative of dra" is the noun drama. A derivative of paskh" is the noun pathos ‘suffering, experience, passion; emotion’. The “passion” that is suffered by a hero in myth corresponds to the “emotion” that is experienced by an everyday person in ritual [drama].
C3. About not seeing and not saying, not visualizing and not verbalizing: compare mu" ‘I have my mouth closed’ or ‘I have my eyes closed’; must#s ‘he who is initiated’; must#rion ‘secret of initiation’.
C4. A thunderbolt signals that it is time to go: OC 1460f, 1606f, cf. 1471 C5. The way it happened, cannot be seen or said: OC 1641ff, cf. 1761ff. C6. Only Theseus is to witness the dr"mena, 1644; cf. Herodotus 5.67.5 C7. Compare mu" ‘I have my mouth closed’ or ‘I have my eyes closed’
C8. must#s ‘he who is initiated’; must#rion ‘secret of initiation’. See Pindar’s Homer Ch.1 p. 31 (“In complex societies...”) up to p. 33 (“...in the context of ritual and myth.”).
C9. mysterium tremendum OC 1623ff C10. secret place OC 1545f
C11. On the expression ‘the dark world of the dead gaped open, with good intention [noos], to receive him’: compare the name Eumenides = those with good intention.
Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus 1586ff: In that you touch upon what is indeed worthy of wonder. How he departed from here, you yourself must know since you were here: with no one of his philoi as guide, but rather with himself leading the way for us all. {1590} When he had come to the Descending Way, which is bound by steps of bronze to earth’s deep roots, he paused at one of the many branching paths near the hollow crater in the rock, where the faithful covenant of Theseus and Peirithoos has its memorial. {1595} He stood midway between that basin and the Thorikios Rock, and between the hollow pear-tree and the marble tomb; then he sat down and loosened his filthy clothing. And then he called his daughters, and bade them bring water from some flowing source, so that he might wash and make a drink-offering. {1600} They went to the hill which was in view, the hill of Demeter of the tender plants and in a short time brought what
their father had commanded. Then they washed him and dressed him, as is the custom [nomos]. But when all his desire was fulfilled, {1605} and nothing that he required was still undone, then Zeus of the Underworld sent forth his thunder, and the maidens shuddered as they heard. They fell weeping at their father’s knees, and did not cease from beating their breast, and from wailing loud. ...{1620} In this way, clinging close to one another, the father and his daughters sobbed and wept. But when they came to the end [telos] of their crying, and the sound of wailing went forth no more, there was a silence; suddenly a voice called aloud to him, so that everyone {1625} felt the hair on their heads stand up from the sudden terror. The god called him again and again: “Oedipus! You, over there, Oedipus! Why do you delay our going? Too long you have been lingering.” And when he perceived that he was called by the god, {1630} he asked that lord Theseus should come to him; and when he did, he said: “Philos, give me the sworn pledge of your right hand for my children; and you, my daughters, for him. Give your solemn word [kat- aine"] never to betray them by your own free will, but always to bring to a telos whatever is in your phrenes for their benefit.”
D1. About the ‘Descending Way’... At this sacred place in Colonus, Theseus and Peirithoos journeyed down to the Underworld. Both were immobilized by sitting on the ‘Throne of Lethe’. Herakles eventually rescued Theseus but, in some versions, Peirithoos was stuck there permanently.
D2. About ‘near the hollow crater’... The Greek word krat#r means ‘mixing-bowl’ and, by extension, ‘crater’. Oedipus is ‘poured out’ into the crater. He is an auto-libation.
D3. Thorikios means ‘Leaping Rock’; it is apparently derived from thoros ‘leaping; semen’.
D4. About ‘Demeter of the tender plants’... The epithet eukhloos ‘of the tender plants’ is related to khlo# ‘growth of tender plants’, which is related to the epithet of Demeter, Khlo# = Chloe. This epithet is also a name, as in the ancient erotic novel Daphnis and Chloe.
D5. About ‘then they washed him’... This procedure is essential for the cult of the dead. Wait till you see what happens to Socrates (when we read Plato).
Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus 576ff: Oedipus says, essentially, that he will donate his corpse (the Thebans only want it on the edges of their community, 399-400).
Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus 621-623 (Oedipus will punish the unjust = the Thebans): And then my sleeping and long-hidden corpse,
cold in the earth, will drink hot blood of theirs,
if Zeus endures if his son’s word is true.
F1. Cf. Theognis lines 337ff
F2. Consider those heroes in Herodotus whose maleficence toward the enemy is emphasized over their beneficence toward their own.
Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus 1656-1662 (adapted from the version of Robert Fitzgerald) But the way in which he [Oedipus] died
no one of the mortals could reveal except Theseus.
No fire-bearing thunderbolt of the god finished him off.
Nor did any gust from the sea [pontia thuella], set in motion at that time. But it was either a messenger from the gods, or else the underworld opened in love the unlit door of earth.
Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus 1679-1682 (adapted from the version of Robert Fitzgerald) It was not war
nor the deep sea that overtook him, but something invisible and strange caught him up - or down -
into a space unseen
H1. Sophocles born at Colonus, described at OC 668ff (= focus passage B) H2. This tribute to Sophocles’ “home town” is, in a way, his own nostos!!!
Session 18: on Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannos
Key word: miasma ‘pollution, miasma’.
Plato Republic 9.571c-d [Socrates talks about epithumiai [desires] and h#donai [pleasures] in sleep . . .]:
“When one part of the psukh# sleeps - I mean the part that is logistikon [rational] and h#meron [domesticated] and arkhon [in control] of the other part, which is th#ri"des [beast-like] and agrion [savage] - then this other part, which is glutted with sita [grain] or meth# [intoxicants], skirt!i [prances, bolts] and seeks to push aside sleep and to glut its own #thos [pl.]. When it is like this, it dares to do everything, released as it is from all sense of aiskhun# [shame] and phron#sis [thinking]. It does not at all shrink back from attempting to lay hands on his mother or on any other human or god or beast, and to commit whatever polluting [= miasma-making] murder, or to eat whatever food. In a word, there is nothing in the realm of noos [in Plato’s time pronounced nous] and shame that it will not do.”
A1. miaiphonein = ‘to commit polluting [= miasma-making] murder’: the wording suggests the taboo topic of father-killing.
A2. ‘to eat whatever food’ . . . the wording suggests the taboo topic of cannibalism.
A3. Note the contrast in Republic 9.571d-e with the other part of psukh# in sleep, where the logistikon is what is awake and not the opposite. So we see here a contrast between two different kinds of subconscious that can be “awake” while we sleep.
The basic idea: inside the unconscious of every citizen is a sleeping tyrant.
Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannos 91-109
{Creon} If you want to hear in the presence of these people, I am ready to speak: otherwise we can go inside.
{Oedipus} Speak to all. The sorrow [penthos] that I bear for these is more than for my own life [psukh#].
{Creon}{95} I will tell you what I heard form the god. Phoebus our lord clearly bids us to drive out the defilement [miasma], which he said was harbored in this land, and not to nourish it so that
it cannot be healed.
{Oedipus} With what sort of purification? What is the manner of the misfortune?
{Creon}{100} By banishing the man, or by paying back bloodshed with bloodshed, since it is this blood which brings the tempest on our polis.
{Oedipus} And who is the man whose fate he thus reveals?
{Creon} Laios, my lord, was leader of our land before you directed [ = euthun" ‘direct’ literally means ‘make straight’] this polis.
{Oedipus}{105} I know it well - by hearsay, for I never saw him.
{Creon} He was slain, and the god now bids us to take vengeance on his murderers, whoever they are.
{Oedipus} Where on earth are they? Where shall the dim track of this old guilt [aitia] be found?
B1. Antidote to miasma is katharsis = catharsis = ‘purification’
Aristotle Poetics 1449b24-28 [his definition of catharsis = katharsis]:
“Tragedy is the mimesis of a serious and complete action that has magnitude, with seasoned speech . . . . The mimesis is done by those who perform [dra"] instead of through narrative, bringing about through pity and terror the purification [katharsis] of such emotions [pathos pl.].”
C1. The noun of the verb dra" is drama.
C2. pathos means emotion for the person who attends the Theater, but it means larger-than-life suffering for the larger-than-life hero
Aristotle Rhetoric 1371a31-b10 [on mim#sis = re-enactment; imitation; representation]: Both understanding and wonder are, for the most part, pleasant. In wonder there is the desire to
understand . . . . Since both understanding and wonder are pleasant, it is necessary that a work of mim#sis also be pleasant, like painting, sculpture, poetry, and everything that is well represented, even if the thing represented is not in itself pleasant. For it is not there that the pleasure lies, but in
the inference “This is that.” What happens as a result is that we understand something.
D1. This drama is all about hamartia. Sometimes translated as “flaw” - but we must think of the “flaw” in terms of plot, not only character.
Aeschylus Libation Bearers 514-522 [Orestes is speaking about his mother]:
“But it is not off the track to inquire {515} from what motive she came to send her libations, seeking too late to make amends [tim#] for an irremediable experience [pathos]. They would be a sorry return [kharis] to send to the dead who have no phrenes: I cannot guess what they mean. The gifts are too paltry for her offense [hamartia]. {520} For though a man may pour out all he has in atonement for one deed of blood, it is wasted effort. So the saying goes. If indeed you know, tell me: I wish to learn.”
E1. Compare also the use of the word at#.
E2. Speaking of things going wrong . . . Here is where I show the clip from The Night of the Iguana.
Note that the character comes apart while his discourse comes apart. “A City without Walls.”
This clip is taken from The Night of the Iguana, a film based on a play by Tennessee Williams. Richard Burton plays the rôle of a tormented Episcopalian priest. The scene you are about to see takes place at the very beginning of the film, before the title or the names of the actors are indicated. Shannon, the priest, is about to deliver his Sunday sermon. He chooses as his topic a quotation from the Book of Proverbs, chapter 25, verse 28 (King James Version):
“He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down, and without walls.” Before he gets to announce his quotation, Shannon gets ready for his sermon by praying. He
turns away from his listeners and toward the front of the church, toward God, as it were. He
looks straight into the camera as he prays. You might say that we get a “God’s-eye-view” of his prayer. The prayer starts:
“May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be always pleasing to Thee, my Lord and my Redeemer!”
Shannon’s gaze toward his God seems unswerving - or is it? Shannon turns back toward the congregation and begins his sermon.
His prayer has prepared him (has it not?) for meshing what he thinks on the inside (“meditations”) and what he feels on the inside (“of my heart”) with what he speaks on the outside. He is ready to start with the quotation from Proverbs. So he goes ahead and says it:
“He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down, and without walls.” So far, so good . . .
Now he must build on his “thesis sentence,” as we like to call it in expository writing. He launches into the rest of the paragraph . . .
“And as we think about these words, we may each ask ourselves: how often do we stray from the straight and narrow?”
That leads him to think about human weakness and frailty. How weak is man! He tries to loop back to the point where he started, “how often do we stray from the straight and narrow?”
Suddenly, you can tell that his eye has become unsteady: you can tell that his formerly straight gaze has become shaken, has begun to stray, to swerve. His unsteady eye is catching the hostile looks that are coming at him from the congregation.
The unsteadiness of the eye translates into an unsteadiness of speech. His speech now becomes shaken, has begun to stray, to swerve.
He tries to repeat “how often do we stray from the straight and narrow?” But he can't. He gets stuck between “how often do we” and “stray.”
He tries again, and he gets stuck again. “How often do we, how often do we, . . .”
Where he should have continued with the following word, “stray,” he loses it, and he starts to bellow:
“All right!” There follows a stream of enraged bellowing.
His speech breaks down. He breaks down on the outside. He breaks down on the inside.
He has lost his rule, his control, over his own spirit. Shannon, the leader of his congregation, breaks down - and the congregation breaks up. The city that is broken down, without walls . . .
That’s it. No more sermon. He is now raving mad. His voice gets louder and louder as his syntax gets more and more disjointed. The congregation breaks out in murmurs. The congregation breaks up. It starts to scatter. Like some demon, he pursues them as they spill out of the church, into the rain.
Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannos 1283-1285 [messenger is speaking]:
“But now on this day there is lamentation, at#, death, disgrace; of all the evils {1285} that can be named, not one is missing.”
F1. Freud’s early notion of Nachträglichkeit (double meaning in German: ‘supplement’ or ‘resentment’, ‘grudge’ - compare also the English expression “unfinished business”), where some unformulated early experience in life becomes also a fulfillment, via “repetition,” at some later stage in life. This notion helps us contemplate the emotional “unfinished business” that each member of the audience of tragedy brings into State Theater.
Aristotle Politics 1342a8-15 [on catharsis = katharsis]:
We see from sacred songs that whenever those who are in a state of enthousiasmos [= being entheos ‘possessed’ = ‘having a theos (god) inside] use songs that stir up the psukh#, they are put into a condition as if they had undergone a medical treatment and katharsis. People liable to pity or terror must experience the same thing - and other generally emotional [path#tikoi] people, as much as is appropriate for each. All of them attain some katharsis and are pleasantly relieved.
G1. Earlier, we saw that mim#sis gives pleasure. Now we see the concept of pleasant relief. G2. Sophocles OT 393: reference to the ainigma of the Sphinx; message of ainigma: hobbling
tyrant
G3. On the meaning of Oidipous, cf. Hesiod WD 497 (starving man), 524 (the “boneless one”), 533 (the 3-legged one)
G4. OT 221: sumbolon, here and elsewhere: the ‘coming together’ of paths of interpretation
Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannos 14-57
Oedipus, ruler of my land, you see the age of those who sit {15} on your altars: some, nestlings still too tender for flight; others, bowed with age, priests of Zeus like me; and some, these here, the chosen youth. The rest of the folk sit {20} with wreathed branches in the agora, and before the twin temples of Athena, and where Ismenus gives answer by fire. The polis, as you yourself see, is now sorely buffeted, and can no longer lift her head from beneath the angry waves of death. {25} A blight has befallen the fruitful blossoms of the land, the herds among the pastures, the barren pangs of women. And the flaming god, a most hateful plague, has swooped upon us,
and ravages the polis; he lays waste to the house of Cadmus, but enriches Hades with {30} groans and tears. It is not because we rank you with the gods that I and these children are suppliants at your hearth, but because we deem you the first among men in life’s common chances and in dealings with the daimones. {35} Coming to the city of the Cadmeans, you freed us of the tax that we rendered to the hard songstress [= by solving the riddle of the Sphinx] and when you knew no more than anyone else, nor had you been taught, but rather by the assistance of a god, as the story goes, you uplifted our life. {40} Now, Oedipus, most powerful, we, your suppliants, beseech you to find some succor for us, whether you hear it from some divine omen, or learn of it from some mortal. For I see that the outcome of the counsels of experienced men
{45} most often have effect. Come, best [aristos] among mortals, resurrect our polis! Come, take care, since now this land gives you kleos as its savior [s"t#r] for your former zeal. Let it not be our memory of your reign that {50} we were first set up straight and then cast down; resurrect this polis so that it falls no more! With good omen you provided us that past happiness; show yourself the same now too, since if you are to rule this land just as you do now, {55} it is better to be lord of men than of a wasteland. Neither tower nor ship is anything, if it is empty and no men dwell within.
H1. About the underlined word ‘resurrect’... The verb anortho" means either ‘to cause to stand up straight, to make erect’ or, mystically, ‘resurrect’.
H2. About the underlined wording ‘set up straight’... The idiom is es orthon ‘into a straight position’
H3. About the second occurrence of the underline word ‘resurrect’: note that, again, the verb is
anortho".
H4. At line 16 . . . your altars; H5. At lines 24f . . . ship of state;
H6. At lines 25f, phthi-, vegetal and human; contrast fertility and kingship in Od. xix 109-114;
H7. At line 873, hubris “breeds” [phuteuei] the turannos (to be more precise: the word means ‘vegetally generates’; cf. Theognis line 39 and line 1081);
H8. At line 46 best of men, an-ortho" [cause to stand up straight or resurrect] the polis!!! again at line 51;
H9. At line 48, Oedipus as savior [s"t#r]; lines 149f, Apollo as savior [s"t#r];
H10. At lines 376-377, god-hero antagonism, via Teiresias as representative of Apollo; cf. line 439, the ainigma of Teiresias; cf. line 438: this day will phuteuein you;
H11. At line 439 = ainigma; cf. 371, the “blindness” passage
Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannos 58-77
My piteous children, I know quite well the desires with which you have come; I know well that you {60} all are sick, and though you are sick I know well that there is not one of you who is as sick as I. Your pain comes on each of you for himself alone, and for no other, but my psukh# groans at once for the polis, for myself, and for you. {65} You are not awakening me from sleep; no, be sure that I have wept many tears, gone many ways in the wanderings of my thought. I have made use of the only remedy which I could find after close consideration: I sent my wife’s brother {70} Creon, Menoikeus’ son, to Apollo’s Pythian residence in order to learn what we might do or say to protect this polis. And now, when the lapse of days is reckoned, I’m troubled about what he is doing, for he tarries oddly {75} beyond the fitting length of time. But when he arrives, I will be kakos if do not perform all that the god reveals.
I1. Same idea at 93-94;
I2. At line 68, iasis ‘cure’, send Kreon to Oracle; cf. the meaning of pharamakos ‘scapegoat’; I3. At line 97, miasma = defilement = pollution;
I4. At line 132, eg" phan" = I will cast light; cf. the meaning of <<Phoibos>> Apollo; I5. At line 895, why should I be part of the khoros?
I6. At line 1083, I am the product of the seasons, the months are my brothers; cf. 438: this day will phuteuein you;
I7. At line 439 = ainigma;
I8. At lines 1403ff, scrambled identity: (1) the wife is the mother, (2) the sons are the brothers who will one day kill each other, (3) the prime enemy is the father;
Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannos 216-226
You pray. And in answer to your prayer, if you will give a loyal reception to my words [epos pl.], and minister to your own disease, you may hope to find succor and relief from woes. These words I will speak publicly, as one who was a stranger [xenos] to the report, {220} a stranger to the deed. I would not go far on the trail if I were tracing it alone, without a clue [sumbolon]. But as it is - since it was only after the event that I was counted a Theban among Thebans - to you, Cadmeans all, I do thus proclaim: Whoever of you knows by whom Laios son of Labdakos
{225} was slain, I bid him to indicate [s#main"] all to me.
Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannos 1266-1285
And when the hapless woman was stretched out on the ground, then the sequel was horrible to see: for he tore from her raiment the golden brooches with which she had decorated herself,
{1270} and lifting them struck his own eyeballs, uttering words like these: “No longer will you behold such evils as I was suffering [paskh"] and performing! Long enough have you looked on those whom you ought never to have seen, having failed in the knowledge of those whom I yearned to know - henceforth you shall be dark!” {1275} With such a dire refrain, he struck his eyes with raised hand not once but often. At each blow the bloody eye-balls bedewed his beard, and did not send forth sluggish drops of gore, but all at once a dark shower of blood came down like hail. {1280} These mingled evils have broken forth upon the heads of them both, not of one alone, on husband and wife together. Their old prosperity [olbos] was once true prosperity, and justly [dikaia] so. But now on this day there is lamentation, at#, death, disgrace; of all the evils
{1285} that can be named, not one is missing.
Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannos 1327-1335
{Chorus} Man of dread deeds, how could you extinguish [marain"] your vision in this way? Who among the daimones urged you on?
{Oedipus} It was Apollo, philoi, Apollo {1330} who gave telos to these evil, evil sufferings [pathos pl.] of mine. But the hand that struck my eyes was none other than my own, wretched that I am! {1335} Why was I to see, when sight showed me nothing sweet?
L1. At line 1328, extinguish his eyes = make the light of his eyes go out by itself.
L2. Compare verse 132, eg" phan" = I will cast light; cf. the meaning of <<Phoibos>> (Phoebus) Apollo.
Notes for Session 19
The hero as mirror of men’s and women’s experiences.
Key word: telos ‘coming full circle, rounding out, fulfillment, completion, ending, end; successfully passing through an ordeal; ritual, rite’. To be linked with another key word, athlos (aethlos) ‘contest, ordeal; competition’; derivative word: athl#t#s ‘athlete’; related concepts are ag"n ‘contest, ordeal; competition’ and ponos ‘pain’ [sharp, shooting pain] and kamatos
‘pain’ [dull, aching pain].
LINK to Pindar’s Homer Ch.5 p. 136 (“Having contemplated...) up to p. 140n28.
A1. Focus passage “A” illustrates the ritual mentality of the hunter:
Euripides Hippolytus 73-87: For you, goddess, I bring this woven garland [stephanos] culled from a virgin meadow, where it is not fit for the shepherd to pasture his flocks, nor has iron yet come there, but unspoiled still in springtime the bees fly through this meadow. Aid"s tends it with pure river water, and those who by their nature always use moderation [s"phrosun#] in all things, instead of having learned it, they can pick flowers, but it is not lawful [themis] for the kakos. Phil# mistress, for your golden locks accept this headband from my reverent hand. I alone among mortals have this privilege: I keep company with you and make conversation, hearing your voice although not seeing your face. So let it be that I reach the telos of my life just as I began it.
A2. Hippolytus is making a garland for Artemis.
A3. Experiences that are ingredients for coming of age, initiation, rite of passage:
men’s experiences: song and dance, marriage; athletics; hunting, war
women’s experiences: song and dance, marriage; athletics [mostly running]; menstruation, childbirth
A5. The underlinings indicate asymmetry from a modern point of view but symmetry from an ancient point of view.
B1. A perfect illustration is a passage we have seen before: it is the narrative about the athletes Kleobis and Biton, and how they reached the perfect telos...
Herodotus 1.31.1-5: When Solon had provoked him by saying that the affairs of Tellos were so olbios, Croesus asked who he thought was next, fully expecting to win second prize. Solon answered, “Kleobis and Biton.” They were Argive by birth, they had enough to live on, and on top of this they had great bodily strength. Both were prize-winning athletes [athlophoroi], and this story is told about them: There was a festival of Hera in Argos, and their mother absolutely had to be conveyed to the sacred precinct by a team of oxen. But their oxen had not come back from the fields in time [h"ra], so the youths took the yoke upon their own shoulders under constraint of time [h"ra]. They drew the wagon, with their mother riding atop it, traveling 45 stadia until they arrived at the sacred precinct. When they had done this and had been seen by the entire gathering, their lives came to the best fulfillment [ariston telos], and in their case the god made clear that for human beings it is better to be dead than to live. The Argive men stood around the youths and congratulated them on their strength; the Argive women congratulated their mother for having such children. She was overjoyed at the feat and at the praise, so she stood before the image and prayed that the goddess might grant the best thing for humanity to her children Kleobis and Biton, who had given great tim# to the goddess. After this prayer they sacrificed and feasted. The youths then lay down in the sacred precinct and went to sleep, and they never got up again; they remained in the pose that they had assumed in reaching their telos. The Argives made and dedicated at Delphi statues of them, since they were aristoi.
B2. To repeat, is all a matter of ritual, ordeal = athlos or ag"n (this will be the key word for the dialogue on Euripides’ Bacchae) or ponos or kamatos
Now, back to Euripides Hippolytus. Ritual background: there are two crucial rites of passage to consider: from childhood to adolescence, from adolescence to adulthood
In the case of adulthood: here is a stage of sexuality, reproduction
In the case of pre-adulthood: there are still restrictions on these activities.
There are two goddesses mainly involved: Artemis / Aphrodite. Both have the title Dios thugat#r
‘daughter of Zeus’.
There is a complementarity of these goddesses on the level of ritual, but a rivalry on the level of myth.
You can see the complementary in rituals of hunting: Artemis must be present and Aphrodite must be absent (in other words, hunting and sex don’t mix).
For ordinary people in the world of ritual: there is a successful transition from Artemis to Aphrodite
For a hero like Hippolytus in the world of myth, however, there is no such successful transition. Euripides is interested in aetiology (that is, where myth “explains” ritual).
Note the beginning of the Hippolytus. At line 32, there is a reference to a sacred space in Athens where Aphrodit# epi hippolut"i ‘Our Lady of Horses Unbridled’ is worshipped; this name contains the imagery of chariot-driving.
All this is relevant to the myth of Hippolytus. The basic narrative is this... Theseus has two fathers, Poseidon (god) and Aigeus (man); he has a liaison with an Amazon called Antiope alias Hippolyte; their bastard son is Hippolytus.
Amazons are women in myth who do what men do in ritual: they live out in myth what men experience in the ritualized activities of war, athletics, hunting, song and dance. So too does Hippolytus live out these same experiences in myth.
Meanwhile, Theseus marries Phaidra (‘Moonglow’)
The unrequited love of Phaidra for Hippolytus leads to the death of both
It is the stuff of a love song, or we might call it ballad. But a love song is also a song of initiation, especially female initiation (this was demonstrated by Vladimir Propp in his research on female initiation-rituals surviving in Russia).
In the city of Trozen, love songs were sung and danced by girls in a coming-of-age ritual. The next passage explicitly describes this ritual. This description takes the form of a prophecy made by the goddess Artemis in response to the death of Hippolytus. Note the key words (a) tim# (b) ai"n (c) penthos. Artemis says to the dying Hippolytus:
Euripides Hippolytus 1423-1430: To you, poor sufferer, in recompense for these miseries, I will grant the greatest timai in the polis of Trozen: unwed girls before marriage will cut off their hair for you, and through the length of time [ai"n] you will harvest the sorrows [penthos pl.] of their tears. It will be the care of the virgin girls to make songs about you, and so Phaedra’s love for you will not fade away unremembered and remain a secret.
LINK... On tim# as ‘honor’ conferred by worship in cult, see Best of the Achaeans Ch.7@1.
The young girls are dying to their happy moments of plaiting their hair with garlands when they cut of their hair. This ritual death is parallel to the mythical death of Hippolytus.
D1. The ritual song of initiation comes to life in the first choral song (notice how ballad-like this song seems to us!), featuring the key word harmonia...
Euripides Hippolytus 121-175: There is a rock which is said to drip water from the stream of Okeanos, sending forth a fixed stream for dipping water-jars. It was there that my friend [phil#] was washing purple robes in the river’s stream and spreading them upon the back of a warm sunny rock. From there the rumor first came to me of my mistress, how wasting away on her sickbed she keeps herself within the house, and a thin veil shadows her blond head. This is the third day, I hear, that her lips have not touched food, and she keeps her body pure from the grain of Demeter, eager to hide her sorrow [penthos] and to put into the cheerless harbor of death. Dear Phaedra, are you possessed either by Pan or Hekate, or do you wander because of the devoted Korybantes or the mountain mother? Have you committed an error offending Artemis of Diktynna, with her wild beasts, and are wasting for neglect of her unoffered sacrifices? For she ranges through the sea, as well as over the islands of the sea, upon the watery eddies of the brine. Or your husband, the well-born ruler of the sons of Erekhtheus, does someone in the palace cherish him in a union hidden from your bed? Or has someone sailing from Crete reached the harbor most welcome to sailors, bringing a report to the queen, and in distress over her sufferings [pathos pl.] her psukh# is tied down to her bed? In women’s difficult tuning [harmonia], a bad, wretched sort of helplessness [am#khania] often makes its abode, arising both from birth pains and irrationality. This breeze once shot through my womb, but I called upon the heavenly helper in labor, the guardian of the arrows, Artemis, and she, much envied, always comes to me with the help of the gods. But look here, the aged Nurse before the palace doors is bringing her from the house, though on her brow the gloomy cloud deepens. My psukh# longs to know what it is, and why the queen, with changed complexion, wastes away.
D2. Note the use of phil#: it is a sign of the principle of choral solidarity. The chorus identifies with Phaedra’s ordeal.
D3. When the chorus says “My psukh# longs to know what it is, just think of who is performing this!
D4. On harmonia... The metaphor is this: women are like a stringed instrument, in need of tuning or balance. There is another dimension as well: harmonia can refer to the harnessing of a chariot.
D5. Note the references to women’s ordeals and the imagery of the womb and the breeze. The relationship between the womb and wind is controlled by Artemis. Remember the Agamemnon of Aeschylus, where Artemis stops the wind until Iphigeneia gets sacrificed; and she stops the wind again until Cassandra gets slaughtered.
E1. Note the “wandering mind” of Phaedra: it “wanders” where the boys are. Compare Freud’s concept of hysteria. Where Artemis is.
Euripides Hippolytus 198-249
Phaedra:
Lift my body, keep my head steady; the fastenings of my limbs are unstrung. 200 Raise my shapely arms, attendants, my headdress is heavy to wear, take it away, let my hair fall over my shoulders. ... Alas! Would that from a dewy fountain I might draw a draught of pure water for myself, 210 and lying beneath the poplars in a grassy meadow I might rest. ... 215 Take me to the mountains - I will go to the woods and to the pine trees, where the beast-killing hounds tread, and where they approach the dappled deer. By the gods, I long to shout to the dogs, 220 and by my fair hair to cast a Thessalian spear, holding a barbed dart in my hand.
Nurse:
Why, my child, are you anxious for these things? Why is the hunt your concern? 225 And why do you long for the flowing spring when nearby, next to these towers, there is a watery hill, from which you might have a drink?
Phaedra:
Artemis of sea-beaten Limna, goddess of the racecourse thundering with horses’ hooves, 230 would that I were on your plains curbing Venetian steeds!
Nurse:
Why again, in madness, have you cast out this utterance? One moment you were going to the hills and set your desire for the hunt, 235 but now on the waveless sands you wish for horses. These things are worth much prophesying; which of the gods drives your from your course and strikes aside your phrenes, child?
Phaedra:
Wretched me, what have I done? 240 Where have I strayed from good sense? I have gone mad and fallen by derangement [at#] from a daim"n. Woe is me! Nurse, cover my head again; I feel shame [aid"s] for what I have said. 245 Hide me! Tears fall from my eyes, and for shame my face is turned away. Although it is painful to come to one’s senses, to be mad is evil; dying in ignorance rules.
E2. Note that Phaedra’s limbs are ‘unstrung’: consider her lack of harmonia
Euripides Hippolytus 732-751: Would that I were beneath some steep cavern, where a god might make me into a bird amid the winged flocks! Away I would soar over the waves of the Adriatic sea [pontos] and to the waters of the river Eridanos, where the unhappy sisters in their grief for Phaethon drip into the purplish swell the amber brilliance of their tears. Then might I
reach the apple-bearing shores of the singing Hesperides, where the ruler of the sea [pontos] no longer gives a path for sailors over the deep, dark waters, and find there the holy boundary of heaven which Atlas holds, and the ambrosial fountains which well up by the couch of Zeus, and where the sacred earth, bestower of good things, increases the happiness [eudaimonia] of the gods.
F 1. Phaethon was the son of Helios, the sun. He lost control of his father’s chariot, so Zeus killed him with a thunderbolt.
Notes on session 20 on Euripides Bacchae
The hero’s agony
Key word ag"n, pl. ag"nes ‘coming together; competition, antagonism; agony; ordeal; trial’ (LINK See Pindar’s Homer p. 385 [“Given that the Theater...”] up to p. 388n31):
Euripides Bacchae 912-976
{Dionysus:}
You there! Yes, I’m talking to you, to the one who is so eager to see the things that should not be seen
and who hurries to accomplish things that cannot be hurried. I’m talking to you, Pentheus.
Come out from inside the palace. Let me have a good look at you
915 wearing the costume of a woman who is a Maenad Bacchant, spying on your mother and her company.
The way you are shaped, you look just like one of the daughters of Kadmos.
{Pentheus:}
What is this? I think I see two suns,
and two images of Thebes, the seven-gated polis.
bull.
Were you ever before a beast? You have certainly now become a
{Dionysus:}
The god accompanies us, now at truce with us, though formerly not propitious.
Now you see what it is right for you to see. 925 {Pentheus:}
So how do I look? Don’t I strike the dancing pose [stasis] of Ino or the pose struck by my mother Agaue?
{Dionysus:}
Looking at you I think I see them right now.
Oh, but look: this strand of hair [plokamos] here is out of place. It stands out, not the way I had secured it underneath the headband [mitra].
{Pentheus:}
While I was inside, I was shaking it [= the strand of hair] forward and backward,
and, in the Bacchic spirit, I displaced it [= the strand of hair], moving it out of place.
{Dionysus:}
Then I, whose concern it is to attend to you, will
arrange it [= the strand of hair] all over again. Come on, hold your head straight.
{Pentheus:}
You see it [= the strand of hair]? There it is! You arrange [kosmeîn] it for me. I can see I’m really depending on you.
{Dionysus:}
And your waistband has come loose. And those things are not in the right order. I mean, the pleats of your peplos, the way they
extend down around your ankles.
{Pentheus:}
That’s the way I see it from my angle as well. At least, that’s the way it is down around my right foot,
but, on this other side, the peplos does extend in a straight line down around the calf.
{Dionysus:} I really do think you will consider me the foremost among those dear to you
when, contrary to your expectations, you see the Bacchants in full control of themselves [= s!phrones].
{Pentheus:}
So which will it be? I mean, shall I hold the thyrsus with my right hand
or with this other one? Which is the way I will look more like a Bacchant?
{Dionysus:}
You must hold it in your right hand and, at the same time, with your right foot you must make an upward motion. I approve of the way you have shifted in your
thinking.
{Pentheus:} 945 Couldn’t I carry on my shoulders the folds of Kithairon, Bacchae and all?
{Dionysus:} You could if you should so wish. Your earlier phrenes were not sound, but now they are the way they should be.
{Pentheus:} Shall we bring levers, 950 or throwing a shoulder or arm under
the mountain-tops shall I lift them up with my hands?
{Dionysus:} Please don’t destroy the seats of the Nymphs and the place where Pan plays his pipe.
{Pentheus:} You’re right. The women are not to be taken by force; I’ll hide in the pines.
{Dionysus:} 955 You will hide yourself in hiding as you should be hidden, coming as a crafty spy on the Maenads.
{Pentheus:} I imagine that they are in the bushes held in the closest grips of love, like birds.
{Dionysus:} You have been sent as a guard against this very event. 960 Perhaps you will catch them, if you yourself are not caught before.
{Pentheus:} Bring me through the midst of the Theban land. I am the only Theban who dares to perform this deed.
{Dionysus:} You alone enter the struggle for this polis, you alone. Therefore the ordeals [ag"nes] which have to be await you. 965 Follow me. I am your saving [s"t#r] guide; another will lead you down from there.
{Pentheus:} Yes, my mother.
{Dionysus:} And you will be remarkable [having a s#ma] to all.
{Pentheus:} I am going for this reason.
{Dionysus:} You will return here being carried...
{Pentheus:} You allude to my luxuriance [habrot#s].
{Dionysus:} ...in the arms of your mother.
{Pentheus:} You even will compel me to be in luxury [truph#].
{Dionysus:} 970 Yes indeed, with such luxury [truph#].
{Pentheus:} I am undertaking worthy deeds.
{Dionysus:} You are terrifying, terrifying, and you go to terrifying sufferings [pathos], with the result that you will attain a kleos that reaches
heaven. Extend your hands, Agave, and you too, her sisters, daughters of Kadmos. I lead the youth 975 to this great ag"n, and Bromius and I will be the victors. The rest the affair itself will signal [s#main"].
A1. On pathos, see LINK Best of the Achaeans Ch.6@26n3 (“On pathos ‘thing suffered’...”).
A2. Dionysus here has not yet fully revealed himself as a god. His antagonist, Pentheus (from penthos), is incompletely initiated and cannot focus by seeing the god clearly. Pentheus has double vision. The psychology of double vision is analogous to the semantics of the expression “to be beside yourself.” Notice the theriomorphic nature of the epiphany of the god here: that is, he appears as a beast.
A3. Notice that the hair of Pentheus is out of order (= out of kosmos). Consider the metonymy.
A4. A word that is directly relevant to the problem of focusing on the god is bakkhos
= god in myth (Latinized as Bacchus) vs. devoté in ritual; the feminine of bakkhos as ‘devoté in ritual’ is bakkh# ‘bacchant’, plural bakkhai (Latinized as Bacchae). Review: entheos ‘he/she who has the god inside’ (theos ‘god’); cf. enthousiasmos ‘state of being possessed by the god’ (from this word English “enthusiasm” is derived).
A5. Pentheus thinks that Dionysos is a bakkhos (at best); the audience already knows that Dionysos is the Bakkhos - in other words, the god himself.
A6. Notice that the bakkhai are s"phrones as singers / dancers. The dictum applies: equilibrium in ritual, disequilibrium in myth. The disequilibrium leads to
catastrophe.
A8. Why is Pentheus deinos ‘terrifying’? It is because he evokes the emotion of fear - because he is about to be dismembered. In the context at hand, Pentheus thinks that he is ‘terrifying’ because he will terrify the women who are under the Dionysiac influence.
A9. Notice that Pentheus is destined to get kleos, according to his ritual antagonist, the god Dionysos.
Euripides Bacchae 135-167: He is sweet in the mountains, whenever after running in the sacred band he falls on the ground, wearing the sacred [hieron] garment of fawn-skin, hunting the blood of the slain goat, the pleasure [kharis] of living flesh devoured, rushing to the 140 Phrygian, the Lydian mountains, and the leader of the dance is Bromius. Evohe! The plain flows with milk, it flows with wine, it flows with the nectar of bees. 145 Like the smoke [G.N. adopts the manuscript reading kapnÒw] of Syrian incense, the Bacchic one, raising high the fiery flame from the pine torch, bursts forth from the narth#x, arousing the stragglers with his racing and khoroi, agitating them with his cries, 150 tossing his luxuriant [trupheros] hair to the air. And among the Maenad cries his voice rings deep: “Onward, Bacchants, onward Bacchants, with the luxury of Tmolos that flows with gold, 155 sing and dance of Dionysus, accompanied by the heavy beats of kettle-drums, glorifying the god of delight with Phrygian shouts and cries, 160 when the sweet-sounding sacred [hieros] pipe sings out the sacred [hiera] tunes 165 for those who wander to the mountain, to the mountain!” And the Bacchant, rejoicing like a foal with its mother, rouses her swift foot in a gamboling dance.
B1. Notice the image of Dionysos tossing his luxuriant disheveled hair.
B2. Notice the intersubjectivity of the chorus with the sacrificial herd.
B3. We see here the god Dionysos as a young exarkhos ‘choral leader’, bursting forth from narth#x).
B4. Dionysus as god of Theater; City Dionysia is the prime occasion for State Theater. For historical background, read Nagy’s introduction about State Theater.
B5. Line 860: Dionysus becomes god in the telos
B6. Lines 275ff: bread vs. wine (cf. earth vs. sea; cf. Demeter vs. Dionysus)
C1. Now we come to the “birth of tragedy,” according to the aetiological version of Euripides:
Euripides Bacchae 677-716
I was just driving the herd of cattle up the hill, at the time when the sun sends forth its rays, warming the earth. 680 I saw three companies of women’s khoroi, one of which Autonoe led, the second your mother Agave, and the third khoros, Ino. All were asleep, their bodies relaxed, some resting their backs against pine foliage, 685 others in a s"phr"n manner laying their heads at random on the oak leaves, not, as you say, drunk with the goblet and the sound of the pipe, hunting out Kypris [= Aphrodite] through the woods in solitude. Your mother raised a cry, 690 standing in the midst of the Bacchants, to wake them from sleep, when she heard the lowing of the horned cattle. And they threw deep sleep from their eyes and sprang upright - a marvel of orderliness to behold - old, young, and still unmarried virgins. 695 First they let their hair loose over their shoulders, and as many of them as had released the fastenings of their knots, secured their fawn-skins, girding the dappled hides with serpents licking their jaws, and some, as many as had abandoned their new-born infants and had their breasts still swollen, holding in their arms a gazelle or wild wolf-pup 700 gave them
white milk. They put on garlands of ivy, and oak, and flowering yew. One took her thyrsos [narth#x] and struck it against a rock, 705 whence a dewy stream of water sprang forth. Another let her thyrsos strike the ground, and there the god sent forth a stream of wine. All who desired the white drink scratched the earth with the tips of their fingers and obtained springs of milk. 710 Sweet streams of honey dripped from their ivy thyrsoi. Had you been present and seen this, you would have approached with prayers the god whom you now blame. We herdsmen and shepherds gathered [= literally sun#lthomen ‘we came together’] in order to 715 wrangle [give eris] with one another concerning this strange behavior, full of marvel.
C2. Here we see the three meanings of ag"n: coming together of the herdsmen, their competing, and, in their song and dance, re-enacting the wonders of Dionysus,
featuring the agony of Pentheus (and, ultimately, of Dionysus himself as the victim of dismemberment).
C3. Socrates says in Plato’s Phaedo (69c): ‘For many, as they say in the mysteries [teletai], are the bearers of the thyrsus [narth#x], but few are the bakkhoi [=devotees of Bacchus]’; Compare the Christian aphorism: “many are called but few are chosen” (Matthew 22:14). Compare such “half-baked” initiates as Kadmos and Teiresias in the Bacchae of Euripides.
C4. The disintegration of Pentheus the hero is modeled on the unspoken and mystical disintegration of Dionysos the god. That theme is not attested directly in the Bacchae of Euripides.
C5. Even the women of Thebes, when they are possessed by Dionysos, behave in a s"phr"n way - until they come into contact with Pentheus. Then the equilibrium turns to disequilibrium.
C6. The first thing the Maenads do is let their hair loose over their shoulders.
C7. Notice the metonymy of liquids flowing on contact with the narth#x.
C8. Ideas for holiday presents... [Subtext: this lame joke is based on the title of an old TV series “I Remember Mama.”]
The I Dismember Mama Doll. Know anyone who’s fed up with Mom? This tension-release toy is the perfect gift for all the disgruntled children and neurotic adults on your shopping list. Cuddly long-suffering Mama doll is held together with Velcro. Throw a fit, tear her limb from limb, toss the parts around the room. Then put her back together again as good as new and say you’re sorry. Substantial discount on orders of 50 or more.
Dialogue 21 about Plato “The Living Word” Part I
Something comparable to think about... Consider this statement, made by a musician, about Bach’s Goldberg Variations (there are 32 of them, technically, = Aria plus 30 variations plus Aria)... “It is, in short, music which observes neither end nor beginning, music with neither real climax nor real resolution ...” - Glenn Gould 1956.
Key word: daimonion = ‘the daim"n thing’ or ‘the little daim"n’, which is Socrates’ parody of the wording used by the State in accusing him of introducing unacceptable concepts of daimones:
A1. The State’s accusation was that Socrates does not “believe” (nomizei, derivative of nomos) in the gods that the state “believes” in ... but that Socrates does “believe” in new “divinities” = daimonia [= plural of daimonion] of his own. The State’s wording of the charge against Socrates becomes the basis for his own wording of the inner voice that prevents him from doing something wrong. He calls that inner voice his daimonion.
A2. “I have a thing that is divine [theion] and daimonion” - described as an inner voice that stops
Socrates from doing things that are morally wrong. The familiar daimonion [Jowett translates it as “oracle”] within me [in the Greek, simply “the usual mantic power of the daimonion”] used to oppose me in the past, but not now. The Jowett translation ‘oracle’ is not all that bad, since it conveys the idea of Apollo’s oracle in particular.
A3. What does the daimonion not tell Socrates not to experience? It does not tell him not to die, because dying ‘now’ is not wrong – it is right. It really is the h"ra, the right time, as we see at the end of this passage. These two words daimonion and h"ra belong to the language of heroes, and the same goes for a third word, s!meion, which is used here as a synonym of daimonion.
From Plato Apology of Socrates
Hitherto the oracular [mantik!] art of the daimonion within me has constantly been in the habit of opposing me even about trifles, if I was going to make a slip or error about anything; and now as you see there has come upon me that which may be thought, and is generally believed to be, the last and worst evil. [40b] But the sign [s!meion] did not oppose me, either as I was leaving my house and going out in the morning, or when I was going up into this court, or while I was speaking, at anything which I was going to say; and yet I have often been stopped in the middle of a speech; but now in nothing I either said or did touching this matter has the oracle opposed me. What do I take to be the explanation of this? I will tell you. I regard this as a proof that what has happened to me is a good [agathon], [40c] and that those of us who think that death is an evil [kakon] are in error. This is a great proof to me of what I am saying, for the customary sign [s!meion] would surely have opposed me had I been going to evil and not to good [agathon]. Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good [agathon], for one of two things:—either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul [psukh!] from this world to another. Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, [40d] but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by the sight of dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain [kerdos]. For if a person were to select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the great king, [40e] will not find many such days or nights, when compared with the others. Now if death is like this, I say that to die is gain [kerdos]; for eternity is then only a single night. But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead are, what good [agathon], O my friends and judges, can be greater than this? [41a] If indeed when the pilgrim [the"ros] arrives in the world below, he is delivered from those who profess justice in this world, and finds the true [al!th!s] judges who are said to give judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and other sons of gods who were righteous in their own life, that pilgrimage [the"ria] will be worth making. What would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus
and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer? No, if this be true [al!th!s], let me die again and again. [41b] I, too, shall have a wonderful interest in a place where I can converse with Palamedes, and Ajax the son of Telamon, and other heroes of old, who have suffered death through an unjust [non-dikaios] judgment [krisis]; and there will be no small pleasure, as I think, in comparing my own sufferings [pathos plural] with theirs. Above all, I shall be able to continue my search into true and false knowledge; as in this world, so also in that; I shall find out who is sophos, and who pretends to be sophos, and is not. What would not a man give, O judges, to be able to examine the leader of the great Trojan expedition; [41c] or Odysseus or Sisyphus, or numberless others, men and women too! What infinite delight would there be in conversing with them and asking them questions! For in that world they do not put a man to death for this; certainly not. For besides being happier in that world than in this, they will be immortal, if what is said is true [al!th!s]. Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and know this of a truth [al!th!s]—[41d] that no evil [kakos] can happen to a good [agathos] man, either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by the gods; nor has my own approaching end happened by mere chance. But I see clearly that to die and be released was better for me; and therefore the oracle gave no sign [s!meion]. For which reason also, I am not angry with my accusers, or my condemners; they have done me no harm, although neither of them meant to do me any good; [41e] and for this I may gently blame them. Still I have a favor to ask of them. When my sons are grown up, I would ask you, O my friends, to punish them; and I would have you trouble them, as I have troubled you, if they seem to care about riches, or anything, more than about virtue [aret!]; or if they pretend to be something when they are really nothing,—then reprove them, as I have reproved you, for not caring about that for which they ought to care, and thinking that they are something when they are really nothing. [42a] And if you do this, I and my sons will have as our experience [pathos] at your hands something that is just [dikaion]. The hour [h"ra] of departure has arrived, and we go our ways—I to die, and you to live. Which is better is known only to the god.
A4. Note the references by Socrates to heroes [= “demigods”; Jowett’s rendering, not adopted in the adapted version of his translation in the Sourcebook, is “sons of God”] who are to be joined by Socrates in the afterlife. They include Homer and Hesiod; they are now deathless. On the idea of Homer and Hesiod as cult-heroes of the Hellenes by virtue of their being the premier teachers of Hellenic civilization, see Herodotus 2.53 and the commentary in LINK Pindar’s Homer Ch. 8@22.
A5. Socrates will also meet, in the afterlife, Ajax (= Aias); why does Socrates single him out? Because what people did to him was wrong, just as what people are doing to Socrates is wrong.
A6. The idea of having a dialogue with a dead hero like Ajax (or even like Homer himself, who
was considered to be a cult hero in the era of Socrates) is a way of establishing a communion with the heroic world. This way of communicating transcends the poet’s inspiration by the Muse. Compare the dialogue of the initiated gardener with the non-initiated sailor in the On Heroes of Philostratus: that dialogue leads into a direct dialogue with the consciousness of dead heroes. The worshipper of the cult hero can enter into a communion with the consciousness of the cult hero.
B1. Some background on the death of Socrates... In Plato’s Apology, Socrates refers to Aristophanes Clouds, which we know was staged in year 423. Socrates is ridiculed in that comedy because he is an intellectual: examples of contemporary intellectuals are Gorgias and Prodicus. A key word is sophos in the sense of ‘sophist’.
B2. The story of Socrates’ quest, as reported in the Apology... Chairephon goes to Delphi on a pilgrimage [= the"ria in Greek]. His quest is to ask who is most sophos of men. The priestess of Apollo answers for the god: that no one is more sophos than Socrates. Socrates asks himself: what kind of “riddle” [ainigma] is the god saying?
B3. Note the reference in the Apology to the wanderings [planai, plural of plan#], and labors [ponoi] of Socrates (expressed in the form of a heroic quest). Compare the veering/wandering of Odysseus in Odyssey 1.2
from Plato Apology of Socrates [22a] I will tell you the tale of my wanderings [planai, plural of plan#] and of the labors [ponoi], as I may call them, which I endured only to find at last the oracle [manteion] irrefutable.
C1. Observe how Socrates refers to Achilles’ choice of death in Iliad XVIII 94ff (compare also Iliad IX 413). Socrates reads out of the Iliadic passage what Achilles is saying, but the reading by Socrates is framed in terms of what is right and what is wrong, whereas the reading by “Homer” is not. In effect, Socrates is having a dialogue with Achilles by quoting him in ways that correspond to the philosopher’s frame of reference – and to the citizen-warrior’s frame of reference.
From Plato Apology of Socrates. Someone will say: And are you not ashamed, Socrates, of a course of life which is likely to bring you to an untimely end? To him I may fairly [dikai"s] answer: There you are mistaken: a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong [doing dikaia or not] acting the part of a good [agathos] man or of a bad [kakos]. [28c] Whereas, according to your view, the heroes who fell at Troy were not good for much, and the son of Thetis [= Achilles] above all, who altogether despised danger in comparison with disgrace; and when his goddess mother said to him, in his eagerness to slay Hector, that if he avenged [paid honor or tim! to] his companion Patroklos, and slew Hector, he would die himself—"Fate," as she said, "waits upon you next after Hector"; he, hearing this, utterly despised danger and death, [28d] and instead of fearing them, feared rather to live in dishonor [basely, like a kakos man], and not to avenge [give tim! to] his friend. "Let me die next," he replies, "and exact justice [dik!] from the enemy, rather than abide here by the beaked ships, a scorn and a burden of the earth." Had Achilles any thought of death and danger? For wherever a man's place is, whether the place which he has chosen or that in which he has been placed by a commander, there he ought to remain in the hour of danger; he should not think of death or of anything, but of disgrace. And this, O men of Athens, is a true saying [al!th!s].
C2. The characterization of Socrates in his bravery is made parallel to the characterization of Achilles in his own bravery. Socrates is saying, in effect: I must not desert my post. That is the ethic of the hoplite = citizen soldier; for Socrates, this ethic of the hoplite is transformed into the ethic of the philosopher.
C3. Note the way Socrates elsewhere describes himself as a gadfly (how is this image an ainos?). Notice that he “stings” an aristocratic but intellectually lazy “horse.”
C4. A man who fights for dik# must lead a private, not a public, life.
C5. Note the list of the philoi present at the trial, including Plato.
C6. Socrates says that he deserves the honors due to an Olympic victor.
C7. Socrates says: the greatest good for man is to discuss aret# (translated here as “virtue”) C8. The unexamined life is not worth living
C9. References to pollution in the Apology: “this confounded Socrates!” [Jowett’s “confounded” translates miaros ‘polluted’ (adjective of miasma ‘pollution’). Todd Compton, in an article written for the American Journal of Philology 1990, shows that Plato is tapping into the myth of Aesop in his role as a ritual scapegoat or pharmakos. On Aesop as a pharmakos, see LINK Best of the Achaeans Ch.16@1, starting with “From the epic tradition of the Aithiopis, all the way to the end of @8.
D1. Further remarks about the trial and death of Socrates, year 399 before our era... In the
Apology, Socrates is quoted as saying that Plato was present at the trial.
D2. Was Plato also present when Socrates died? Here is the answer...
From Plato Phaedo [Phaedo is “quoted” as saying. [59b] Of native Athenians there were, besides Apollodorus, Critobulus and his father Crito, Hermogenes, Epigenes, Aeschines, and Antisthenes; likewise Ctesippus of the deme of Paeania, Menexenus, and some others; but Plato, if I am not mistaken, was not feeling well.
D3. So the “transcriber” Plato, who is only mentioned twice in the writings of Plato, was not there when Socrates died. How can we trust his “quotations” of Socrates?
Plato is present when Socrates delivers his speech as dramatized in the Apology. But he is absent (“sick”) during the dialogue as dramatized in the Phaedo.
What are the implications for the status of a text like Plato’s Phaedo? Where does Plato live in his texts?
Where does Socrates “live”?
E1. Plato’s Socrates has never written anything down. But he does compose two masterpieces during his last days.
E2. Just before he dies, Socrates turns a fable [what is the Greek word for “fable”?] of Aesop into poetry and then composes a hymn to Apollo; “this is in honor of the festival of Apollo that consecrates the time between Socrates’ trial and his death, delaying his execution” (Todd Compton, American Journal of Philology 1990 p. 340). On the Festival of Apollo, see Phaedo 28b-c. On Aesop as a cult-hero and as a ritual antagonist of Apollo, see LINK Best of the Achaeans Ch.17@@1-2.
From Plato Phaedo In the course of my life I have often had intimations in dreams “that I should make music [mousik!].” The same dream came to me sometimes in one form, and sometimes in another, but always saying the same or nearly the same words: Make and cultivate music [mousik!], said the dream. [61a] And hitherto I had imagined that this was only intended to exhort and encourage me in the study of philosophy, which has always been the pursuit of my life, and is the noblest and best of music [mousik!]. The dream was bidding me to do what I was already doing, in the same way that the competitor in a race is called on by the spectators to run when he is already running. But I was not certain of this, as the dream might have meant music [mousik!] in the popular sense of the word, and being under sentence of death, and the festival giving me a respite, I thought that I should be safer if I engaged with the holiness, [61b] and, in obedience to the dream, composed a few verses before I departed. And first I made a hymn [humnos] in honor of the god of the festival, and then considering that a poet, if he is really to be a poet or maker, should not only put words together but make stories [muthoi], and as I am not a maker of stories [muthologikos], I took some fables [muthoi] of Aesop, which I had ready at hand and knew, and turned them into verse. Tell Evenus this, and bid him be of good cheer; that I would have him come after me if he be a wise man, and not tarry; [61c] and that today I am likely to be going, for the Athenians say that I must.
E3. Socrates “made” a hymn to Apollo; and the verb is poie" (poi#t#s ‘poet’ is ‘he who makes’). On important parallelisms between the ainos-traditions of Aesop and the ainigma-traditions of the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi, see Pindar’s Homer Ch.11@17 (starting with “After quoting a passage in the Histories...”) up through @22. At Phaedo 61b, fables of Aesop are called muthoi.
E4. Remember: one of Plato’ s central points is that Socrates does not leave writings behind.
F1. Here is the “swansong” of Socrates. Think of Schubert’s “hymn” To Music The swan is the sacred bird of what god?
Why is the swan called the therap"n of the god?
Why is Socrates called “the fellow minister” of the swans?
from Plato Phaedo
Socrates smiled and said: [84e] O Simmias, how strange that is; I am not very likely to persuade other men that I do not regard my present situation as a misfortune, if I am unable to persuade you, and you will keep fancying that I am at all more troubled now than at any other time. Will you not allow that I have as much of a prophetic [mantikos] capacity in me as the swans? For they, when they perceive that they must die, having sung all their life long, [85a] do then sing more than ever, rejoicing in the thought that they are about to go away to the god whose ministers [therap"n plural] they are. But men, because they are themselves afraid of death, slanderously affirm of the swans that they sing a lament at the last, not considering that no bird sings when cold, or hungry, or in pain, not even the nightingale, nor the swallow, nor yet the hoopoe; which are said indeed to tune a song of sorrow, although I do not believe this to be true of them any more than of the swans. [85b] But because they are sacred to Apollo and have a prophetic [mantikos] capacity and anticipate the good things of another world, therefore they sing and rejoice in that day more than they ever did before. And I, too, believing myself to be the consecrated minister of the same god, and a fellow minister [homo-doulos] with the swans, and thinking that I have received from my master a prophetic [mantikos] capacity that is not inferior to theirs, would not go out of life in a less happy state than the swans.
F 2. mousik#: much more than just ‘music.’
What is the significance of Socrates’ Hymn to Apollo?
Note that “Homer” was known to Socrates as the poet of a Homeric Hymn to Apollo.
G1. Compare the “swansong” of Schubert:
“An die Musik” (To Music) by Franz Schubert (D. 547 Op. 88 No. 4). Text by Franz von Schober
Du holde Kunst, in wieviel grauen Stunden, | You, O sacred art, how often, in hours that were gray, | ||
Wo mich des Lebens wilder Kreis umstrickt, | while I was caught up in the savage cycle of life, | ||
Hast du mein Herz zu warmer Lieb entzünden, | you brought back my heart to warm love, reigniting it, | ||
Hast mich in eine beßre Welt entrückt! | and spirited me off to a better world. | ||
Oft hat ein Seufzer, deiner Harf’ entflossen, | Often has a sigh drifted from your harp - | ||
Ein süßer, heiliger Akkord von dir | a sweet and holy chord coming from you, | ||
Den Himmel beßrer Zeiten mir erschlossen, | revealing from the heavens a glimpse of better times | ||
Du holde Kunst, ich danke dir dafür! | You, O sacred art, I thank you for this. | ||
Notes for Dialogue 22 Shades of the Hero
How the consciousness of the hero lives on in the post-heroic world.
Key word for this time: pateres ‘fathers’ or ‘ancestors’, as in the name Patroklos / Patrokleês. Related key word: ainigma (from ainos) ‘riddle, enigma’, derived from verb ainissomai ‘say in
a riddling way’. This word will return to play an important role in the Oedipus Tyrannus of Sophocles.
Amphiaraos, speaking from the dead as one of the pateres, visualizes his son, Alkmaion.
The word theaomai ‘see’ (in the dialect used by Pindar, thaeomai) is derived from thea
‘vision’. A related word is theatron, which means literally ‘instrument for seeing’.
The word saphês / saphes ‘clear’ has to do with clarity of vision. Thus a seer is a clairvoyant.
Pindar Pythian 8.35ff
[35] For you follow, at wrestling matches, in the footsteps of your mother’s brothers. You did Theognetos proud, the one in the Olympics. Also Kleitomakhos, whose victory at the Isthmians gave proof to the boldness of his limbs. Making great the house[1] of the Meidulidai,[2] you win as a prize the words that once the son of Oikles[3] said [ainissomai],[4] when he saw [40] the Sons[5] holding their ground at Thebes, by the power of the spear,
at the time when they, the Epigonoi,[6] had come from Argos, on the second expedition. Thus he [7] spoke about those who fought: [45] “By inherited nature, the noble purpose [lêma] shines forth from fathers [pateres][8] to sons. I can see [theaomai] clearly [saphes] Alkmaion,[9] wielding the patterned snake on his blazing shield,[10] in the forefront of the gates of Kadmos.”[11]
We see here that the heroes in the age of heroes are stylized ancestors for the post-heroic age. If a man as an athlete in the post-heroic age ‘did his ancestors proud’, he also did the heroes of the heroic age proud. That is the logic of hero cult as a stylized form of ancestor worship.
Pindar Pythian 8.95ff
[95] Creatures of a day. What is a someone, what is a no one? Man is the dream of a shade. But when the brightness given by Zeus comes, there is at hand the shining light of men, and the life- force [aiôn] gives pleasure. Aigina! Philê Mother! Make an armada[12] of freedom for this polis as you bring it back to light and life,[13] back to Zeus! May Aiakos the Ruler be there. So also Peleus. And noble Telamon. And especially Achilles.[14]
For a detailed analysis of focus passages A and B, see the Heroes website: go to Texts and then go to:
G. Nagy, “Refractions of Epic Vision in Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes and Pindar’s Pythian
8.”
What is a skia in Homer? How is it related to psukhê?
Does the translation ‘of’ in ‘dream of a shade’ mark a subjective or objective genitive? Note that aiôn means both ‘life force’ and ‘eon.’
As we see from my analysis in the paper that I cited, successful persons in the post-heroic age are imagined positively as if they were “dreamed” by their ancestors in the heroic age.
Such positive “dreaming” is matched by a sinister negative “dreaming” when the hero is angry, as we see in focus passages C and D:
Aeschylus Seven 709-711... Yes, it [the daimôn] boiled over with the curses [kateugmata, from eukhomai] of Oedipus! True are the visions [opsis plural] of apparitions-in-dreams [en- hupnia], - visions of dividing the father’s property.
This passage C is thematically the reverse of A and B.
There was a comedy by Aristophanes called The Heroes where the chorus of heroes at the beginning says the equivalent of “he knows when you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness’ sake.”
Aeschylus Seven 720ff... I shudder in dread of the goddess who destroys dynasties. She is not like other gods. She is the all-truthful [pan-alêthês] seer [mantis] of evils, the Fury [Erinys] of a father’s cursing [eukhomai]. [725] She is poised to bring to fulfillment [telos] the curses [kat- arai], full of passion [thumos], that came from Oedipus, the one whose mind [phrên] was thrown off course. This discord [eris], destroyer of his children, is pressing ahead.
The vision of the Furies
The ‘Fury [Erinys] of a father’s cursing [eukhomai]’: the ‘of’ can be subjective.
For a parallel theme of positive ancestral dreaming in modern poetry, consider this:
selections from Walt Whitman, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry (1892):
I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence,
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt, Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,
Just as you are refresh'd by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refresh'd,
Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood yet was hurried
. . .
I too and many a time crossed the river of old
. . .
Closer yet I approach you,
What thought you have of me now, I had as much of you - I laid in my stores in advance,
I consider'd long and seriously of you before you were born.
. . .
Who knows, for all the distance, but I am as good as looking at you now, for all you cannot see me?
For a parody, consider this:
Allen Ginsberg "A Supermarket in California"
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked
down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon
fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at
night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!
--and you, García Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons? I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking
among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys. I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy
tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier. Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour.
Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a
smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?
Berkeley, 1955
Heroes can intervene in the present, either positively or negatively, as here:
Herodotus 7.188-191. The Persian fleet put to sea and reached the beach of the Magnesian land, between the polis of Kasthanaia and the headland of Sepias.[15] The first ships to arrive moored close to land, with the others after them at anchor; since the beach was not large, they lay at anchor in rows eight ships deep out into the sea [pontos]. Thus they spent the night, but at dawn out of a clear and windless sky a storm descended upon them and the sea began to boil. A strong east wind blew, which the people living in those parts call Hellespontiês. Those who felt the wind rising or had proper mooring dragged their ships up on shore ahead of the storm and so survived with their ships. But the wind carried those ships caught out in the open against the rocks called the Ovens at Pelion or onto the beach. Some ships were wrecked on the Sepian headland, others were cast ashore at the polis of Meliboia or at Kasthanaia. ... [191] There was no counting how many grain-ships and other vessels were destroyed. The generals of the fleet were afraid that the Thessalians might attack them now that they were in a bad situation, so they built a high palisade out of the wreckage. The storm lasted three days. Finally the Magi made offerings and cast spells upon the wind, sacrificing also to Thetis and the Nereids. Thus they made the wind stop on the fourth day, or perhaps it died down on its own. They sacrificed to Thetis after hearing from the Ionians the story that it was at this place that Peleus had abducted her, and that all the headland of Sepias belonged to her and to the other Nereids.
Achilles intervenes from the other world by unleashing his anger in the form of the ‘wind from the Hellespont’.
So heroes can be models for the elites of the post-heroic age.
Pindar Isthmian 8.56a-62
Even when he [Achilles] died, the songs did not leave him, but the Heliconian Maidens [the
Muses] stood by his pyre and his funeral mound, pouring forth a song of lamentation [thrênos] that is famed far and wide. And so it was that the gods decided to hand over the worthy man, wilted [phthi-menos] in death as he was, to the songs of the goddesses [Muses].[16] And this, even now, wins as a prize the words, as the chariot-team of the Muses starts moving on its way to glorify the memory of Nikokles the boxer.
In the next passage, Leonides, king of Sparta, is described as one of the Herakleidai, descendants of Herakles. So Herakles is for him and his men a model, even a model for death. We see in this passage the Three Hundred Spartans at Thermopylae, “preening for la belle mort”...
Herodotus 7.208-209. While they thus debated, Xerxes sent a mounted scout to see how many there were and what they were doing, for while he was still in Thessaly he had heard that a small army was gathered there and that its leaders were Lakedaimonians, including Leonides, a Herakleid in genos. Riding up to the camp, the horseman watched and spied out the place, but he could not see the whole camp, for it was impossible to see those posted inside the wall they had rebuilt and were guarding. He did take note of those outside, whose arms lay in front of the wall, and it chanced that at that time the Lakedaimonians were posted there. He saw some of the men exercising naked and others combing their hair. He marvelled at the sight and perceived their numbers. When he had observed it all carefully, he rode back undisturbed, since no one pursued him or paid him any attention at all. So he returned and told Xerxes all that he had seen. When Xerxes heard that, he could not comprehend the reality that the Lakedaimonians were preparing to kill or be killed to the best of their ability. What they did appeared laughable to him, so he sent for Demaretos the son of Ariston, who was in his camp, and when he came asked him about each of these matters, wanting to understand what it was that the Lakedaimonians were doing. Demaretos said, “You have already heard about these men from me, when we were setting out for Hellas. But when you heard, you mocked me, though I told you how I saw these events turning out. For it is my greatest aim, O King, to exercise truth in your presence. Hear me now. These men have come to fight us for the pass, and for that they are preparing. This is their custom [nomos]: when they are about to risk their psukhai, they carefully arrange [= make kosmos for] their hair. Know that if you overcome these men and those remaining behind at Sparta, there is no other on earth that will raise its hands to withstand you, my King. You are now attacking the fairest kingdom in Hellas and men who are aristoi.”
Herodotus gives the genealogy of Leonides, King of Sparta (the Spartan pronunciation is ‘Leonidas’)...
Herodotus 7.204. Each city had its own general, but the one most admired and the leader of the whole army was a Lakedaimonian, Leonides son of Anaxandrides son of Leon son of Eurykratides son of Anaxandros son of Eurykrates son of Polydoros son of Alkamenes son of
Teleklos son of Arkhelaos son of Hegesilaos son of Doryssos son of Leobotes son of Ekhestratos son of Agis son of Eurysthenes son of Aristodemos son of Aristomakhos son of Kleodaios son of Hyllos son of Herakles. Leonides had gained the kingship at Sparta unexpectedly.
Herodotus 7.224. By this time most of them had had their spears broken and were killing the Persians with swords. Leonides fell in that ordeal [ponos], an aristos man, and with him other famous Spartans, whose names I have learned, since they were worthy men. Indeed, I have learned the names of all 300.
Herodotus ponders the motivation of the 300 Spartans:
Herodotus 7.220. But I tend more to believe that when Leonides perceived that the allies were dispirited and unwilling to run all risks with him, he bid them depart. But it was not good for him to leave: If he remained, he would leave a name of great kleos, and the good fortune [eudaimonia] of Sparta would not be blotted out. When the Spartans asked the oracle about this war as soon as it first arose, the Pythia had prophesied to them that either Lakedaimon would be destroyed by the barbarians or their king would be killed. She gave them this answer in hexameter verse [epea], running as follows:
For you, inhabitants of wide-wayed Sparta, either your great and glorious city must be wasted by Persian men, or if not that, then the bound of Lakedaimon must mourn a dead king, from Herakles’ line. The menos of bulls or lions will not restrain him with opposing force, for he has the menos of Zeus. I declare that he will not be restrained until he utterly tears apart one of these.
Considering this and wishing to lay up kleos for the Spartans alone, he sent away the allies rather than have them leave in disorder after divided counsels.
[1] The word oikos ‘house’ refers to the victor’s ancestral lineage or “clan.”
[2] Meidulidai is the name of the victor’s ancestral lineage.
[3] Amphiaraos, one of the Seven Against Thebes, was the son of Oikles. The heroes known as the Seven Against Thebes had failed in their expedition against Thebes. Myth has it that Thebes had Seven Gates, each attacked by one of the Seven Against Thebes and each defended by a corresponding Theban hero.
[4] The verb ainissomai ‘say in a riddling way’ is derived from ainigma ‘riddle, enigma’, which is derived from ainos. Since Amphiaraos died in the failed expedition of the Seven Against Thebes, what he says here is obviously meant to be understood as if spoken from the grave. There is historical evidence for a hero-cult of Amphiaraos, located at the very spot where myth says that the earth had engulfed him, chariot-team and all, as he was riding away from Thebes after the expedition failed. Worshippers would come to consult Amphiaraos, who was believed to have the power of communicating with them from the dead.
[5] The Sons are the Sons of the Seven Against Thebes. Whereas the original Seven Against Thebes had failed in their expedition against Thebes, the Sons of the Seven Against Thebes were successful.
[6] Epigonoi ‘The Descendants’ is another way of referring to the Sons of the Seven Against Thebes.
[7] Amphiaraos.
[8] The “fathers” here are ancestors, that is, a succession of fathers through time, not a collection of fathers at one time. The word patro- ‘ancestor, father’ is found in the first part of the name Patroklos = Patroklês), which means ‘he who has the kleos of the ancestors’.
[9] The hero Alkmaion is the son of Amphiaraos.
[10] In traditional Greek poetry, the image represented on a shield, in this case a snake, would be called a sêma.
[11] Kadmos was known as the primordial founder of Thebes.
[12] This fleeting reference serves as a nostalgic reminder of the glory days of Aigina, when its navy was still a major power, as in the Sea Battle of Salamis in the Persian War, described by Herodotus 8.40-97; note especially the role of the Aiakidai in 8.64 and 8.83-84.
[13] I translate komizô here as ‘bring back to light and life’ in view of the traditional correlation of this verb with the noun nostos.
[14] Compare Herodotus 8.64: “At sunrise ... there was an earthquake on land and sea, and they resolved to pray to the gods and summon the Aiakidai as allies. When they had so resolved, they did as follows: they prayed to all the gods called Ajax and Telamon to come straight from Salamis, and sent a ship to Aigina for Aiakos and the other Aiakidai [besides Ajax and Telamon].”
[15] Meaning “the place of the sepia.” It was here, according to epic tradition, that Peleus and Thetis conceived Achilles.
[16] As I argue in Best of the Achaeans 176-177, the phraseology here implies that Achilles was destined to have a kleos that is a-phthi-ton ‘unwilting’, as explicitly formulated at Iliad IX 413.
Notes for Dialogue 23 - “The Living Word” Part II.
[[I highlight here the splendid minutes of Franklin Zhao for the 2008 version of Dialogue 23, stored in the archives of the Heroes site.]]
[[I need to say at the beginning that Socrates, even though he is being set up to become a cult hero in Plato’s Apology and Phaedo, resists this role. That is why he is the first true Anti-Hero in this course. As I said at the very beginning of the course, the true ‘hero’ of this course is the word, the logos, as brought to life in dialogue, Socratic dialogue.]]
The key word for this dialogue is s"zein (verb) ‘save; be a s"t#r (for someone)’; s"t#r
‘savior’ (either ‘bringing to safety’ or, mystically, ‘bringing back to life’); s"t#ria ‘safety, salvation’. I am not borrowing this concept of “savior” and “salvation” from Christian discourse. Christian discourse inherited the words s"t#r ‘savior’ and s"zein (verb) ‘save; be a s"t#r (for someone)’ from pre-Christian phases of the Greek language.
A1. Let us examine this word in the context of the following passage, which is the beginning of Plato’s Phaedo:
Plato’s Phaedo (57a-58c):
Echecrates. [57a] Were you yourself, Phaedo, in the prison with Socrates on the day when he drank the poison [pharmakon]?
Phaedo. Yes, Echecrates, I was.
Ech. I wish that you would tell me about his death. What did he say in his last hours? We were informed that he died by taking poison [pharmakon], but no one knew anything more; for no Phliasian ever goes to Athens now, [57b] and a long time has elapsed since any Athenian found his way to Phlius, and therefore we had no clear account.
Phaed. [58a] Did you not hear of the proceedings at the trial?
Ech. Yes; someone told us about the trial, and we could not understand why, having been condemned, he was put to death, as appeared, not at the time, but long afterwards. What was the reason of this?
Phaed. An accident [tukh#], Echecrates. The reason was that the stern of the ship which the Athenians send to Delos happened to have been garlanded [stephein] on the day before he was tried.
Ech. What is this ship?
Phaed. This is the ship in which, as the Athenians say, Theseus went to Crete when he took with him the fourteen youths, [58b] and was the savior [s"zein] of them and of himself. And they were said to have vowed to Apollo at the time, that if they were saved [s"zein] they would make an annual pilgrimage [the"ria] to Delos. Now this custom still continues, and the whole period of the pilgrimage [the"ria] to and from Delos, [58c] beginning when the priest of Apollo garlands [stephein] the stern of the ship, is the season of the the"ria, during which the city is not allowed to be polluted by public executions; and often, when the vessel is detained by adverse winds, there may be a very considerable delay. As I was saying, the ship was garlanded [stephein] on the day before the trial, and this was the reason why Socrates lay in prison and was not put to death until long after he was condemned.
I return to a question I posed the last time. Where was Plato when Socrates died? Plato was “weak” and couldn’t attend. To repeat, the single naming of Plato in the Phaedo is the only place, besides the single naming of Plato in the Apology, where Plato is mentioned at all in Plato’s own works. This authorial self-effacement is relevant to the objectives of Socratic dialogue.
Earlier, we saw that Socrates composes a Hymn to Apollo, without the medium of writing (the word for ‘compose’ in this context is poieîn ‘make’ - not graphein ‘write’). The word that we translate as ‘hymn’ is prooimion. This word conveys the idea that a perfect beginning of a song is metonymically a perfect song in its entirety, even though that song is only potential in the prooimion.
We now see, in the passage we are considering, that Theseus is the s"t#r of the city of Athens. The hero as s"t#r or ‘savior’ has been a central theme in this course. The occasion of ‘salvation’ here is the archetypal the"ria of Theseus to Delos, where he celebrates his ‘salvation’ in Crete. In Plutarch’s Life of Theseus, we can read the details about the prototypical celebration in Crete. This celebration is re-enacted in the the"ria from Athens to Delos and back. In Delos, the labyrinth of Crete is re-enacted by way of the “crane dance” at the festival of Apollo at Delos. The “crane dance” is the dance of the Cretan labyrinth (the labyrinth retraces the dance-steps of the “crane dance”). Delos is the site of this festival of Apollo, which becomes in the Phaedo the ritual frame for the pathos of Socrates. As we remember from the Apology, Socrates himself refers to his
ordeal as his pathos, which he compares to the pathos of heroes in the heroic world.
The ship of the the"ria in ritual is a recreation of the prototypical ship of the the"ria in myth. Notionally, it is the same ship, except that each of its parts has been replaced, one by one, in the course of time, so that the ship in the time of Socrates would have no piece in it that goes all the way back to the heroic age of Theseus. And yet, it is materially the exact replica of the “original” ship. The ship of the the"ria in myth is the absolute ship, the ideal ship, comparable to an ideal ship in Plato’s theory of Forms, whereas the ship of the real world is not absolute, not ideal, just as the things of this world are not real in terms of Plato’s theory of Forms. The word in Greek that we translate as ‘Form’ is idea, and it is from this Greek word that such English words as idea, ideal, and idealism are borrowed. Of these borrowings, the adjective and noun ideal come closest to the philosophical concept of Form. (Another word that is used in Plato to express the idea of Form is eidos, which also conveys the idea of ‘genre’.)
In general, I should stress that Plato’s Phaedo is like an introductory course on Plato’s theory of the Forms. “Forms 101,” as it were.
The idea of salvation, which is notionally started (“launched”) by the notionally original the"ria of Theseus, is to be continued by the theory that is generated by dialogue.
What is to be saved in Plato’s Phaedo is not the s"ma of Socrates, not even his psukh# per se, but the word - that is, the word that he gets started by way of dialogue.
These observations are relevant to the words stephein ‘to garland, to make garlands for’, and the derivative noun stephanos ‘garland’ that we saw in passage A. In Modern Greek, the word is stephan# (stepháni), likewise meaning ‘garland’. In the neuter plural, Modern Greek stéphana means ‘wedding garlands’; note the metonymy embedded in the phrase used to offer best wishes to newlywed couples: kalá stéphana. In one Modern Greek phrasebook for English-speakers, this expression is translated ‘may you have a quick and happy wedding’.
Pictures of garlands. One picture shows an assortment of garlands on sale in a marketplace. The flowers that make up the garland in this case are sempreviva (in Venetian Italian, it means ‘eternally alive’; the local Greeks think it is a local Greek word). The locale is Cythera.
The ritual of ‘garlanding’ (stephein) the stern of a ship is attested as far back as the 1600s BCE. In the frescos of Thera, we see the painting of a ship that features a cabin on the stern festooned with garlands. This practice survives to this day in the Greek-speaking world, on such festive occasions as Easter.
When it comes to the treatment of traditional visions of immortalization involving Hades as a transition, we must beware of the translator’s (Jowett’s) assumptions as embedded in his translations. I offer the reader a general warning about Jowett’s translation “in the world below” (the Greek is simply ekei ‘over there’). In eschatological contexts, as in the Phaedo, the concept of Hades or “underworld” tends to be shaded over in the original Greek of Plato.
The mystical language of immortalization is foregrounded in the Phaedo, as we see from the following passage:
Plato Phaedo (69c):
And I conceive that the founders of the mysteries [teletai] had a real meaning and were not mere
triflers when they intimated in a figure [or ‘riddle’ = verb of ainigma] long ago that he who passes without initiation [amu#tos] and without ritual induction [atelestos, from verb of telos] into the world below [= Hades] will live in a slough, but that he who arrives there after purification [= verb of katharsis] and induction [verb of telos] will dwell [verb of oikos] with the gods. For many, as they say in the mysteries [teletai], are the bearers of the thyrsos [narth#x], but few are the bakkhoi [= devotees of Bacchus].
We may compare again the Christian aphorism mentioned before: ‘many are called but few are chosen’ (Matthew 22:14). Examples of the unchosen are such “half-baked” initiates as Kadmos and Teiresias in the Bacchae of Euripides.
What is at stake for Plato’s Socrates is not the resurrection of the body or the preservation of the
psukh# but the resurrection of the word.
The de-emphasis of corporeality can be seen even in the way the participants in the dialogue talk about remembering Socrates. It is *not* a matter of total recall. We see two people talking about Socrates, and one of the two, a man called Phaedo, makes extensive “quotations” from what he remembers Socrates said.
When there is talk in the Phaedo about calling Socrates to mind, ‘to bring him to recollection’, the expression is memn#sthai + genitive. This is not total recall, which is expressed via memn#sthai + accusative.
Also relevant to the question of corporeality is the word pharmakon in passage A. Let me stress, from the start, that pharmakon means not just ‘poison’; a better translation is ‘potion’. A potion is a ritual drink (notice that Socrates has to drink the pharmakon). The semantics of libation are in effect. Note that Socrates, at the very end, wants to pour part of the potion into the ground as a libation. To whom? Here the idea of daimonion once again comes to mind.
The effect of the pharmakon is either death or resurrection. In Plato’s Phaedrus, we learn that Socrates thinks of the technology of writing as a pharmakon. The pharmakon is the letter, that is, literacy, writing. The letter can kill the word or it can resurrect the word. We must keep this theme in mind when we come to the passage, later on, where Socrates says that he is ‘speaking like a book’. Or, more literally, he is speaking like an author who is communicating not by way of living speech but by way of speech embedded in a book. We see here a meditation on the fact that we as readers are introduced to Plato - or, in Plato’s terms, to Socrates - by way of a book.
Initially, Socrates speaks to us as if he were a book, and yet, it is the live speech of dialogue that makes the word come alive. What matters is not his wording per se but the words that he is starting in dialogue, to be continued by his interlocutors and by succeeding interlocutors of generations to come, generation after generation, notionally forever. That is why the dialogues as framed by Plato are not authorial. That is why Socrates is not an author.
Plato’s Phaedo (59d-60a):
On the last morning the meeting was earlier than usual; [59e] this was owing to our having heard on the previous evening that the sacred ship had arrived from Delos, and therefore we agreed to meet very early at the accustomed place. On our going to the prison, the jailer who answered the door, instead of admitting us, came out and told us to wait and he would call us. “For the Eleven,” he said, “are now with Socrates; they are taking off his chains, and giving orders that he is to die today.” He soon returned and said that we might come in. [60a] On entering we found Socrates just released from chains, and Xanthippe, whom you know, sitting by him, and holding his child in her arms. When she saw us she uttered a cry and said, as women will: “O Socrates, this is the last time that either you will converse with your friends, or they with you.” Socrates turned to Crito and said: “Crito, let someone take her home.” Some of Crito’s people accordingly led her away, crying out and beating herself.
We see from this passage the terminus of the sacred time frame of the pathos of Socrates. The defining moment is now at hand. Consider the use of the word h"ra by Socrates in the Apology.
Note that the figure of Xanthippe with the child is more like that of Andromache with Astyanax than what is imagined in later philosophical traditions. Xanthippe laments the end of opportunities to have dialogues with Socrates in person. She laments this termination not only for the friends of Socrates, but also, implicitly, for herself. When Socrates says “take her away!” it is not so much an unfeeling attitude toward his wife. It is more a matter of Plato’s own compartmentalization of family vs. friends. When Socrates chooses to take a bath before his death, his gesture is worded as an act of consideration toward his wife and other women kinfolk. Of course it is also a symbolic gesture. No laments for Socrates. No bathing of Socrates’ corpse by the women of his family after he dies: no, he wants to take his last bath while he is still alive. All the sequences of funerary practice, which is the ideological basis of both the cult of the dead and hero-cult, seem to be challenged by Socrates.
Plato’s Phaedo (60e-61b):
In the course of my life I have often had intimations in dreams “that I should make music [mousik#].” The same dream came to me sometimes in one form, and sometimes in another, but always saying the same or nearly the same words: Make and cultivate music [mousik#], said the dream. [61a] And hitherto I had imagined that this was only intended to exhort and encourage me
in the study of philosophy, which has always been the pursuit of my life, and is the noblest and best of music [mousik#]. The dream was bidding me to do what I was already doing, in the same way that the competitor in a race is called on by the spectators to run when he is already running. But I was not certain of this, as the dream might have meant music [mousik#] in the popular sense of the word, and being under sentence of death, and the festival giving me a respite, I thought that I should be safer if I engaged with the holiness, [61b] and, in obedience to the dream, composed a few verses before I departed. And first I made a hymn [humnos] in honor of the god of the festival, and then considering that a poet, if he is really to be a poet or maker, should not only put words together but make stories [muthoi], and as I am not a maker of stories [muthologikos], I took some fables [muthoi] of Aesop, which I had ready at hand and knew, and turned them into verse.
I repeated this passage here because I need to stress once again the symbolic value of the humnos
‘hymn’ as an inauguration of “music” still to come.
Plato’s Phaedo (88c-89c):
[[Here Echecrates interrupts the narrative of Phaedo containing the dialogue of Socrates with Phaedo and others. The interruption of the narrative is like a derailment of the dialogue contained by the narrative.]]
Ech. There I feel with you - I do, Phaedo, and when you were speaking, I was beginning to ask myself the same question: [88d] What argument can I ever trust again? For what could be more convincing than the argument of Socrates, which has now fallen into discredit? That the psukh# is a tuning [harmonia] is a doctrine which has always had a wonderful attraction for me, and, when mentioned, came back to me at once, as my own original conviction. And now I must begin again and find another argument which will assure me that when the man is dead the psukh# dies not with him. Tell me, I beg, [88e] how did Socrates proceed? Did he appear to share the unpleasant feeling which you mention? or did he receive the interruption calmly and give a sufficient answer? Tell us, as exactly as you can, what passed.
[[Here the narrative of Phaedo containing the dialogue of Socrates with Phaedo and others is resumed after the interruption, after the derailment.]]
Phaed. Often, Echecrates, as I have admired Socrates, I never admired him more than at that moment. [89a] That he should be able to answer was nothing, but what astonished me was, first, the gentle and pleasant and approving manner in which he regarded the words of the young men, and then his quick sense of the wound which had been inflicted by the argument, and his ready application of the healing art. He might be compared to a general rallying his defeated and broken army, urging them to follow him and return to the field of argument.
Ech. How was that?
Phaed. You shall hear, for I was close to him on his right hand, seated on a sort of stool, [89b]
and he on a couch which was a good deal higher. Now he had a way of playing with my hair, and then he smoothed my head, and pressed the hair upon my neck, and said: Tomorrow, Phaedo, I suppose that these fair locks of yours will be severed. Yes, Socrates, I suppose that they will, I replied. Not so if you will take my advice. What shall I do with them? I said. Today, he replied, and not tomorrow, if this argument dies and cannot be brought to life again [anabi"sasthai] by us, you and I will both shave our locks; [89c] and if I were you, and could not maintain my ground against Simmias and Cebes, I would myself take an oath, like the Argives, not to wear hair any more until I had renewed the conflict and defeated them. Yes, I said, but Herakles himself is said not to be a match for two. Summon me then, he said, and I will be your Iolaos until the sun goes down. I summon you rather, I said, not as Herakles summoning Iolaos, but as Iolaos might summon Herakles.
As David Elmer pointed out (2004), we see here the first moment in the inset narrative of Phaedo where “the frame narrative breaks into the inset narrative” (this moment happens when Echecrates interrupts the inset narrative of Phaedo). Elmer continues: “This moment is just exactly after Socrates has asked someone else to respond to the objections of Simmias. In the inset narrative, Socrates then turns to Phaedo himself, who is the frame narrator to Echecrates.” After the objections of Simmias and Cebes, the dialogic partners of Socrates are at a loss, clearly. So the interruption by Echecrates happens at the moment when the flow of argumentation has in any case been interrupted by the inability of the dialogic partners to come up with a good response to the objections of Simmias and Cebes. The dialogic partners’ model of immortality, which is pictured for them as the perfect tuning (harmonia) of the seven-string lyre, has been shattered. It is also being shattered for Echecrates, who expresses his feelings of despair to Phaedo as he interrupts Phaedo’s inset narrative. (On the concept of the shattered tuning . . . GN compares the tragedy Thamyras by Sophocles, where the lyre of Thamyras the singer disintegrates while he is playing it.)
To compare Socrates to Herakles as someone that needs to be ‘summoned’ in an hour of need has one meaning in the world of heroes (the young nephew Iolaos ‘summons’ Herakles to help him in his hour of need - and vice versa) and another meaning in the world of the present, when worshippers are worshipping heroes (the worshippers ‘summon’ Herakles to help them in their hour of need). When Herakles is fighting solo against two, even he needs the help of his nephew Iolaos. After Socrates is dead, Phaedo will not be able to fight against the likes of Simmias and Cebes. That would be a one-against-two fight. The dialogic partner of Socrates, Phaedo, wants to summon Socrates from the dead as if Socrates were Herakles. Phaedo can be Iolaos to the Socrates as Herakles, although Socrates thinks that he can be Iolaos and let Phaedo be Herakles in a debate with Simmias and Cebes. Either way, Socrates would be dead, and the living dialogic partner would have to team up with the dead words of Socrates who is shown engaging in dialogue inside a book. These dead words can be made to come alive only in a “live dialogue.”
Plato Phaedo (102d): He [= Socrates] added, laughing, I am speaking like a book
[sungraphik"s erein], but I believe that what I am now saying is true.
Plato Phaedo (117a-118a):
Crito, when he heard this, made a sign to the servant, and the servant went in, and remained for some time, and then returned with the jailer carrying a cup of poison [pharmakon]. Socrates said: You, my good friend, who are experienced in these matters, shall give me directions how I am to proceed. The man answered: You have only to walk about [117b] until your legs are heavy, and then to lie down, and the poison will act. At the same time he handed the cup to Socrates, who in the easiest and gentlest manner, without the least fear or change of color or feature, looking at the man with all his eyes, Echecrates, as his manner was, took the cup and said: What do you say about making a libation out of this cup to any god? May I, or not? The man answered: We only prepare, Socrates, just so much as we deem enough. I understand, he said: [117c] yet I may and must pray to the gods to prosper my journey from this to that other world—may this, then, which is my prayer, be granted to me. Then holding the cup to his lips, quite readily and cheerfully he drank off the poison. And hitherto most of us had been able to control our sorrow; but now when we saw him drinking, and saw too that he had finished the draught, we could no longer forbear, and in spite of myself my own tears were flowing fast; so that I covered my face and wept over myself, for certainly I was not weeping over him, [117d] but at the thought of my own calamity in having lost such a companion. Nor was I the first, for Crito, when he found himself unable to restrain his tears, had got up and moved away, and I followed; and at that moment. Apollodorus, who had been weeping all the time, broke out in a loud cry which made cowards of us all. Socrates alone retained his calmness: What is this strange outcry? he said. I sent away the women mainly in order that they might not offend in this way, [117e] for I have heard that a man should die in peace. Be quiet, then, and have patience. When we heard that, we were ashamed, and refrained our tears; and he walked about until, as he said, his legs began to fail, and then he lay on his back, according to the directions, and the man who gave him the poison now and then looked at his feet and legs; and after a while he pressed his foot hard and asked him if he could feel; and he said, no; and then his leg, [118a] and so upwards and upwards, and showed us that he was cold and stiff. And he felt them himself, and said: When the poison reaches the heart, that will be the end. He was beginning to grow cold about the groin, when he uncovered his face, for he had covered himself up, and said (they were his last words)—he said: Crito, I owe the sacrifice of a rooster to Asklepios; will you remember to pay the debt? The debt shall be paid, said Crito; is there anything else? There was no answer to this question; but in a minute or two a movement was heard, and the attendants uncovered him; his eyes were set, and Crito closed his eyes and mouth. Such was the end, Echecrates, of our friend, whom I may truly call the wisest, and most just, and best of all the men whom I have ever known.
In the figure of the hero Asklepios, we see the theme of resurrection. For Socrates, what matters is the resurrection of the word.
Death is the necessary pharmakon for leaving the everyday life and for entering the everlasting cycle of resurrecting the word.
Dialogue 24. The Hero as savior.
The key word here is the noun s"t#r ‘savior’; its derivative is s"t#ria ‘safety, salvation’. Earlier we saw the verb s"zein ‘save; be a s"t#r for someone’ (either by ‘bringing to safety’ or, mystically, by ‘bringing back to life’).
A1. As I already said before, I am not borrowing this concept of “savior” and “salvation” from Christian discourse. Christian discourse inherited the words s"t#r ‘savior’ (noun) and s"zein (verb) ‘save; be a s"t#r (for someone)’ from pre-Christian phases of the Greek language.
A2. Two levels of meaning: saving of life (on the surface), saving of afterlife (underneath the surface).
[[I insert here a remark on the second of two “anti-heroes” as featured in this course. The first of these anti-heroes, as I argued in sessions 21 and 23, is Socrates. The second, as we will now see, is the figure of Jesus as presented for example in the Gospel according to Mark.
I offer two focus passages, one taken from Mark 4:35-41, focusing on “heroic deeds,” and the other taken from Mark 16:1-8, focusing on the themes of the empty tomb and the resurrection.
The first of these two focus passages shows the integration of the figure of Jesus with the superhuman forces of the cosmos.
The second of these two focus passages challenges directly the idea of the hero’s body as a talisman of fertility and prosperity for the local community that venerates it.
The “empty tomb” theme of the New Testament, which is considered the oldest element in the development of the Passion Narrative, can be analyzed as an alternative to ancient Greek practices of venerating tombs of cult heroes - and to ancient Jewish and Muslim practices of venerating tombs of prophets and other figures of the Hebrew Bible, including the tomb of Abraham and Sarah in Hebron. This theme of the “empty” tomb is replaced in the era of the emperor Constantine (fourth century CE) by the rival theme of the “Holy Sepulcher,” which is a reversion to the older heroic model of the cult-hero’s tomb. As for the theme of Jesus’ resurrection and subsequent epiphanies in the New Testament, it can be compared with the rival “pagan” theme of the “double resurrection” and subsequent epiphanies of the epic and cult hero Protesilaos in the dialogue crafted by Philostratus.]]
A3. Now I return to the topic of non-Christian models of heroes. In the historical context of ancient Greek song culture, it is better to avoid the word “religion” and to speak instead in terms of myth/ritual symbiosis (that is, in terms of what you say [myth] and what you do [ritual] in sacred space; remember: “sacred space” does not have to be a physical space, and it can even be a state of mind).
A4. The history of Greek “religion” is the story of the eventual destabilization of this symbiosis.
A5. Plato has an important role in this destabilization, and yet he has Socrates saying at the end of the Republic ...
Plato Republic (10.621b8-c1): Socrates is quoted as saying, with reference to the “Myth of Er”: kai ho muthos es"th# ‘and the myth was saved’.
A6. Aristotle muses about becoming ever more solitary in old age and becoming ever more fond of muthos (fr. 668 ed. Rose, via “Demetrius” 144: hos"i gar autit#s kai mon"t#s eimi, philomuthoteros gegona).
A7. Patterns of myth/ritual symbiosis can be seen most clearly in small-scale societies, e.g. the Yukuna: we will return to this topic towards the end of this dialogue.
B1. In this course, we have seen some important images of the hero as savior. The most important of these is Achilles and the solitary lighthouse of his tomb on the Hellespont, shining a light of
salvation for sailors who are lost at sea. There is a concise write-up of this image in {LINK} Best of the Achaeans Ch.20@20-28. We will see this image when we consider Passage C. To introduce Passage C, I start with Passage B:
Iliad XVIII 202-214:
But Achilles dear to Zeus arose, and Athena flung her tasseled aegis round his strong shoulders; she crowned his head with a halo of golden cloud from which she kindled a glow of gleaming fire. As the smoke that goes up into heaven from some city that is being beleaguered on an island far out at sea - all day long do men sally from the city and fight their hardest, and at the going down of the sun the line of beacon fires blazes forth, flaring high for those that dwell near them to behold, if so be that they may come with their ships and save them - even so did the light flare from the head of Achilles.
B2. Here we see a preview, featuring ‘beacon fires’ in a besieged city. The population is calling for help, and the flames of their beacon fires are compared to the light that comes out of the head of the yet-unarmed Achilles.
C1. Now, we come to the picture of the light coming from beacon fires in a lighthouse, and the light from these beacon fires is the image that is being compared to the light from the bronze shield of the armed Achilles.
Iliad XIX 372-379:
He [Achilles] slung the silver-studded sword of bronze about his shoulders, and then took up the shield so great and strong that shone afar with a splendor as of the moon. As the light seen by sailors from out at sea [pontos], when men have lit a fire in their homestead high up among the mountains, but the sailors are carried out to sea [pontos] by wind and storm far from the haven where they would be - even so did the gleam of Achilles’ wondrous shield strike up into the heavens.
D1. Notice that the reflection of light from the surface of the bronze Shield projects an image of salvation: it is the s#ma ‘tomb’ of the hero Achilles, which is like a lighthouse. This s#ma is situated on the Hellespont.
Odyssey xxiv 71-94:
But when the flames of Hephaistos had consumed you, we gathered your [= Achilles’] white bones at daybreak and laid them in ointments and in pure wine. Your mother brought us a golden vase to hold them - gift of Dionysos, and work of Hephaistos himself; in this we mingled your bleached bones with those of Patroklos who had gone before you, and separate we enclosed also those of Antilokhos, who had been closer to you than any other of your comrades now that Patroklos was no more. Over these the host of the Argives built a noble tomb, on a point jutting out over the open Hellespont [Hell#spontos], that it might be seen from far out upon the sea by those now living and by them that shall be born hereafter. ... Thus even in death your kleos, Achilles, has not been lost, and your name lives evermore among all humankind.
D2. The word Hell#spontos means ‘the crossing of Hell#’.
D3. For the effect of light reflected by bronze, compare the bronze relief sculpture (the sculptor was St. Gaudens) showing the faces of soldiers of an all-black regiment marching to their death in 1863; their officer, Col. Robert Gould Shaw (a Harvard graduate) died with them; their story is told in the film Glory. You can find the relief sculpture in front of the statehouse on Beacon Hill in Boston. Try to see it at the last light of the sunset of the summer solstice.
Herodotus 7.189:
The Persian fleet put to sea and reached the beach of the Magnesian land, between the polis of Kasthanaia and the headland of Sepias. The first ships to arrive moored close to land, with the others after them at anchor; since the beach was not large, they lay at anchor in rows eight ships deep out into the sea [pontos]. Thus they spent the night, but at dawn out of a clear and windless sky a storm descended upon them and the sea began to boil. A strong east wind blew, which the people living in those parts call Hellesponti#s. Those who felt the wind rising or had proper mooring dragged their ships up on shore ahead of the storm and so survived with their ships. But the wind carried those ships caught out in the open against the rocks called the Ovens at Pelion or onto the beach. Some ships were wrecked on the Sepian headland, others were cast ashore at the polis of Meliboia or at Kasthanaia. The storm was indeed unbearable. ... There was no counting how many grain-ships and other vessels were destroyed. ... The storm lasted three days. Finally the Magi made offerings and cast spells upon the wind, sacrificing also to Thetis and the Nereids. Thus they made the wind stop on the fourth day, or perhaps it died down on its own. They sacrificed to Thetis after hearing from the Ionians the story that it was at this place that Peleus had abducted her, and that all the headland of Sepias belonged to her and to the other Nereids.
E1. Sepias means “the place of the sepia.” It was here, says the tradition, that Peleus and Thetis
conceived Achilles.
E2. Another important image is... Odysseus as the reintegrated king and the reintegrated body politic in the second half of the Odyssey.
E3. Yet another... Hesiod, bearer of the scepter of truth, whose authoritative word replaces kings. In the Works and Days, he speaks of the Islands of the Blessed, the place where heroes are immortalized and olbioi.
F1. Yet another... Ino as the White Goddess. Her corpse will “one day” come alive as the White Goddess: remember how Odysseus is saved from drowning at the end of Odyssey v. See Passage F.
from Odyssey v 332-353: When he [Odysseus] was in this plight, Ino daughter of Kadmos, also called Leukothea, saw him. She had formerly been a mere mortal, but had been since raised to the rank of a marine goddess. Seeing in what great distress Odysseus now was, she had compassion upon him, and, rising like a sea-gull from the waves, took her seat upon the raft. “My poor good man,” said she, “... swim to the Phaeacian coast where better luck awaits you. And here, take my veil and put it round your chest; it is enchanted, and you can come to no harm so long as you wear it. As soon as you touch land take it off, throw it back as far as you can into the sea, and then go away again.” With these words she took off her veil and gave it him. Then she dived down again like a sea-gull and vanished beneath the seething dark waters.
F2. Yet another... Oedipus the king turned scapegoat.
F3. Yet another... Pentheus, dismembered and “remembered” in Euripides Bacchae 881 and 901:
ho ti kalon philon aei ‘whatever is beautiful is always philon’; cf. Romulus in Roman myth.
G1. Yet another... Socrates in the Phaedo: he saves humans from the fear of death. Consider the image of a fish poking its head above the water (109e-110a), like a drowning man coming up for air. At the end of the Phaedo, Socrates says: sacrifice a rooster to Asklepios. This hero was the son of Apollo, and he had special powers of healing. Asklepios also had the power of bringing the dead back to life. Some interpret Socrates’ final instruction to mean simply that death is a cure for life. But think of this: you sacrifice the rooster on the night before, and then you will still be
hearing other roosters crowing in the morning after the sacrifice. As Socrates says, do not cut off the locks of your hair, do not fail to bring the arguments back to life again. Dialectic comes back to life every time you engage in “the Socratic method.” See Passages G and H.
again, from Plato Phaedo (89b):
Now he had a way of playing with my hair, and then he smoothed my head, and pressed the hair upon my neck, and said: Tomorrow, Phaedo, I suppose that these fair locks of yours will be severed. Yes, Socrates, I suppose that they will, I replied. Not so if you will take my advice. What shall I do with them? I said. Today, he replied, and not tomorrow, if this argument dies and cannot be brought to life again by us, you and I will both shave our locks.
again, from Plato Phaedo (117e and following):
... then he lay on his back, according to the directions, and the man who gave him the poison now and then looked at his feet and legs; and after a while he pressed his foot hard and asked him if he could feel; and he said, no; and then his leg, and so upwards and upwards, and showed us that he was cold and stiff. And he felt them himself, and said: When the poison reaches the heart, that will be the end. He was beginning to grow cold about the groin, when he uncovered his face, for he had covered himself up, and said (they were his last words) - he said: Crito, I owe the sacrifice of a rooster to Asklepios; will you remember to pay the debt? The debt shall be paid, said Crito; is there anything else? There was no answer to this question; but in a minute or two a movement was heard, and the attendants uncovered him; his eyes were set, and Crito closed his eyes and mouth. Such was the end, Echecrates, of our friend, whom I may truly call the wisest, and most just, and best of all the men whom I have ever known.
H1. Yet another... Protesilaos (in Herodotus). Concise write-up in {LINK} Pindar’s Homer Ch. 9@28 till the end of the chapter.
It is all a matter of telos.
I1. Yet another... A “hero” not yet mentioned: Alexander the Great.
I2. Hegel said: Achilles, the ideal youth of poetry, commences the Greek achievement; Alexander, the ideal youth of reality, concludes it.
I3. Alexander kept a master copy of the Iliad and a dagger under his “pillow” [= headrest]; the dagger marks him as the chief priest of the Macedonians. What is the symbolism of the Iliad under his headrest?
I4. Alexander claims descent from Achilles, on his mother’s side; he sacrifices at the s#ma of Achilles at Troy; Alexander’s own tomb is called the s"ma.
I4. Alexander Romance, 3rd century of our era; a key figure is Nektanebo II, the last Egyptian pharaoh, who in real life fled Egypt in 343. In the narrative of the Alexander Romance, Nektanebo and not Philip of Macedon is the real father of Alexander. Since the pharaoh is the reincarnation of the god Ammon, who is the “Zeus” of the Egyptians, Alexander is the son of the Egyptian Zeus in terms of the Alexander Romance.
I5. Menander the Rhetorician reports: Alexander is to be addressed as son of Zeus.
I6. In the Alexander Romance, birds at the edge of the earth say to him: “Alexander, stop standing up to the gods and go back to your palace at home and stop striving to ascend the road to the heavens.” See Passage I and J.
One is no longer at home anywhere, so in the end one longs to be back where one can somehow be at home because it is the only place where one would wish to be at home: and that is the world of Greece.—Friedrich Nietzsche.
In the Alexander Romance, birds at the edge of the earth say to him: “Alexander, stop standing up to the gods and go back to your palace at home and stop striving to ascend the road to the heavens.” When he reaches the Island of the Blessed, Alexander sees his own obelisk in a dream (the obelisk marks his starting point, at “home” in Alexandria) and a figure with gleaming eyes at the Island of the Blessed (this figure marks the extremity of his quest): Alexander will reach the status of a god, will have an oikos in Alexandria, as a nekros.
J1. Alexander claimed descent from Achilles, on his mother’s side; he sacrificed at the s#ma of Achilles at Troy; to repeat, Alexander’s own tomb in Alexandria was called the s"ma.
J2. Water of life myth in Alexander Romance.
J3. When he reaches the Island of the Blessed, Alexander sees his own obelisk in a dream (the obelisk marks his starting point, at “home” in Alexandria) and a figure with gleaming eyes at the Island of the Blessed (this figure marks the extremity of his quest): Alexander will reach the status of a god, will have an oikos in Alexandria, as a nekros. There is no place like home. See again Passage I and J.
J4. Let us return to the concept of the Yukuna, = myth. For this society, myth *is* their identity. Without this identity, there is no point in being a Yukuna. An anthropologist actually recorded a Yukuna in the act of saying this.
In Modern Greek folklore, the Daughter of Alexander, the surviving Nereid of modern times, has the habit of surfacing for air on the occasion of sea-storms. When asked, she will always tell the pilot of a ship beset by the storm: z#i kai basileuei kai ton kosmon kurieuei. ‘He lives and reigns and rules the cosmos.’
So long as the concept of the hero is alive, the word is alive, and vice versa.
Gregory Nagy
“One is no longer at home anywhere, so in the end one longs to be back where one can somehow be at home because it is the only place where one would wish to be at home: and that is the world of Greece.” -
Friedrich Nietzsche [[from part Two of “Der Wille zur Macht”]]
Time. The time-span covered extends from the eighth through fourth centuries before our era (unless otherwise noted, all dates are “BC” or “BCE” = “Before Common Era”). Some of the sources we are using date from later periods, however: for example, Pausanias is dated to the second century CE (= “Common Era”) and Philostratus, to the early third century CE.) The term “ancient” will include
“archaic” (up to roughly the middle of the fifth century), “Classical” (roughly, the second half of the fifth century), and “post-Classical” (fourth century and beyond). A convenient point for dividing “Classical” and “post-Classical” is the death of Socrates in 399 BCE. A convenient stopping-point for this course is the death of Alexander the
Great in 323 BCE.
Place. In the ancient world of the “classical” period, “Greece” was not really a “country” or a “nation,” as we ordinarily think of these terms. Rather, it was a cultural constellation of competing city states that had a single language in common, Greek. Among the most prominent of the ancient Greek city states were Athens, Sparta, Corinth, Argos, and Thebes, all of them located in the Mediterranean region that we know today as “modern Greece” or “Hellas.” There were also other prominent ancient Greek city states in other Mediterranean regions. To the East, on the coast of Asia Minor, which is now part of the modern state of Turkey, were Greek cities like Miletus and Smyrna (now Izmir); facing the coast of Asia Minor were Greek island states like Samos and Chios. Further to the North was a federation of Greek cities on the island of Lesbos and on the facing mainland of Asia Minor. Still further to the North, guarding the entrance to the Black Sea, was the Greek city of Byzantium, later to be called Constantinople (now Istanbul). To the South, in African Lybia, was the Greek city of Cyrene. Further to the East in Northern Africa, in Egypt, was the arguably greatest of all Greek cities in the ancient world, Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great in the fourth century BCE. To the West were other great Greek cities like Syracuse on the island of Sicily as well as Tarentum and Naples in what is now the modern state of Italy. Still further to the West, in what is now the modern state of France, was the Greek city of Massalia (now Marseille).
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The ancient Greeks would agree that they shared the same language, despite the staggering variety of local dialects. They would even agree that they shared a civilization, though they would be intensely contentious about what exactly their shared civilization would be. Each city-state had its own institutions, that is, its own government, constitution, laws, calendars, religious practices, and so on. Both the sharing and the contentiousness lie at the root of the very essence of the city-state. What I am translating here as “city-state” is the Greek word polis. This is the word from which our words political and politics are derived.
Here is a basic observation about ancient Greek society: ʻThe human being is an organism of the polisʼ - Aristotle, Politics I 1253a2–3. (Often mistranslated as ʻMan is a political animalʼ.) Here we see the basis for the concept of civilization. In other words, human beings achieve their ultimate potential within a society that is the polis. From this point of view, the ultimate humanism is achieved politically.
Here are some basic aspects of Greek civilization that most ancient Greeks could agree about:
interpolitical festivals; primary examples: the Olympic festival (= “Olympics”) at Olympia, the Pythian festival at Delphi
interpolitical repositories of shared knowledge; primary example: Delphi 3. interpolitical poetry; primary examples: the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, the Theogony
and Works and Days of Hesiod.
I use “interpolitical” instead of “international” because I do not want to imply that each polis is a nation. In my own writings, I use a cover-term for “interpolitical”: Panhellenic. Panhellenism is the least common denominator of ancient Greek civilization.
The impulse of Panhellenism is already at work in Homeric and Hesiodic poetry. In the Iliad, the names “Achaeans” and “Danaans” and “Argives” are used synonymously in the sense of Panhellenes = “all Hellenes” = “all Greeks.”
We will start with Homer. Homer represents an interpolitical or Panhellenic perspective on the Greeks. Homeric poetry is not tied down to any one polis. It presents the least common denominator in the cultural education of the elite of all city-states. How can a narrative or “story” like the Iliad be an instrument of education? We will get to that question later.
In the Classical period, an authoritative source is on record as saying that Homer and Hesiod are the foundation for all civilization. That source is the 5th-century historian
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Herodotus (2.116–117). Note that Herodotus defines civilization primarily in terms of religion (the forms and functions of gods).
Finally, I have a point to make about ancient Greek religion: not only were the gods worshipped. Heroes too were worshipped. The worship of heroes was very much like ancestor worship. Besides the word worship, we may use the word cult, as in hero cult. Other relevant concepts are cultivate and culture. The concept of hero cult is one of the main topics of my book The Best of the Achaeans (1999).
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Key word for this hour: kleos ʻglory, fame, that which is heardʼ; or, ʻthe poem or song that conveys glory, fame, that which is heardʼ.
This word was used in ancient Greek poetry or song to refer to the poetry or the song that glorifies the heroes of the distant heroic past. Since the references to kleos in ancient Greek poetry and song make no distinction between poetry and song, I will simply use the word “song” hereafter. A specific form of poetry is epic, which is the medium of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey, and a general form of song is what we know today as lyric. I will have more to say later about epic and lyric.
The song of kleos glorifies not only the heroes of the distant past, which is a “heroic age.” It glorifies also the gods - as they “existed” in the heroic age and as they continued to “exist” for their worshippers at any given moment in historical time.
Why did the ancient Greeks glorify heroes? Partly because they worshipped not only gods but also heroes. This is a fundamental fact of ancient Greek history: the ancient Greeks practiced hero-worship. See Introduction 1; for detailed argumentation, I refer to Introduction 3, which is my article “The Epic Hero.” This article, to which I will often refer, is likewise available on the Heroes website.
Let us return to the main topic of this hour, as signaled by the key word kleos. This word was used to refer to both the medium and the message of the glory of heroes. The dictum of Marshall McLuhan applies here (his main interest was popular culture): the medium is the message.
I begin by concentrating on the medium of song as marked by the word kleos. In ancient Greece, kleos was the primary medium for communicating the concept of the hero, which is the primary topic (or “message”) of these 24 hours. (For other media that we will be studying here, see Introduction 1.)
Hour 1 Passage A. Iliad IX 410-414 In the Iliad, the main hero of the Iliad, Achilles,
is quoted as saying:
[410] My mother Thetis, goddess of the silver feet, tells me that there are two ways in which I may meet my end [telos]. If I stay here and fight, I shall lose my safe homecoming [nostos], but I shall have a glory [kleos] that is unwilting [aphthiton]: whereas if I go home [415] my glory [kleos] will perish, but it will be a long time before the end [telos] shall take me.
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This translation, based on that of Samuel Butler, has been adjusted by me to fit as accurately as possible the meaning of the original Greek. The original wording of Butler is as follows:
My mother Thetis tells me that there are two ways in which I may meet my end. If I stay here and fight, I will not return alive but my name will live for ever: whereas if I go home my name will die, but it will be long ere death shall take me.
This is a literary translation, not a literal one. In general, Butlerʼs translation of the Iliad is literary, meant to be pleasing to the ear when read out loud. In the case of this passage, it successfully captures the general idea of what is being said by Achilles. I focus our attention on the part that I highlighted:
I will not return alive but my name will live for ever.
In place of this literary version, I substituted a more literal translation of the original Greek, which is contained in one single verse:
I shall lose my safe homecoming [nostos], but I shall have a glory [kleos] that is unwilting [aphthiton].
Iliad Scroll IX verse 413
You notice I said “Scroll IX” of the Iliad, not “Book IX.” My intent was to drive home the reality of the “scrolls” or “rolls” of papyrus on which the performance-units of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey were written in the ancient world. In ancient Greek, these Homeric performance-units were called rhapsōidiai or ʻrhapsodiesʼ. From here on, I will use both ways of talking about such performance units: “Scroll IX” or “Rhapsody IX.”
In the next paragraph, I offer my interpretation of this verse. From here on, I will refer to this kind of interpretation as exegesis, which is an ancient Greek term referring to a close reading of a given text. In the course of my exegesis, I will be making a set of arguments that I try to encapsulate here in one thesis sentence:
In Iliad IX 413, the main hero of the Iliad leaves as his signature the kleos of his own epic, which turns out to be the Iliad.
Here, then, is my exegesis:
Achilles has started to understand the consequences of his decision to reject the option of a safe homecoming. He is in the process of deciding to choose the other option: he will stay at Troy and continue to fight in the Trojan War. Choosing this option will result in his death, and he is starting to understand that. In the fullness of time, he will be ready to give up his life in exchange for getting a kleos that will never ʻwiltʼ. Unlike natural flowers that
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go through the cycle of blossoming and then wilting, this kleos is an unnatural or we may even say “mutant” flower that will forever stay the same, never losing its color, aroma, and overall beauty. Here we see a very ancient theme that is built into the
traditional symbolism of kleos, which we will explore in more detail later. Like a natural flower, Achilles will ʻwiltʼ. But his kleos will never wilt because it is not a thing of nature: it is a thing of art, a song. This kleos is the story of Troy, the Iliad (the name of the poem, Iliad, means ʻstory of Ilionʼ; Ilion is the other name for ʻTroyʼ). Achilles the hero gets into the Iliad by dying a warriorʼs death. The consolation prize for his death is the kleos of the Iliad.
We can see a parallel theme in the tragedy Herakles, by Euripides: at line 350, the hero Linos is ʻwilted [phthitos] in his beautyʼ, but Apollo sings ʻhimʼ. By implication, the song of Linos thus becomes unwilting, just as the kleos of Achilles in Iliad IX 413 is aphthiton or ʻunwiltingʼ.
In ancient Greek culture, the distinction between art and nature, between the artificial and the natural, is not the same as in our culture. Their culture was what anthropologists call a song culture.
In our culture, artificial implies “unreal” and natural implies “real.” In a song culture, the artificial can be just as real as the natural. In a song culture, the words of an “artificial” song can be just as real as the words of “natural” speech in a real-life experience. In a song culture, the song can be just as real as life itself.1
In ancient Greek song culture, the “story” of the Iliad was felt to be not only “real” but also “true.” As we will see in later hours, the Homeric Iliad was felt to convey the ultimate truth-values of the ancient Greek song culture.
Because we English-speakers have a different cultural perspective on the word story, which implies fiction and is therefore not expected to be “true,” I will ordinarily use the more neutral word narrative in referring to the story of the Iliad and other such stories. I return to my point: in a song culture, the song can be just as real as life itself. To experience song in a song culture is to experience a real-life experience. For the Greek hero, as we will see, the ultimate real-life experience is death. (Which can be an alternative to sex, as we will also see.)
The hero must struggle against the fear of death, in order to achieve the most perfect death. Such a perfect moment must be recorded in song, which brings kleos ʻgloryʼ. In ancient Greek traditions, a heroʼs dying words can be pictured as a swan song (see Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1444-1445, where the last song of sorrow sung by Cassandra before she
A modern attempt to capture a sense of the “trueness” of song is a poem by Wallace Stevens, “Peter Quince at the Clavier” (1915).
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dies is pictured as her swan song). According to such traditions, the swan sings his most beautiful song at the moment of his death. We will consider this myth at the end of this course, when we read Platoʼs Phaedo: in that work, Socrates talks about the concept of the swan song at the moment of his own death by hemlock. What Socrates is quoted as saying in the Phaedo, as we will see, turns out to be his own swan song. That said, I am ready to move on to the next passage to be considered in this hour. Hour 1 Passage B. Iliad XI 218-227
Tell me now you Muses dwelling on Olympus, who, whether of the Trojans or of their
allies, was first to face Agamemnon? It was Iphidamas son of Antenor, a man both brave and of great stature, who was brought up in fertile Thrace the mother of sheep. Kissēs, his motherʼs father, brought him up in his own house when he was a child -
Kissēs, father to fair-cheeked Theano. When he reached manhood, Kissēs would have kept him there, and was for giving him his daughter in marriage, but as soon as he had married he went off to seek the kleos of the Achaeans with twelve ships that followed him.
This passage, like the first passage I analyzed, is about a heroʼs obsession with the goal of dying the right way and thus being remembered forever in the kleos or ʻgloryʼ of song. In this case, however, the hero is not a major figure of the Iliad, like Achilles. This other hero is mentioned only one time in the Iliad, in what amounts to a short story embedded inside the overall story of the Iliad.
To distinguish the story of the Iliad from such short stories that exist inside the story of the Iliad, I will as a rule refer to the Iliad as the Narrative, with an upper-case N, and to the stories inside the Iliad as narratives, with lower-case n. Such narratives are micro- narratives in comparison to the macro-Narrative that is the Iliad. Also, I will as a rule use the word Narrator in referring to ʻHomerʼ, who was a prehistoric culture-hero venerated by the ancient Greeks as the ultimate ʻsingerʼ of the Iliad and Odyssey. (I will return to the concept of culture-hero in later hours.)
In order to appreciate the poetic artistry that produced this micro-narrative, we must consider the artistic device of compression in the traditional media of ancient Greek songmaking. This device of compression is to be contrasted with the device of expansion. Whereas expansion produces macro-narratives, such as the monumental composition of the Iliad itself, compression produces micro-narratives, such as the story-within-a-story that we are now considering. In many ways, a “trailer” in todayʼs culture of film-making is produced by techniques of compression that resemble the techniques used in producing such micro- narratives in ancient Greek songmaking.
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I concentrate on the last verse of this micronarrative, which I now translate more literally:
Married, he went away from the bride chamber, looking for kleos from the Achaeans. Iliad XI 227
This micro-narrative is about a hero who decides to interrupt his honeymoon and go to Troy to fight on the side of the Trojans against the ʻAchaeansʼ, which is an epic name - along with ʻArgivesʼ and ʻDanaansʼ - for the Greeks of the heroic age. At this point in the narrative, he has just been killed in battle. Why did this hero give up his life, a life of newlywed bliss, just to fight and die at Troy? The Narrator of the macro- Narrative gives the answer to this question: this hero did it in order to get included in the kleos of the Greek song culture. He was ʻlooking for kleos from the Achaeansʼ. This kleos is the macro-Narrative of the Iliad.
We see here a hero getting into the Iliad by dying a warriorʼs death. To that extent, he is like the major hero Achilles, whose death is the core theme of the Iliad. But this minor hero, Iphidamas, dies for just a “bit part.” By contrast, Achilles will die for the lead part.
These “parts” in the epic master Narrative of the Iliad are just as real to these heroes as their very own lives are real to them. For Achilles, the major hero of the Iliad, the song of kleos is just as real as his very own life is real to him. The infinite time of the artificial song, the kleos aphthiton or ʻunwilting gloryʼ (IX 413), is just as real to him as the finite time of his natural life.
Similarly, the infinite time of the gods, who are everlasting, is just as real to Homeric heroes as is the finite time of their natural lives. The gods are “artificial” but real, just as kleos is “artificial” but real. Even the sky, which is the abode of the gods, is “artificial.” The movements of the celestial bodies - the patterns of the stars and even sunrise and sunset - belong to the realm of immortality. By contrast, the earth, which is the abode of humans, is “natural”: it is mortal territory. In hours coming up, I will have more to say about this opposition of mortal / natural and immortal / artificial.2
A second key word for this hour: hōra (plural hōrai) ʻseason, seasonality; time; timelinessʼ.
This word hōra stood for natural time, natural life, natural life-cycle. The English word hour is derived from ancient Greek hōra. Relevant are such expressions as The hour is near.
I offer further observations about this opposition in my article “As the World Runs Out of Breath: Metaphorical Perspectives on the Heavens and the Atmosphere in the Ancient World” (Nagy 1999), published in a book that has a specially evocative title: Earth, Air, Fire, Water: Humanistic Studies of the Environment.
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The goddess of hōra (plural hōrai) was Hēra (the two forms hōra and Hēra are linguistically related to each other). She was the goddess of seasons, in charge of making everything happen on time, happen in season, and happen in a timely way. Related to these two words hōra and Hēra is hērōs (singular) / hērōes (plural), meaning ʻheroʼ. As we will see, the precise moment when everything comes together for the hero is the moment of death. The hero is ʻon timeʼ at the hōra or ʻtimeʼ of death. In Passage A, we have seen Achilles thinking about his future death as glorified by the medium of kleos. In a sense, we see him “scripting” his death. And this “scripting” is all about timing. The timing of heroic death is all-important for the hero.
I see a point of comparison in modern popular culture. The example I have in mind comes from the film Bladerunner, directed by Ridley Scott (1982), based on the science fiction novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (1968). In particular, I have in mind the moment when Roy, an artificial human, “scripts” his own death, which is meant to be natural.
[[I show the clip “Like tears in rain. Time to die,” from Ridley Scottʼs Bladerunner (1982).]]
I draw attention here, for the first time, to a collection of film clips, with commentaries that accompany them, on the Heroes website, which is available (via user name and password) to those who are enrolled in the course.
We now turn to a model for Achilles in the “scripting” of his own death. This model is a hero from an earlier age, who exemplifies the perfect timing of his own death. That hero is Herakles, otherwise known by the Romanized version of his name, Hercules. Herakles is more than a model for Achilles. He is a model for all heroes. As we will see, his story brings to life the meaning of the ancient Greek word for hero, hērōs, and the meanings of the related words for seasonality, hōra, and for the goddess of seasonality herself, Hēra. As we will also see, even his name tells the story: Hēraklēs means ʻhe who has the kleos of Hēraʼ.
In the Iliad, we find an embedded micro-narrative that tells the story of Herakles as it relates to the story of Achilles in the macro-Narrative that is the Iliad. I quote the entire
micro- narrative:
Hour 1 Passage C. Iliad XIX 75-133
Then Agamemnon spoke, rising in his place, and not going into the middle of the assembly. “Danaan heroes,” said he, “attendants [therapontes] of Ares, it is well to listen when a man stands up to speak,
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[80] and it is not seemly to interrupt him, or it will go hard even with a practiced speaker. Who can either hear or speak in an uproar? Even the finest orator will be disconcerted by it. I will expound to [Achilles] the son of Peleus, and do you other Achaeans heed me and mark me well.
[85] Often have the Achaeans spoken to me of this matter and upbraided me, but it was not I who was responsible [aitios]: Zeus, and Fate [Moira], and the Fury [Erinys] that roams in darkness struck me with derangement [atē] when we were assembled on the day that I took from Achilles the prize that had been awarded to him.
[90] What could I do? All things are in the hands of the gods, and Atē, eldest of Zeusʼ daughters, shuts menʼs eyes to their destruction. She walks delicately, not on the solid earth, but hovers over the heads of men to make them stumble or to ensnare them.[95] Time was when she [Atē, goddess of derangement] fooled Zeus himself, who they say is greatest whether of gods or men; for Hera, female though she was, beguiled him on the day when Alkmene was to bring forth mighty Herakles in the fair city of Thebes.
[100] He told it out among the gods saying, ʻHear me all gods and goddesses, that I may speak even as I am minded; this day shall Eileithuia, helper of women who are in labor, bring a man child into the world who shall be lord over all that dwell about him
[105] who are of my blood and lineage.ʼ Then said Hera all crafty and full of guile, ʻYou will play false, and will not hold to the finality [telos] of your word. Swear me, O Olympian, swear me a great oath, that he
[110] who shall this day fall between the feet of a woman, shall be lord over all that dwell about him who are of your blood and lineage.ʼ Thus she spoke, and Zeus suspected her not, but swore the great oath, to his much ruing thereafter. For Hera darted down from the high summit of Olympus,
[115] and went in haste to Achaean Argos where she knew that the noble wife of Sthenelos son of Perseus then was. She being with child and in her seventh month, Hera brought the child to birth though there was a month still wanting, but she stayed the offspring of Alkmene, and kept back the goddesses of childbirth [Eileithuiai]. [120] Then she went to tell Zeus the son of Kronos, and said, ʻFather Zeus, lord of the lightning - I have a word for your ear. There is a fine child born this day, Eurystheus, son to Sthenelos the son of Perseus; he is of your lineage; it is well, therefore, that he should reign over the Argives.ʼ
[125] Then Zeus was stung to the very quick with grief [akhos], and in his rage he caught Atē by the hair, and swore a great oath that never should she again invade the starry heavens and Olympus, for she was the bane of all.
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[130] Then he whirled her round with a twist of his hand, and flung her down from the heavens so that she fell on to the fields of mortal men; and he was ever angry with
her when he saw his son groaning under the cruel labors [athloi] that Eurystheus laid upon him.”
The speaker here is Agamemnon, who is telling the story about Herakles and his inferior cousin Eurystheus. The goddess Hera accelerated the birth of Eurystheus and retarded the birth of Herakles, so that Eurystheus the inferior hero became king, entitled to give commands to the superior hero Herakles. As we see in the Herakles of Euripides, Herakles qualifies as the supreme hero of them all, the aristos ʻbestʼ of all humans (150; cf. 183, 209, 1306). Still, his heroic superiority to all is trumped by the social superiority of Eurystheus, who is entitled by birth to give orders to Herakles as his king. Similarly, the heroic superiority of Achilles is trumped by the social superiority of Agamemnon at the beginning of the Iliad.
The twist in this story told by Agamemnon, in micro-narrative form, is made clear by the macro-Narrative of the story that is the Iliad. In terms of Agamemnonʼs micro- narrative, the point of his story is that Atē the goddess of derangement made it possible for Zeus himself to make a mistake in the story about Herakles, just as she made it possible for Agamemnon to make a mistake in the story of the Iliad. In terms of the macro-Narrative of the Iliad, however, the parallel extends much further: the mistake in the story about Herakles and Eurystheus is that the hero who was superior as a hero became socially inferior, and that is also the mistake in the story about Achilles and Agamemnon as narrated in the overall Iliad: Achilles is superior to Agamemnon as a hero, but he is socially inferior to him, and that is why Agamemnon seemed to get away with the mistake of asserting his social superiority at the expense of Achilles. Like Herakles, who is constrained by the social superiority of Eurystheus and follows his commands in performing athloi ʻlaborsʼ (XIX 133), so also Achilles is constrained by the social superiority of Agamemnon in offering no physical resistance to the taking of the young woman Briseis, his war prize, by the inferior hero.
The performance of athloi ʻlaborsʼ by Herakles is mentioned in passing by this micro- narrative in the Iliad (XIX 133). As we are about to see from other sources, these Labors of Herakles lead to the kleos ʻgloryʼ that Herakles earns as a hero, and these labors would never have been performed if Hera the goddess of seasons had not made Herakles the hero unseasonal by being born after rather than before his inferior cousin. So, Herakles owes the kleos that he earns from his Labors to Hera. There are many different kinds of Labors performed by Herakles, as we see from an extensive retelling by Diodorus of Sicily (4.7.4-4.39). The work of this author, who lived in the first century BCE, is not part of our reading list of ancient texts, but I need to summarize his narrative here in order to highlight some essential features of the overall story of Herakles.
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One of the Labors of Herakles, as we see from Diodorus, was the foundation of the athletic festival of the Olympics. The story as retold by Diodorus (4.14.1-2) says that Herakles not only founded this major festival: he also competed in every athletic event on the prototypical occasion of the first Olympics. On that occasion, he won first prize in every Olympic event. This tradition about Herakles is the perfect illustration of a fundamental connection between the labor of a hero and the competition of an athlete at athletic events like the Olympics. As we will see later on, the heroʼs labor and the athleteʼs competition are the “same thing,” from the standpoint of ancient
Greek concepts of the hero. The Greek word for the heroʼs labor and for the athleteʼs competition is the same: athlos. Our English word athlete is derived from this Greek word.
Before we consider further Labors performed by Herakles, I offer a paraphrase of the beginning of the story of these Labors as narrated by Diodorus of Sicily:
The supreme god and king of gods, Zeus, impregnates Alkmene, a mortal woman (4.9.2). The wife of Zeus, the goddess Hera, is jealous; she decides to intervene in the life of the hero who is about to be born, Herakles (4.9.4). If this hero had been born on schedule, on time, in time, he would have been the supreme king of his time; but Hera makes sure that Herakles is born not on schedule, not on time, not in time. Heraklesʼ inferior cousin, Eurystheus, is born ahead of him and thus is fated to become king instead of Herakles (4.9.4-5). During all of Heraklesʼ lifetime, Eurystheus persecutes him directly; Hera persecutes him indirectly. The superior hero has to spend his entire lifespan obeying the orders of the inferior king (4.9.5). The orders add up to the Labors of Herakles.
In the Classical era (as represented by the second half of the fifth century BCE), the Labors of Herakles were represented most famously in relief sculptures that decorated the two longitudinal sides of the Temple of Zeus in Olympia, built in the fifth century BCE. These relief sculptures, the technical term for which is metopes, focused on a canonical number of twelve Labors performed by Herakles. The narrative of Diodorus of Sicily gives the following sequence of these Twelve Labors:
Herakles kills the Nemean Lion (4.11.3-4) - Herakles kills the Lernaean Hydra (4.11.5-6) - Herakles kills the Erymanthian Boar (4.12.1-2) - Herakles hunts down the Hind with the Golden Horn (4.13.1) - Herakles clears the Stymphalian Marsh of the birds that infested it (4.13.2) - Herakles clears the manure from the Augean Stables (4.13.2-3)
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Herakles captures the Cretan Bull alive and brings it to the Peloponnesus (4.13.4) - Herakles corrals the Horses of Diomedes, eaters of human flesh (4.15.3-4) - Herakles captures the cincture or ʻgirdleʼ of the Amazon Hippolyte (4.16.1-4) - Herakles rustles the Cattle of Geryon (4.17.1-2)
Herakles descends to Hades and brings up Cerberus the Hound of Hadēs from the zone of darkness to the zone of light and life (4.26.1)
Herakles gathers the Golden Apples of the Hesperides (4.26.2).
In the catalogue of the Labors of Herakles as sung and danced in praise of the hero by the chorus in a tragedy by Euripides entitled the Herakles (lines 348-439), the last of these Labors to be mentioned is the descent of Herakles to Hadēs (425-439); in the imagery of Euripides, and elsewhere in Greek poetry and song as we will see later on, the experience of going into Hadēs is explicitly the experience of dying, and the experience of coming back out of Hades is implicitly the experience of resurrection (lines 143-146).
Heraklesʼ heroic deeds in performing these Labors and many others are the contents of the heroic song, kleos, that is sung about him. The connection of the name of Herakles with these deeds and with the medium of kleos that glorifies the hero is made explicit in the Herakles of Euripides (lines 270, 1334, 1369). This connection of the heroʼs name with such deeds of kleos is also made explicit by Matris of Thebes
(FGH 39 F 2), as transmitted by Diodorus of Sicily 1.24.4 (where the attribution is made to Matris of Thebes) and 4.10.1 (where the version of Matris is actually retold). And, as I have already noted, Herakles owes the kleos that he earns from his Labors to Hera. Hence his name Hēraklēs, which means ʻhe who has the kleos of Hēraʼ.3 The goddess of being on time makes sure that the hero should start off his lifespan by being not on time and that he should go through life by trying to catch up and never quite managing to do so until the very end. Herakles gets all caught up only at the final moment of his life, at the moment of death.
I continue here my paraphrase of Diodorus of Sicily:
At the final moment of Heraklesʼ heroic lifespan, he experiences the most painful death imaginable, climaxed by burning to death. This form of death is an ultimate test of the
On the linguistic validity of the etymology of his name, see Nagy Homeric Questions (1996) 48n79. The problem of the short a in the middle of the form Hērăklēs can best be addressed by comparing the short a in the middle of the form Alkăthoos, the name of a hero of Megara (as in Theognis 774) who is closely related thematically to Herakles. I owe this solution to Alexander Nikolaev.
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nervous system, by ancient Greek heroic standards. Here is how it happens. Herakles is fatally poisoned by the semen of a dying Centaur. His ex-wife Deianeira gave it to him in a phial as a “wedding present” on the occasion of the heroʼs re- marriage to the girl Iole: the ex-wife had mistakenly thought it was a love-drug that could win back the love of her ex- husband (4.38.1-2). Burning up on the inside with the excruciatingly painful poison that is consuming his body from the outside, Herakles arranges with the people of Trachis to have them build for him a funeral pyre on the peak of Mount Oita, and then he climbs up on top of the funeral pyre (4.38.3-4). He yearns to be put out of his misery, ready to die and be consumed by the fires of the funeral pyre; he calls on his friend Philoktetes to light his pyre (4.38.4).4 At that precise moment of agonizing death, a flaming thunderbolt from his father Zeus strikes him. He goes up in flames, in a spectacular explosion of fire (4.38.4-5). In the aftermath, those who attended the primal scene find no physical trace of Herakles, not even bones (4.38.5). They go home to Trachis, but Menoitios, the father of Patroklos, will later establish a hero cult for Herakles at Opous, and the Thebans have a similar hero cult for him (4.38.1). Others, however, especially the Athenians, worship Herakles not as a hero but as a god (4.39.1-2). The rationale for this alternative custom is given by the continuation of the myth as retold by Diodorus: at the moment of his death, Herakles regains consciousness and finds himself on the top of Mount Olympus, in the company of the gods (4.39.2-3). He has awakened to find himself immortalized. He is then adopted by the theoi ʻgodsʼ on Mount Olympus as one of their own (the technical Greek term is apotheosis). Hera now changes identities - from Heraklesʼ stepmother to Heraklesʼ mother (4.39.2). The procedure is specified by Diodorus, and I translate literally (4.39.3): ʻHera got into her bed and drew Herakles close to her body. She let him fall through her garments to the ground, re-enacting [= making mimēsis of] the genuine birth.ʼ5
By now we can see that the name Hēraklēs ʻhe who has the glory [kleos] of Heraʼ marks both the medium and the message of the hero. When we first consider the
meaning of the name of Herakles, our first impression is that this name is illogical: it seems to us strange that Herakles should be named after Hera - that his poetic glory or kleos should depend on Hera. After all, Herakles is persecuted by Hera throughout his heroic lifespan. And yet, without this unseasonality, without the disequilibrium brought about by the persecution of Hera, Herakles would never have achieved the equilibrium of immortality and the kleos that makes his achievements live forever in song.
At the core of the narratives about Hēraklēs is the meaning of hērōs ʻheroʼ as a cognate of Hērā, the goddess of seasonality and equilibrium, and of hōrā, a noun that actually means
Thinking of Jim Morrisonʼs 1966 recording of “Light my fire,” I recall these words: “Try now we can only lose / And our love become a funeral pyre / Come on baby, light my fire / Come on baby, light my fire / Try to set the night on fire, yeah ... .” 5 In Hour 8, I will offer a working definition of mimēsis as ʻre-enactmentʼ.
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ʻseasonalityʼ in the context of designating hero cult (as in Homeric Hymn to Demeter 265).6 The unseasonality of the hērōs in mortal life leads to the telos or ʻfulfillmentʼ of seasonality in immortal life, which is achieved in the setting of hero cult. The cult epithet or ornamental adjective that conventionally describes Hera, teleia ʻperfectʼ, expresses this concept of ʻfulfillmentʼ.7
Overall, the narratives about Herakles fit neatly into a model of the hero as I outline it in §§105-110 of Introduction 3, “The Epic Hero,” on the Heroes website. I offer here a shortened version of the outline that I develop there.
In terms of that outline, here are three characteristics of the hero:
The hero is unseasonal.
The hero is extreme - positively (for example, ʻbestʼ in whatever category) or negatively (the negative aspect can be a function of the heroʼs unseasonality).
The hero is antagonistic toward the god who seems to be most like the hero; antagonism does not rule out an element of attraction (often a “fatal attraction”), which is played out in a variety of ways.
All three characteristics converge in the figure of the hero Herakles:
He is made unseasonal by Hera.
His unseasonality makes it possible for him to perform his extraordinary Labors. He also commits some deeds that are morally questionable: for example, he destroys the city of Iole and kills her brothers in order to capture her as his bride - even though he is already married to Deianeira (Diodorus of Sicily 4.37.5). It is essential to keep in mind that whenever heroes commit deeds that violate moral codes, such deeds are not condoned by the heroic narrative.
He is antagonistic with Hera throughout his lifespan, but he becomes reconciled with her through death: as we have seen, the hero becomes the virtual son of Hera by being reborn from her. As the heroʼs name makes clear, he owes his heroic identity to his kleos and, ultimately, to Hera. A parallel is the antagonism of Juno, the Roman equivalent of Hera, toward the hero Aeneas in Virgilʼs Aeneid.
I add here paraphrases of two relevant details from Herakles narratives as attested in other sources:
6 Nagy Pindarʼs Homer (1990) 5§7 = p. 140n27, Greek Mythology and Poetics (1990)
136. 7 As we see for example in Aristophanes Women at the Thesmophoria 973. 15
Hera finds an abandoned baby, who happens to be Herakles. She takes a fancy to the baby and breast-feeds it, but the baby bites her. This part of the narrative is reported by Diodorus of Sicily (4.9.6). Another part of the narrative is reported elsewhere: the bite of Herakles leads to a cosmic explosion of milk, a galaxy (Greek galakt- means ʻmilkʼ) - that is, the Milky Way (Hyginus Astronomica 2.43; Eratosthenes Katasterismoi 44; “Achilles” Introduction to Aratus 24.).
Heraklesʼ mortal mother, Alkmene, conceives another son by her mortal husband, Amphitryon, on the same night that when conceives her son Herakles by her immortal paramour, Zeus (Apollodorus 2.4.8). This twin, Iphikles, is mortal. The other twin, Herakles, is mortal only on his motherʼs side. I do not say half-mortal or half-divine in this case, and I will give my reasons later on.
We find in the figure of Achilles the same three heroic characteristics that we found in figure of Herakles:
He is unseasonal: in Iliad XXIV 540, Achilles is explicitly described as is pan-a-(h) ōr-ios ʻthe most unseasonal of them allʼ.8 His unseasonality is a major cause of his grief, which makes him “a man of constant sorrow.” In using this phrase, I am thinking here of the title of a traditional American folk song, first recorded by Dick Burnett, a partially blind fiddler from Kentucky. The grief over the unseasonality of Achilles is best expressed by the heroʼs mother Thetis in Iliad XVIII 54-60, a passage that will figure prominently in Hour 3.
He is extreme, mostly in a positive sense, since he is ʻbestʼ in many categories, and ʻbest of the Achaeansʼ in the Homeric Iliad; occasionally, however, he is extreme in a negative sense, as in his moments of martial fury. I will have more on such martial fury, otherwise known as warp spasm, in Hour 6.
He is antagonistic to the god Apollo, to whom he bears an uncanny resemblance. I will have more to say about the antagonism of Apollo with the hero Achilles in Hour 6. There is another important parallel between Herakles and Achilles: the use of the word kleos in identifying Herakles as a hero is relevant to the fact that the same word is used in identifying Achilles as an epic hero in the Homeric Iliad. In the Iliad, kleos designates not only ʻgloryʼ but also, more specifically, the glory of the hero as conferred by epic. In Iliad IX 413, as we have seen, Achilles chooses kleos over life itself, and he owes his heroic identity to this kleos.9
So we end up where we started, with the hero Achilles. He chooses kleos over life itself, and he owes his heroic identity to this kleos. He achieves the major goal of the hero: to have his
8 Nagy Homeric Questions (1996) 48. 9 Nagy Homeric Responses (2003) 39-48.
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identity put on record through kleos. For us, a common way to express this goal is to say: “youʼll go down in history.” For the earliest periods of ancient Greece, the equivalent of this kind of “history” is kleos. He puts his identity on permanent record through kleos.
In J.D. Salingerʼs, Catcher in the Rye (1951), Holden Caulfield is given this lesson by the teacher: “The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.”
My guess is that Achilles would answer: in that case, I would rather be immature than mature. Still, as we will see, he will achieve a maturity, a seasonality, at the moment in the Iliad when he comes to terms with his own impending heroic death.
The teacher continues speaking in Salingerʼs narrative: “Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. Youʼll learn from them...if you want to. Itʼs a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isnʼt education. Itʼs history. Itʼs poetry.” - the highlighting is mine.
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Key word for this hour: memnēmai, which means ʻI have total recallʼ in special contexts and ʻI rememberʼ in ordinary contexts. The special contexts involve memory by way of song. I will get to the specifics later.
Hour 2 Passage A. Iliad IX 527-528 I totally recall [me-mnē-mai] this action that happened a long time ago - it is not
something new - recalling exactly how it was. I will tell it in your company - since you are all near and
dear [philoi].
In the paragraphs that follow, I offer an exegesis of this passage (in the previous hour, I defined this word exegesis as “an ancient Greek term referring to a close reading of a given text”).
I start with the verb memnēmai, containing the root mnē-, which means ʻI rememberʼ. When this verb takes an object in the genitive case, it means ʻI rememberʼ in the general sense of ʻI have memories ofʼ. But when this verb takes an object in the accusative case, as here, it means ʻI rememberʼ in the special sense of ʻI remember totallyʼ.
Phoenix, an old hero, is about to tell a story that he says he remembers totally. This story is a micro-narrative embedded in the macro-Narrative that is the Iliad. Before Phoenix tells his story, he speaks to those who are listening to the story, telling them that they are philoi ʻnear and dearʼ to him. Who are these ʻnear and dearʼ listeners? They are Achilles and his best friend, who is the hero Patroklos, as well as the heroes Ajax and Odysseus, and two professional announcers or ʻheraldsʼ. The Greek word translated here as ʻnear and dearʼ is philoi, and it can also be translated in this context simply as ʻfriendsʼ. This word philos (that is the singular form; the plural is philoi) means ʻfriendʼ as a noun and ʻnear and dearʼ as an adjective. It is a term of endearment, an emotional term. As we will see especially in Hour 6, this emotional term is most important for understanding the story of Phoenix.
What kind of memory does Phoenix have of the story that he is about to tell his ʻnear and dearʼ listeners? In the original Greek, the word here for the act of remembering is memnēmai, which can be translated as ʻI have total recallʼ. In order to understand the special kind of memory that is ʻtotal recallʼ, I offer two examples from modern popular culture.
The first example is the film Total Recall (1990), directed by Paul Verhoeven, featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sharon Stone, which was based on a science fiction “novelette” by Philip K. Dick, “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale,” first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (April 1966).
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The second example comes from something that I quoted in the last hour. It was a quotation from J.D. Salingerʼs Catcher in the Rye, where Holden Caulfield is being given a lesson by his teacher: “The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.” The teacher goes on to say: “Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. Youʼll learn from them...if you want to. Itʼs a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isnʼt education. Itʼs history. Itʼs poetry.” - the highlighting is mine. The word “history” here refers simply to keeping a record. For the moment, I highlight the idea of keeping a record.
We have an interesting way of using the word “record” these days - in an era when CD-s have replaced the old vinyl “records.” We still say “record store” when we go shopping for CD-s. I suspect it is because of the idea of memory embedded in the word “record.”
Let us pursue further the concept of keeping a record, recording, putting on record. In the earliest phases of ancient Greek song culture, the process of keeping a record of things that must be remembered, of putting things on the record, was not ordinarily done by way of writing. Writing did not become a widespread technology in the ancient Greek world till around the fifth century BCE, and even then it was confined to the uppermost strata of society. In the archaic period of Greek history (that is, from around the 8th century through the 6th century: for a 5-minute historical sketch, see Introduction 2, on the Heroes website), the idea of recording was mostly a matter of memory and of techniques of memory, mnemonics. It is in this connection that we confront the mentality of total recall.
The wording total recall is meant to convey a special mentality of remembering, of putting things on record, common in traditional societies. In terms of this mentality, to remember is to re-live an experience, including someone elseʼs experience, including even the experiences of heroes in the remote past of the heroic age.
The process of remembering in ancient Greek song culture requires a special medium, song (which includes poetry). Such song, such singing, is an oral tradition. The Homeric Iliad derives from an oral tradition of singing, which is a process of composition-in-performance. That is, composition is an aspect of performance and vice versa. In this kind of oral tradition, there is no script, since the technology of writing is not required for composition-in- performance. In Homeric poetry, the basic medium of remembering is heroic song or kleos.
This word kleos ʻgloryʼ, which we considered in Hour 1, brings us back to the narrative of the old hero Phoenix, who uses this word in the same context of making his remark about his total recall:
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Hour 2 Passage B. Iliad IX 524-525 This is the way [houtōs] that we [= I, Phoenix] learned it, the glories [klea] of men
[andrōn] of an earlier time who were heroes [hērōes], whenever one of them was overcome by tempestuous anger.
The word klea, the abbreviated plural form of kleos, is combined here with andrōn ʻof menʼ and hērōōn ʻof heroes [hērōes]ʼ. This expression klea andrōn | hērōōn ʻthe
glories of men who were heroesʼ, or a shorter form of the expression, klea andrōn ʻthe glories of menʼ, is used in Homeric poetry to refer to epic narrative. When Phoenix uses this expression here, he is referring to an epic narrative that he is about to tell about the hero Meleager. As we will see, this same expression klea andrōn (hērōōn) ʻglories of men (who were heroes)ʼ applies not only to the epic narrative about Meleager. It applies also to the epic narrative about Achilles, which is the Iliad.
In general, the word kleos applies to Homeric poetry as performed by the master Narrator of that poetry. Etymologically, kleos is a noun derived from the verb kluein ʻhearʼ, and it means ʻthat which is heardʼ. In the Iliad, the master Narrator declares that the epic he narrates is something he ʻhearsʼ from goddesses of poetic memory called the Muses, who know everything because they were present when everything was done and when everything was said. Here is the key wording.
Hour 2 Passage C. Iliad II 484-487
And now, tell me, O Muses, you who live in your Olympian abodes, since you are goddesses and you were there and you know everything, but we [= the Narrator] only hear the kleos and we know nothing - who were the chiefs and princes of the Danaans [= the Greeks]?
When we read this passage for the first time, our first impression may be that the Narrator is making a modest statement about the limitations of his own knowledge. In fact, however, what we are seeing here is just the opposite. The Narrator is making a most proud and boastful statement. He is boasting that his mind is directly connected to what the Muses as goddesses of memory actually saw and heard. The Muses ʻtellʼ him what they saw and heard. What he narrates about heroes and even gods is exactly what the Muses saw. What he quotes from the spoken words of heroes and even of gods is exactly what the Muses heard. The Narratorʼs mind is supposed to see and hear what the Muses saw and heard. His mind has the power of total recall. The Narrator here is calling on the Muses as goddesses of memory to tell him the part of the Troy narrative known as the Catalogue of Ships. The Muses are expected to tell the Narrator exactly, and the Narrator will tell his listeners exactly. This part of the Troy narrative catalogues all the important details about which warriors came to Troy in how many ships, and so on; many modern readers get distracted and even bored when they read through the
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Catalogue, but it was of the greatest cultural interest and importance to the listeners of the Iliad in ancient times. So important was the Catalogue that the Narrator needed special powers of memory to get it right. That is why the Narrator here prays to the Muses, as if he had just started his overall narration. (In fact, however, he has already prayed to ʻthe Museʼ at the start of the Iliad).
And these Muses, as we have just seen, are supposed to know absolutely everything. They are all-knowing, that is, omniscient. So the omniscient Muses are goddesses of total recall, and their absolute power of recall is expressed by an active form of the verb mnē- in the sense of ʻremindʼ (II 492). The master Narrator of the Iliad receives from these goddesses their absolute power of total recall when he prays to them to tell him everything about the Achaean forces that sailed to Troy (II 484, 491-492). Inspired by the omniscient Muses, the master Narrator becomes an omniscient Narrator. Although he says he will not exercise the option of telling everything in full,
deciding instead to tell only the salient details by concentrating on the names of the leaders of the warriors who sailed to Troy and on the precise number of each leaderʼs ships (II 493), the master Narrator insists on his power of total recall.1 The very idea of such mental power is basic to Homeric poetry.
The Narrator is saying here that he does not have to know anything: all he has to do is to ʻhear the kleosʼ. Since the goddesses of memory were there when the heroic actions happened, and since they saw and heard everything, they know everything. The Narrator needs to know nothing, he needs to experience nothing. To repeat, all he has to do is to ʻhear the kleosʼ from the goddesses of memory and then to narrate what he is hearing to those who are listening to him.
What the omniscient Muses see and what they hear is a total recall: they recall everything that has ever happened, whereas the Narrator only hears ʻthat which is heardʼ, which is the kleos from the Muses.2 The Narrator of epic depends on these goddesses to tell him exactly what they saw and to quote for him exactly what they heard.
But what about a story-within-a-story, that is, where a narrator narrates a micro- narrative within the macro-Narrative of the Iliad? In such a situation, the narrator of that micro-narrative has to reassure his listeners that he has total recall matching the total recall of the Narrator of the macro-Narrative, which is the Iliad. This is what happens when the old hero Phoenix, in Iliad IX, begins to narrate to the hero Achilles and to the other listeners the story of the earlier hero Meleager. Phoenix is telling this story about Meleager because he wants to persuade Achilles to accept the offer of Agamemnon. That is the purpose of this narrator. As
1 Nagy Homerʼs Text and Language (2004) 175n78; cf. 80n75. 2 Nagy The Best of the Achaeans (1999) 1§§2-4.
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we will see, however, the purpose of the master Narrator of the Iliad is different: it goes far beyond the purpose of Phoenix.
When Phoenix says he has total recall, totally recalling the epic action he narrates, his power of memory depends on the power of the omniscient Narrator who tells the framing story of the Iliad, and that power in turn depends on the power of the omniscient Muses themselves, who are given credit for controlling the master Narrative. Phoenix has total recall because he uses the medium of poetry and because his mind is connected to the power source of poetry.
As we have seen, Phoenix refers to his story as klea andrōn | hērōōn ʻthe glories [kleos plural] of men of an earlier time who were heroesʼ (IX 524-525). It is a story about the hero Meleager and his anger against his people, parallel to the framing story about the hero Achilles and his anger against his own people, the Achaeans (as we saw in Hour 1, these people are also known as the Argives or the Danaans). The telling of the story by Phoenix is an activation of epic within epic.
Phoenix is a hero in the epic of the Homeric Iliad, and this epic is a narrative about the distant heroic past - from the standpoint of listeners who live in a present tense devoid of contemporary heroes. But Phoenix here is narrating to listeners who live in that distant heroic past tense. And his narrative-within-a-narrative is about heroes who lived in an even more distant heroic past tense.
There are close parallels between the framing epic about the anger of Achilles and
the framed epic about the anger of Meleager. Just as the framed epic about Meleager is a poetic recollection of the klea ʻgloriesʼ of heroes of the past, so too is the framing epic about Achilles. That framing epic, which is the Iliad, is a poetic recollection by the Muse whom the master Narrator invokes to sing the story of the anger of Achilles (I 1). As the narrator of a framed epic, Phoenix does not have to invoke the goddesses of memory, the Muses, since the Narrator of the framing epic has already invoked them for him.
In performing the klea andrōn | hērōōn ʻthe glories [kleos plural] of men of an earlier time who were heroesʼ (IX 524-525), Phoenix expresses himself in the medium of poetry because he is speaking inside a medium that is poetry. He is speaking in poetry just as the master Narrator, who is quoting him, also speaks in poetry. When Phoenix says memnēmai, he is in effect saying: I have total recall by way of speaking in the medium of poetry.
The basic rhythmical unit of this medium of poetry, which calls itself kleos or klea andrōn, is called the dactylic hexameter. Here is the basic rhythm of this unit:
-uu-uu-uu-uu-uu--. 22
(“-” = long syllable, “u” = short syllable) {On the CHS website, I illustrate how the rhythm sounds by reciting Iliad I 1-13.} Over 15,000 of these dactylic hexameter lines make up the Iliad.
When the master Narrator speaks the kleos or klea andrōn, he is speaking in dactylic hexameters. When the master Narrator quotes characters speaking, whether these characters are heroes or gods, they too are speaking the kleos or klea andrōn, and so they too are imagined as speaking in dactylic hexameters. That is the way the Muses, who saw everything and heard everything, speak the kleos or klea andrōn. Notionally,3 the Muses heard the heroes and gods speaking in dactylic hexameters, and then the Muses spoke these dactylic hexameters for the master Narrator to hear, so that he may speak them to his listeners.
Now we come to another example of klea andrōn ʻglories of men (heroes)ʼ. It occurs at a slightly earlier point in the master Narrative. In Iliad IX 189, Achilles himself is pictured as singing the klea andrōn in his tent. The master Narrator does not say what the subject of this song sung by Achilles may have been. All we are told is that Achilles was singing the klea andrōn. And, at this point in the narrative, the only listener of the klea andrōn sung by Achilles is Patroklos. If it werenʼt for Patroklos, Achilles would be singing to himself. Here is the key wording.
Hour 2 Passage D. Iliad IX 185-195
When they [= Phoenix along with his fellow delegates, Odysseus and Ajax] reached the ships and tents of the Myrmidons, they found Achilles playing on a lyre, a beautiful one, of exquisite workmanship, and its cross-bar was of silver. It was part of the spoils that he had taken when he destroyed the city of Eëtion, and he was now diverting himself with it and singing the glories of men [klea andrōn]. He was alone with Patroklos, who sat facing him and said nothing, waiting till he [= Achilles] would leave off singing. Odysseus and Ajax now came in - Odysseus leading the way - and stood before him. Achilles sprang from his seat with the lyre still in his hand, and Patroklos, when he saw the guests, rose also.
What we see here is a clue about Achilles himself as a virtuoso performer of song. He
is not only the subject of songs that are the klea andrōn ʻglories of men (heroes)ʼ. He is also the performer of such songs. And the same goes for Patroklos or Patrokleēs, the meaning of whose name encapsulates, as we we will see, the very idea of klea andrōn.
From the start, I alert the reader to the fact that notionally is one of my favorite words. I use it to indicate that the statement I am making reflects not my own thinking but rather the thought patterns of others.
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In a lecture delivered by the late Albert B. Lord about this medium of heroic song, he singles out the Homeric expression klea andrōn ʻglories of men (heroes)ʼ.
[[I show here the clip entitled “Albert Lord talks about heroic song.”]]
Lord is comparing here the ancient Homeric medium of heroic song with media of heroic song that survived into the twentieth century. Among these survivals is the tradition of heroic song in the South Slavic areas of the Balkans, specifically in the former Yugoslavia. Lord (who died in 1991) and his teacher Milman Parry (who died in 1935) pioneered the systematic study of oral traditions of such heroic song in the former Yugoslavia, especially in Bosnia and in parts of Serbia. Both these scholars were professors at Harvard University (Parry died a violent death at age 33, when he was still only an assistant professor at Harvard; Lord eventually succeeded Parry as professor there, and later became one of the most accomplished and respected senior professors in the history of the university). Both Parry and Lord were Classicists as well as ethnographers, and their knowledge of Homeric poetry turned out to be a valuable source of comparative insights in their study of the living oral traditions of the South Slavic peoples. For an introduction to the pathfinding research of Parry and Lord, I recommend the well-known book of Albert Lord, The Singer of Tales (Harvard University Press 1960; in 2000, there was a second edition published by Stephen Mitchell and Gregory Nagy, who together wrote a new introduction).
In the clip from Lordʼs lecture mentioning the klea andrōn ʻglories of men (heroes)ʼ, he refers to one of the greatest singers whose songs were studied by Parry and Lord, Avdo Međedović. One of Avdoʼs songs, recorded by Milman Parry of Harvard, contained as many as 12,000 lines.
What is a “line” in the case of South Slavic heroic songs? The basic rhythmical unit is the heroic decasyllable, and the basic rhythm of this unit is
-u-u-u-u-u.
This was the rhythmical framework for the wording used by singers like Avdo in composing their heroic songs.
[[I show here the clip entitled “Avdo sings a song of heroes.”]]
Let us return to the narrative told by Phoenix... As we saw in Passage A, the key word that introduces the narrative of Phoenix is memnēmai, which I translate as ʻI have total recall, I totally recallʼ.
Phoenix has total recall because he uses the medium of song and because his mind is connected to the power source of song; in fact, he has to use song, because he is inside the
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medium of song. To repeat, he is speaking in dactylic hexameters, just like the Narrator who quotes him. When Phoenix says memnēmai, he is in effect saying: ʻI
have total recall by means of using the medium of songʼ.
Similarly, as we have already seen in Hour 1, kleos means not just glory but glory achieved by way of using the medium of song. This medium is a way of speaking in a special way, of using special speech.
I mention, in passing, Richard P. Martinʼs basic finding in The Language of Heroes (Cornell UP 1989; his book is available on line, for free, on the Heroes website): he shows that narratives within the master Narrative of the Iliad contain markers for and about the listeners of the master Narrative.
A special way of speaking, a special speech, marks what is being performed, not just said. Earlier, at Iliad IX 524-525, Phoenix says (as we saw already):
This is the way [houtōs] that we [= I, Phoenix] learned it, the glories [klea] of men of an earlier time
who were heroes [hērōes] - whenever one of them was overcome by tempestuous anger. The poetry and song of kleos is a performance.
So, things that we do in everyday ways, like remembering something, can be done by way of song in other cultures. Relevant here is the the concept of a “speech-act,” as originally formulated by J. L. Austin in his influential book How to do Things with Words (edited by J. O. Urmson, Oxford 1962), based on the William James Lectures that Austin delivered at Harvard University in 1955. In terms of Austinʼs theory, there are situations where you actually do things by way of saying things. But you have to say these things in the right context. For example, “Youʼre fired!” is a speech act, but only in certain contexts, as when an employer says these words to an employee. Another example is “I do,” which is a speech act only in the context of answering the question: “Do you take this woman/man to be your lawfully-wedded wife/husband?” Still another example is “All hands on deck,” which is a speech act only in the context of sailing a ship, when the commanding officer says these words.
Something that Austin did not consider in the book I just cited is the idea that poetry or song can also be a speech act when poetry or song are performed in oral traditions.4 This idea is very much at work in the Homeric Iliad. As I have shown in my research, Homeric poetry can be considered a speech act in its own right because it is a medium that is performed. This kind of poetry comes to life only in performance, in live performance. And such performance could take place within the framework of an oral tradition, which is a specialized language of composition-in-performance.
Nagy Homeric Questions (1996) 132-133.
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And a culture that uses poetry or song as a speech act is what I have been calling a song culture.
Here I am analyzing a most striking example of such a speech act, which is the total recall, by the old hero Phoenix, of the story of Meleager.
The story that Phoenix tells is a beautiful example of compression. (I have already explained the principle of compression in Hour 1). As we are about to see, the climax of the compressed narrative told by Phoenix about Meleager will be signaled at a moment in the story where the wording describes a woman who is crying. The name of this woman, as we will also see, is Kleopatra. I now turn to this climactic moment, as narrated by Phoenix...
Hour 2 Passage E. Iliad IX 550-602
So long as Meleager was in the field things went badly for the Kouretes, and for all their numbers they could not hold their ground under the city walls; but in the course of time anger [kholos] entered Meleager in his thinking [noos], as will happen sometimes even to a sensible man. He was incensed with his mother Althaea, and therefore stayed at home with his wife, whom he had courted as a youth, fair Kleopatra [556], who was daughter of Marpessa daughter of Euenos, and of Idēs a man then living. It was he who took his bow and faced King Apollo himself for fair Marpessaʼs sake; her father and mother then named her Alcyone [562], because her mother had lamented with the plaintive strains of the halcyon, a bird of much lamentation [penthos 563], when Phoebus Apollo had carried her off. Meleager, then, stayed at home with wife, nursing the anger which he felt by reason of his motherʼs curses. His mother, grieving for the death of her brother, prayed to the gods, and beat the earth with her hands, calling upon Hades and on terrifying Persephone as she went down on her knees, and her bosom was wet with tears as she prayed that they should kill her son - and an Erinys that roams in darkness and knows no mercy heard her, from below in Erebos. Then was heard the din of battle about the gates of Calydon, and the dull thump of the battering against their walls. Now the elders [574] of the Aetolians sought out Meleager; they sent the chief of their priests [575], and begged him to come out and help them, promising him a great reward. They told him to choose fifty acres, the most fertile in the plain of Calydon, the one-half a vineyard and the other an open plough-land. The old warrior Oineus [581] implored him, standing at the threshold of his room and beating the doors in supplication. His sisters [584] and his mother [584] herself implored him over and over again, but he kept on refusing them all the more; those of his comrades [585] who were nearest and dearest [philtatoi 586] to him also implored him, but they could not move him till the enemy was battering at the very doors of his chamber, and the Kouretes had scaled the walls and were setting fire to the city. Then at last his sorrowing wife [590] detailed the horrors that befall those whose city is taken; she reminded him how the men are slain, and the city is given over to the flames, while the women and children are carried
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off into captivity; when he heard all this, his heart was touched, and he put on his armor to go forth. Thus yielding to his heart he saved the city of the Aetolians; but they now gave him nothing of those rich rewards that they had offered earlier, and though he saved the city he took nothing by it. Do not then, my near and dear one [philos 601], think this way; do not let an otherworldly being [daimōn] steer you in this direction. When the ships are burning it will be a harder matter to save them.
I draw special attention to verse 556 here, where we see the name of Kleopatra, who is the wife of Meleager. (This figure is not to be confused with the historical figure Kleopatra, also spelled in the Romanized form Cleopatra.) I also draw attention to line 562, where we see the second name of the wife of Meleager, which is Alcyone. In ancient Greek lore, the alcyon / halcyon is a bird that sings songs of lament over the destruction of cities. In Hour 3, I will follow up on the lament of Kleopatra and the general idea of lament in ancient Greek song culture.
The story of Meleager and his lamenting wife Kleopatra is a micro-narrative meant for Achilles and for the Iliad, which is the macro-narrative about Achilles; in its
compressed form, the Meleager narrative “replays” or “repeats” some of the major themes of the expanded form that is the Iliad.
An essential word in the micro-narrative is the adjective philos ʻnear and dearʼ at verse 601. The superlative form of this adjective is philtatos ʻmost near and dearʼ, or philtatoi in the plural. The plural form philtatoi ʻmost near and dearʼ is applied to the comrades of Meleager at verse 586. As we are about to see, this adjective philos measures the heroʼs ascending scale of affection: elders, priests, father, sisters, mother, companions [hetairoi], {wife}.
I will now explain why I highlight the word “wife” by putting it within braces. The sequence in which these characters are presented in the narration corresponds to a principle that I have just described as the heroʼs ascending scale of affection. As we are about to see, the placement of the wife in this sequence is dictated by the logic of the micro-narrative itself, not by the logic of its narrator Phoenix. And the logic of this micro-narrative is shaped by the emotions of Meleager.
The emotions of Achilles, which shape the macro-Narrative of the Iliad, can be understood by thinking through these emotions of Meleager, which shape the micro- narrative told by Phoenix in Iliad IX. A key to these emotions is the principle of an ascending scale of affection.5 As we are about to see, this principle is on full display in the Meleager narrative, which calls itself klea andrōn (IX 524), told in the midst of philoi ʻfriends, near-and-dear onesʼ (IX 528).
The term ascending scale of affections is explained in Nagy The Best of the Achaeans (1999) 6§15.
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As we analyze the emotions that are activated in the story of Meleager and Kleopatra, it is important to consider again the meaning of philoi ʻfriends, near-and-dear onesʼ, and this wordʼs links with the emotion of love. The lament of Kleopatra highlights the emotion of love as well as the emotion of sadness or sorrow or grief as well as the emotion of anger as well as the emotion of fear. The story of Meleager and Kleopatra explores the combinations and permutations of all these emotions.
***The song culture of “Classical” opera likewise explores such combinations and permutations of emotions. In the Renaissance, opera was thought to be a “reinvention” of ancient drama and, by extension, of epic themes transmitted by drama, especially by tragedy.***
In opera, confusion of emotions is an emotion in its own right, since it is meant to be a mixture of more than one emotion. That is, confusion results from a fusion of grief and anger, anger and hate, hate and love, and so on. Such fusion, as we will see later, is evident in Greek epic and tragedy as well.
In the story of Meleager and Kleopatra, two emotions that we see foregrounded are fear and pity. The philosopher Aristotle, who lived in the fourth century BCE, thought that the emotions of fear (phobos) and pity (eleos) are essential for understanding tragedy (Poetics 1449b24-28). The same can be said for understanding the epic of the Iliad, which Aristotle understood to be a prototype of tragedy.6
Here I offer some background on these and other emotions as expressed in ancient Greek song culture.
The English translations ʻfearʼ and ʻpityʼ do not quite capture the range of meanings embedded in the original Greek words. It is easier if we start thinking of the contrast of
fear and pity in these terms:
fear: a feeling of repulsion when you see or hear someone else suffering (that is, you feel like getting as far away as possible from that person)
pity: a feeling of attraction when you see or hear someone else suffering (that is, you feel like getting closer to that person).
When you yourself are suffering, you feel grief. When you feel fear or pity, you are repelled by or attracted to the grief.
Of course, the emotion of fear goes beyond what you feel about othersʼ grief: you can more basically fear for yourself. But the same basic feeling is at work when you experience fear
Nagy Homer the Classic (2008) 1§10. 28
in reaction to someone elseʼs suffering: you are afraid that something might happen to you that will make you suffer the same way.
Another word that I will use, from here on, to express the idea of fear is terror. This background will help us analyze the micro-narrative about Meleager and his wife Kleopatra.
In the case of the emotions that we know as sadness and love, I can show some analogies in contemporary popular media:
[[I show here the clip entitled “Implants, just implants,” from Bladerunner. [[I also show here a clip entitled “You play beautifully,” from Bladerunner.]]
Both these film clips illustrate the idea that the musical recalling of a memory is the “same thing” as the reliving of an experience, with all its emotions. If you “recall” someone elseʼs experience by way of song or music, then that experience and all its emotions become your own, even if they had not been originally yours.
The total recall of Phoenix in telling the story of Meleager focuses on the wife of Meleager, named Kleopatra, and on the meaning of her name Kleopatra. This name Kleopatra in the micro-narrative will be relevant to the name of Patroklos, the best friend of Achilles, in the macro-Narrative.7
As Achilles contemplates the decisions he has to make in the making of an epic that centers on his own epic actions, he is invited by Phoenix to contemplate the decisions made by an earlier hero in the making of an earlier epic. As we saw earlier, that hero is Meleager, who figures in an earlier epic called the klea andrōn | hērōōn ʻthe glories of men who were heroesʼ (IX 524-525). The framed epic about Meleager, quoted as a direct speech by the framing epic, is introduced by way of a special word houtōs ʻthusʼ, signaling the activation of a special form of speech otherwise known as the ainos.8 Technically, an ainos is a performance conveying a meaning that needs to be interpreted and then applied in moments of making moral decisions.9
The ainos that Phoenix tells in the Iliad, drawing on narratives concerning the hero Meleager, is intended to persuade Achilles to accept an offer made by Agamemnon. That is the short-range intention of Phoenix as a narrator narrating within the master Narration that is
In what follows, I give a shortened version of an argument I presented in my essay “Homer and Greek Myth” (2007), which is given in full on the Heroes website). 8 Nagy Pindarʼs Homer (1990) 7§1n4. 9 Nagy Pindarʼs Homer (1990) 7§§1-4.
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the Iliad. But the long-range intention of the master Narrator is quite different from the short- range intention of Phoenix. The master Narrative shows that the embedded narrative of Phoenix was misguided - that is, misguided by hindsight. If Achilles had accepted the offer of Agamemnon, as Phoenix had intended, this acceptance would have undermined the epic reputation of Achilles.10
So the reaction of Achilles to the ainos performed by Phoenix needs to be viewed within the framework of the master Narrative performed by the master Narrator. From the standpoint of Achilles as a character who takes shape within the plot of the overall epic that is the Iliad, the consequences of his decisions in reacting to the subplot of the epic about Meleager are still unclear at the moment when he makes these decisions. From the standpoint of the master Narrator who narrates the plot of the Iliad, on the other hand, the consequences are quite clear, since the master Narration takes shape by way of an interaction between the framed micro-narrative about the anger of Meleager and the framing macro-Narrative about the anger of Achilles. The short-range agenda of Phoenix and Achilles will be transformed into the long-range agenda of the master Narrative, which will ultimately correspond to what actually happens to Achilles in his own heroic life. In the world of epic, heroes live out their lives by living the narratives that are their lives.
The point of the story as told by Phoenix is that Achilles must identify with those who are philoi ʻnear and dearʼ - and must therefore rejoin his comrades in war. Phoenix himself, along with Odysseus and Ajax, is a representative of these comrades by virtue of being sent as a delegate to Achilles.
More must be said here about the word philos (singular) / philoi (plural), which as we have seen means ʻfriendʼ as a noun and ʻnear and dearʼ as an adjective. The translation ʻdearʼ conveys the fact that this word has an important emotional component. As we will see, the meaning of the framed micro-narrative of Phoenix emerges from the framing macro-Narrative of the Iliad. As we will also see, the central theme has to do with the power of emotions, and the central character turns out to be someone who is not mentioned a single time in the framed micro-narrative: that someone is Achillesʼ best friend, the hero Patroklos.
From the standpoint of Phoenix as narrator, the word philoi applies primarily to Achilles at the moment when he begins to tell his story (IX 528). But this word applies also to the whole group of epic characters who are listening to the telling of this story. This group, as we have seen, is composed of (1) Odysseus and Ajax, who are the other two delegates besides Phoenix; (2) the two heralds who accompany the three delegates; (3) Achilles himself; and (4) Patroklos. Inside the story told by Phoenix, the comrades who approach Meleager as delegates are the philtatoi, that is, those persons who are ʻnearest and dearestʼ to the hero (IX 585-587).
Nagy Homeric Questions (1996) 142-143.
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So, from the short-range perspective of Phoenix as the narrator of the ainos about Meleager, the three comrades who approach Achilles as delegates must be the persons who are nearest and dearest to him. From the long-range perspective of the master Narrator, however, it is not Phoenix and the two other delegates but Patroklos who must be nearest and dearest to Achilles. Later on in the Iliad, after Patroklos is killed in battle, Achilles recognizes this hero as the one who was all along the
philtatos, the ʻnearest and dearestʼ of them all (XVII 411, 655).11
The story about Meleager as narrated by Phoenix is already anticipating such a long- range recognition. The micro-narrative indicates, by way of the sequence of delegates who are sent to Meleager, that heroʼs ascending scale of affection. The order in which the delegates are mentioned corresponds to the order in which they are placed in the heroʼs emotional world of affections. Delegates that are mentioned earlier are placed relatively lower in the heroʼs ascending scale of affection, while delegates that are mentioned later are placed relatively higher. The scale of lower to higher goes from the elders [verse 574] to the priests [verse 575] to the father [verse 581] to the sisters [verse 584] to the mother [verse 584] to the comrades [verse 585]. At first it seems as if the comrades are at the top of Meleagerʼs ascending scale of affection, since they seem to be the last and the latest delegates to be mentioned, and, on top of that, they are actually described by Phoenix as philtatoi, the ʻnearest and dearestʼ (IX 585- 587). But there is someone who is even nearer and dearer to Meleager than the comrades. In the logic of the story, that someone turns out to be the wife of Meleager (IX 588-596). In Meleagerʼs ascending scale of affection, the wife of the hero ultimately outranks even the comrades approaching him as delegates. Likewise in Achillesʼ ascending scale of affection, there is someone who ultimately outranks the comrades approaching him as delegates. For Achilles that someone is Patroklos, who was all along the philtatos, the ʻnearest and dearestʼ of them all (XVII 411, 655). The name of this hero in its full form, Patrokleēs, matches in meaning the name given to the wife of Meleager in the ainos narrated by Phoenix: she is Kleopatra (IX 556). These two names, Patrokleēs / Kleopatra, both mean ʻthe one who has the glory [kleos] of the ancestors [pateres]ʼ.12 Both these names amount to a periphrasis of the expression klea andrōn | hērōōn ʻthe glories [kleos plural] of men of an earlier time who were heroesʼ (IX 524- 525), which refers to the ainos narrated by Phoenix to a group of listeners including not only the delegates approaching Achilles but also Achilles and Patroklos themselves (IX 527-528). Phoenix is presuming that all his listeners are philoi ʻnear and dearʼ to him (IX 528). Even before the arrival of the delegates, Achilles himself is pictured as singing the glories of heroes, the klea andrōn (IX 189). At this moment, he is alone except for one person. With him is Patroklos, who is intently listening to him and waiting for his own turn to sing, ready to start at whatever point Achilles leaves off singing (IX 190-191). As Patroklos gets ready to continue the song sung by Achilles, the song of Achilles get ready to become the song of
Nagy The Best of the Achaeans (1999) 6§15. 12 Nagy The Best of the Achaeans (1999) 6§§15, 17-19.
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Patroklos. So the hero whose name conveys the very idea of klea andrōn ʻglories of men (who are heroes)ʼ is figured here as the personal embodiment of the klea andrōn.13
As we will see in hours to come, Achilles himself is a virtuoso in expressing emotions by way of song, that is, by way of klea andrōn. Especially the emotions of sorrow, anger, hatred, and love.
The ainos as told by Phoenix, to which he refers as klea andrōn (IX 524), connects with the song of Achilles, to which the master Narrator refers likewise as klea andrōn
(IX 189). The ainos also connects with Patroklos as the one person who is nearest and dearest to Achilles. Patroklos is at the very top of that heroʼs ascending scale of affection.
What must mean more than anything else to Achilles is not only Patroklos himself but also the actual meaning of the name Patrokleēs, which conveys the idea of the klea andrōn. For Achilles, the words klea andrōn represent the master narrative in the actual process of being narrated in the epic of the Iliad. For Achilles, it is a narrative of his own making. And it is the speech act of narration in the making.
Just as the song of Achilles is identified with the master Narrative of the Iliad, so also the style of this heroʼs language is identified with the overall style of the master Narrator. In other words, the language of Achilles mirrors the language of the master Narrator. Empirical studies of the language of Homeric diction have shown that the language of Achilles is made distinct from the language of other heroes quoted in the Iliad, and this distinctness carries over into the language of the master Narrator, which is thus made distinct from the language of other narrators of epic.14 It is as if the klea andrōn as sung by Achilles - and as heard by Patroklos - were the model for the overall klea andrōn as sung by Homer.
The ainos as told by Phoenix, to which he refers as klea andrōn (IX 524), connects with the overall klea andrōn as told by the master Narrator. The connection is made by way of poetic conventions distinguishing the ainos from epic. One of these conventions is a set of three features characterizing the rhetoric of the ainos. Unlike epic, the ainos requires three qualifications of its listeners in order to be understood:15
The listeners must be sophoi ʻskilledʼ in understanding the message encoded in the poetry. That is, they must be mentally qualified.
They must be agathoi ʻnobleʼ. That is, they must be morally qualified.
13 Nagy Poetry as Performance (1996) 72-73, Platoʼs Rhapsody and Homerʼs Music (2002) 17. 14 Martin The Language of Heroes (1989) 225, 227, 233, 237. 15 Nagy Pindarʼs Homer (1990) 6§5.
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They must be philoi ʻnear and dearʼ to each other and to the one who is telling them the ainos. That is, they must be emotionally qualified. Communication is achieved through a special sense of community, that is, through recognizing “the ties that bind.”
Each of these three features of the ainos is made explicit in the songmaking medium of Pindar, whose songs date back to the first half of the fifth century BCE. The medium of Pindar actually refers to itself as ainos.16
One of these three features of the ainos is also made explicit in the ainos narrated by Phoenix, that is, in the klea andrōn | hērōōn, ʻthe glories [kleos plural] of men of an earlier time who were heroesʼ (IX 524-525). When it comes to the emotional qualifications required for understanding the ainos spoken by Phoenix, we have already seen that the speaker refers to his listeners as philoi ʻnear and dearʼ to him (IX 528). So the emotional requirements of the ainos are made quite explicit. By contrast, when it comes to the moral requirements for understanding the ainos, they are merely implicit in the word philoi. The moral message as encoded in his ainos becomes explicit only at a later point, once the outcome of the master Narrative is clarified. That point is reached when Patroklos is killed while fighting for his
comrades. It is only then that Achilles, for whom the story about the anger of Meleager was intended, ultimately recognizes the moral message of that story.
This kind of recognition, to borrow from the wording used in the lyric poetry of Pindar, shows that the listener has become sophos ʻskilledʼ in understanding the message encoded in the ainos. In the story told by Phoenix, that message is conveyed by the figure of Kleopatra, who is nearest and dearest to Meleager in that heroʼs ascending scale of affection. In the logic of the embedded narrative, that figure promotes the moral principle of fighting for oneʼs comrades, just as the figure of Patroklos, who is nearest and dearest to Achilles, promotes the same principle in the logic of the master Narrative.
Patroklos not only promotes that principle: he exemplifies it through his own epic actions, thereby forfeiting his life. Then, responding to the lesson learned from the death of Patroklos, Achilles will express his willingness to forfeit his own life in order to avenge the death of Patroklos (Iliad XVIII 90-126). Thus Achilles will be justifying the principle for which Patroklos had died, this principle of klea andrōn.
Plato shows his understanding of this moral principle as developed in the master Narrative of the Iliad: in the Apology (28c-d), we see a paraphrase of the relevant verses of the Iliad (XVIII 90-104), along with some quotations of the original wording. Likewise in Platoʼs Symposium (179e-180a), we see another paraphrase of the same verses. In the case of this second paraphrase, however, the choice made by Achilles to forfeit his life in order to avenge
Nagy Pindarʼs Homer (1990) 6§§5-8.
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the death of Patroklos appears to be conflated with another choice that faces the hero. At an earlier point in the Iliad, in the context of the so-called Embassy Scene where Achilles is speaking to Phoenix and the other delegates (IX 410-416), he says that he must decide between two kēres ʻfatesʼ (IX 411): either he dies at a ripe old age after a safe nostos ʻhomecomingʼ to his homeland Phthia or he dies young on the battlefield in Troy - and thereby wins for himself a kleos ʻgloryʼ that is aphthiton ʻunwiltingʼ (IX 413).
Platoʼs apparent conflation of two choices facing Achilles turns out to be justified: the two choices are in fact one choice. In the Embassy Scene of the Iliad, when Achilles says he must choose between two kēres ʻfatesʼ (IX 411), either a nostos ʻhomecomingʼ or a kleos ʻgloryʼ that is aphthiton ʻunwiltingʼ (IX 413), he is actually not yet ready to make his choice: the two alternative fates have simply been foretold for him by his mother, the goddess Thetis (IX 410- 411). Later on, after Patroklos has been killed, Achilles is facing the same choice, but by now he has made his decision. He says that there cannot be a homecoming for him (nosteîn XVIII 90) because he must kill Hector in order to avenge the death of Patroklos, and, once he kills Hector, his own death in battle will become a certainty (XVIII 90-93), just as his mother had foretold - and as she now foretells again (XVIII 96-97). By choosing to kill Hector, Achilles chooses to die young on the battlefield, and he refers to this death as his inevitable kēr ʻfateʼ (XVIII 115). As his compensation, however, he will now win kleos ʻgloryʼ for himself (XVIII 121).
So, ultimately, Achilles decides to choose kleos over life itself. Earlier on, however, when the choice is first formulated in the Embassy Scene, it is not yet clear which of
the two kēres ʻfatesʼ (IX 411) will be chosen by the hero - whether it will be a nostos ʻhomecomingʼ or the kleos ʻgloryʼ that is aphthiton ʻunwiltingʼ (IX 413). The hero is saying that he loves life more than any property he can win for himself by fighting in Troy, and such property is defined in terms of raiding cattle in particular and acquiring wealth in general (IX 401-408). Still earlier on, in the so-called Quarrel Scene at the very start of the Iliad, in Rhapsody I, such property is being defined in terms of the women as well as the cattle and the general wealth that the hero has already acquired in the course of raiding the territories of Aeolic-speaking Greeks in the vicinity of Troy.17
At the start, the heroʼs sense of timē ʻhonorʼ is simply a function of all the property he has acquired. The prime example is Briseis, a woman whom Achilles captured in one of his raiding expeditions in the territories of the Aeolic-speaking Greeks of Asia Minor, especially on the island of Lesbos and on the facing mainland: in the Quarrel Scene at the beginning of the Iliad, when Briseis is forcibly taken from Achilles by Agamemnon, she is treated merely as a war-prize, a trophy, and the heroʼs loss is seen as a loss of property. And yet, though the heroʼs honor is being expressed exclusively in terms of property in the Quarrel Scene of Rhapsody I,
The word Aeolic refers to the Greek dialect spoken on the island of Lesbos and the facing mainland of Asia Minor, as well as the dialect spoken in Thessaly, the homeland of Achilles.
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things have changed by the time Achilles speaks to Phoenix in the Embassy Scene of Rhapsody IX. By then, Achilles has rethought the loss of Briseis. By now this loss has become the loss of a personal relationship, and Achilles even says he loves Briseis as he would love a wife (IX 340- 343).
Here I must return to the story told by the old man Phoenix to the young man Achilles about the hero Meleager and his wife Kleopatra (Iliad IX 527-599). I highlight again the fact that the old man refers to his story as klea andrōn, the ʻglories of heroes of the pastʼ (IX 524). This story about Meleager, a hero who seems at first to love his wife more than he loves his own comrades, will now take on a special meaning for the hero of the master Narrative that is the Iliad.
But there are vital questions that remain: does Achilles love his would-be wife more than he loves his comrades - or even more than life itself? Here is where the name of Meleagerʼs own wife, Kleopatra, becomes essential. As we have seen, the meaning of Kleopatra is parallel to the meaning of Patrokleēs, the name of the one person who means more to Achilles than anyone else in the whole world. After Patroklos is killed, this hero is recognized as the one single person who was nearest and dearest to Achilles. After the death of Patroklos, Achilles can now say that he has all along valued Patroklos as much as he has valued his own life (XVIII 80-82).
So the hero Ajax misses the point when he accuses Achilles of loving Briseis more than he loves his comrades (IX 622-638). Achilles loves his would-be wife the same way that Meleager loves Kleopatra, but there is a deeper meaning to be found in that heroʼs love for Kleopatra, and that deeper meaning has to do with the relevance of the name of Kleopatra to Achilles. What Achilles loves more than anything else in the whole world is what the name of Kleopatra means to Meleager - and what the name of his own nearest and dearest comrade Patroklos means to him. That is because
these two names Patrokleēs / Kleopatra both mean ʻthe one who has the glory [kleos] of the ancestors [pateres]ʼ, and, as I have argued, both these names amount to a periphrasis of the expression klea andrōn | hērōōn ʻthe glories [kleos plural] of men of an earlier time who were heroesʼ (IX 524-525).
Just as Patroklos made the moral choice of loving his comrades more than life itself, actually giving up his life for them, so also Achilles will now make the moral choice of giving up his own life for his comrade Patroklos - and for the meaning of Patroklos. The meaning of the name of Patroklos, ʻthe one who has the glory [kleos] of the ancestors [pateres]ʼ, recapitulates the epic choice of Achilles, who ultimately opts for kleos over life itself. That is why the epic kleos chosen by Achilles must be aphthiton ʻunwiltingʼ forever (IX 413): the kleos of Achilles is like a flower so beautiful that it must not ever lose its divine vitality.
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There are two key words for this hour: akhos and penthos, and the meaning of both words is ʻgrief, sorrow; public expression of grief, sorrow, by way of lamentation or keeningʼ
Hour 3 Passage A. Iliad I 188-191
The son of Peleus [= Achilles] felt grief [akhos], and his heart within his shaggy breast was divided [190] whether to draw his sword, push the others aside, and kill the son of Atreus [= Agamemnon], or to restrain himself and check his anger [kholos].
The word akhos is connected with the name of Achilles in the Iliad. And the meaning of the word akhos, which conveys intense grief, sorrow, pain, is connected with a central theme that is linked with Achilles in the Homeric Iliad: Achilles is “a man of constant sorrow.” I have already used this phrase once before, in Hour 1, where I was thinking of the title of a traditional American folk song. I am thinking now also of an expression in Isaiah 53:3 as translated in the King James Bible: ʻa man of sorrows, and acquainted with griefʼ. One of my major research projects over the years has been the study of this central theme of grief and sorrow as experienced by Achilles and by his people, the Achaeans. Essential for such a study are the principal words that express all that grief and sorrow, namely, akhos and its synonym penthos. We can see this theme of grief and sorrow already at the very beginning of the Iliad. As Passage A shows, Achilles experiences akhos right away, and the grief, sorrow, and pain of this akhos modulates right away into kholos, anger.
Just as the word akhos is connected with the name of Achilles, its synonym penthos is connected with the name of an Amazon called Penthesileia. The story of Penthesileia the Amazon is preserved in an ancient plot summary of a lost epic, the Aithiopis or ʻSong of the Ethiopiansʼ:
Hour 3 Passage B. Proclus plot-summary of Aithiopis (p. 105 lines 26-27 ed. Allen)
The Amazon Penthesileia, daughter of Ares and Thracian by birth, comes to Troy as
an ally of the Trojans. In the middle of her aristeia [= greatest epic moments], Achilles kills her and the Trojans arrange for her funeral. Thersites, reviling and reproaching Achilles by saying that he loved Penthesileia, is killed by Achilles.
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What we read here is all that we have left, unfortunately, about Penthesileia the
Amazon in this ancient plot-summary.1
We must ponder a basic question about the plot of this lost epic, the Aithiopis, as retold by Proclus in his plot-summary. The question is this: when Thersites says that Achilles is in love with the Amazon Penthesileia, why is Achilles angry enough to kill him? My answer is this: it would seem that Achilles is in a state of denial about having fallen in love with the beautiful and powerful Amazon whom he has just killed.
As we know from the narrative about Thersites in Iliad II, we are dealing here with a character who understands the truth about heroes, even though he retells that truth in a distorted and offensive way that make the offended heroes want to kill him. A close reading of the Thersites narrative in Iliad II shows that there is a kernel of truth in what he says about Agamemnon and Achilles when he speaks in public about the big quarrel between those two heroes.2 Thersites is lucky to escape with his life for what he says here in the Iliad, but his luck finally runs out in the Aithiopis.
We know that Thersites was on to something when he mocked Achilles for falling in love with Penthesileia. We know this from the evidence of ancient vase-paintings, dating from the sixth and fifth centuries, where we see depictions of the actual moment when Achilles kills the beautiful Amazon.
http://www.easypedia.gr/el/images/shared/0/02/Akhilleus_Penthesileia_Staatliche_A ntikensammlungen_2688.jpg (mid fifth c.)]]
These evocative paintings, which show the eye contact between Achilles and Penthesileia at the precise moment when he plunges his weapon into her beautiful body, convey a remarkable convergence of themes linked with death and sex - and we will observe many other examples of such convergence as we proceed in our readings from ancient Greek song culture. Coming up, in Hour 5, is an example from the lyric songs of Sappho.
A big question remains: why would Achilles fall in love with the Amazon Penthesileia in particular? A key to the answer is the name of this Amazon, Penthesileia, which means ʻshe who
1 If you want to read right now the rest of the plot-summary of this lost epic Aithiopis, concerning what happens after the death of the Amazon Penthesileia, see my translation of the whole plot-summary of the Aithiopis in the Sourcebook. 2 Nagy The Best of the Achaeans (1999) 14§§10-14 = pp. 259-264.
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has penthos for the people [lāos]ʼ. This name is a perfect parallel to the name of Achilles, the full form of which can be reconstructed linguistically as *Akhi-lāos and which is understood in the specialized language of Homeric poetry to mean ʻhe who has akhos for the people [lāos]ʼ.3 Not only the names of these epic characters but even the characters themselves are beautifully matched. When Achilles and Penthesileia are engaged in mortal combat, as we see in the vase paintings, their eyes meet at the precise moment when he kills her. And what Achilles sees in Penthesileia is a female reflection of his male self. All along, Penthesileia has been his other self in the feminine gender, as even her name shows, and now he has killed her. The death of Penthesileia thus becomes a source of grief, sorrow, and
overwhelming sadness for Achilles, this man of constant sorrow. Both these epic names - and the epic characters that are tied to them - have to do with themes of lament, as signaled by the words akhos and penthos. Both these words point to the ʻgriefʼ or ʻsorrowʼ or ʻsadnessʼ of lament.
How, then, is ʻgriefʼ or ʻsorrowʼ or ʻsadnessʼ expressed by lament? It is by crying and singing at the same time. When people like you and me cry, we just cry. When people in a song culture cry, they lament. That is, they sing while they cry, they cry while they sing, and this kind of singing is crying; this kind of crying is singing. The physical aspects of crying are all integrated into the singing: the flow of tears, the choking of the voice, the convulsions of the body, and so on, are all part of the singing. Anthropologists have collected many examples of laments that are sung and cried by persons in the depths of real grief. I could illustrate here by way of citing performances in Modern Greek contexts. There has been a great deal of ethnographic collecting of and research on laments in Modern Greek song culture. A particularly useful work that surveys the vast evidence is the book of Margaret Alexiou, The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition.4 But I choose here instead to focus on a lament in the context of a historically unrelated song culture. In doing so, I am engaging in typological comparison, which is a kind of comparative method that has to do with the study of parallelisms between structures as structures pure and simple, without any presuppositions. Such a mode of comparison is especially useful in fields like linguistics: comparing parallel structures in languages - even if the given languages are unrelated to each other - is a proven way of enhancing oneʼs overall understanding of the linguistic structures being compared.5
The lament I have in mind is a Hungarian lament, sung - and cried - by an old woman who was mourning two adult sons, both of whom were killed in war. The recording of the
3 This reconstruction is explained in Nagy The Best of the Achaeans (1999) 6§§1-30
= pp. 94-117 and Homerʼs Text and Language (2004) 131-137. 4 Alexiou 2002. The first edition was published in 1974; the second edition features an important new introduction by Yatromanolakis and Roilos 2002.
Nagy “The Epic Hero” (2006) §4, with bibliography. This article can be found as “Introduction 3” on the Heroes website.
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lament was initiated many years ago by Zoltán Kodály, himself a Hungarian. Kodály was not only a celebrated composer and pianist (my late father, also a pianist, was one of his pupils). He was also a respected ethnographer and ethnomusicologist who studied the song cultures of Eastern Europe and elsewhere. He arranged for the “live” recordings of a wide variety of folk performances, including performances of lament. It was he who recorded the lament that I have chosen as illustration:6
[[Discography here.]] Transcribed by Henry Bayerle.
jaj jaj énnekem bánatos anyának! jaj jaj for me, sorrowful mother!
jaj jaj jaj jaj, jaj jaj jaj, Gézikám! jaj 7x, my little Géza!
Hogy elrabolták a fiam tö:lem How they robbed my son from me.
Gézikám, Gézikám! my little Géza! 2x
Hun vagy édes fiam? where are you, my sweet son
Drága gyerekem! my dear child
jaj jaj jaj jaj jaj jaj! jaj 6x
Jaj minden szentek napja Jaj, every saint's day,
úgy járkálok a sírok közt,
how I wander among the graves
hogy nem tanálom a sírodat
but I can't find your grave.
Gézikám édes fiam
my little Géza, my sweet son
Gézikám Dezsö:kém
my little Dezsö:, my sweet son
drága gyerekeim! my dear children
Hun vagytok, merre vagytok? where are you, where are you headed?
Jaj de szerencsétlen anya vagyok! jaj, how luckless a mother I am
A gyerekeim elsodródtak tölem messze a vihar.
My children have been swept away, far away, by the storm.
Nem tanálom, nem tanálom, I can't find them, I can't find them.
jaj nekem, jaj nekem! jaj for me, jaj for me
Itthon vagyok evvel a bánatos szívü: apátokval,
I'm here at home with this father of yours with the sad heart.
akinek minden héten kiszedik a vérit. Every week they rip out his veins
Jaj jaj jaj, olyan kínosan néz szegény! jaj 3x, he looks so tortured
Jaj jaj jaj jaj jaj jaj nekem jaj 6x for me
Hova legyek, mit csináljak? where am I headed, what am I to do?
Kihö forduljak panaszra? where shall I turn for consolation?
Ki segít rajtam, ki vigasztal engem? who will help me, who will comfort me? 39
Ki ad nekem egy darabka kenyeret
who will give to me a little piece of bread,
édes fiaim énnekem? my sweet sons, to me?
Jaj, hova legyek, mit csináljak?
jaj, where am I headed, what am I to do?
Jaj, kihö menjek? jaj, where am I to go?
Kihö menjek panaszra, édes fiaim, drága gyerekeim?
where shall I turn for consolation, my sweet sons, my dear children?
Nincs aki azt mondaná nekem, There is nobody who would say to me,
hogy édesanyám de szeretlek! My sweet mother, how I love you!
Gézikám drága gyerekem, My little Géza, my dear child,
aki ölelt-csókolt minden pillanatban engem. who hugged and kissed me every moment.
Anyukám, nem tehetek róla,
My dear little mother [= "mommy"], I can't help it,
de nagyon-nagyon szeretlek! but I love you very very much.
Pondering the words of this lament, I note here especially the many ways in which the lamenting woman expresses here her feelings of losing control and order. There is a sense of disorientation that sets in, especially at lines 18 and following, and this disorientation leads to a time warp: at lines 32 and following, the lamenting womanʼs memories modulate from the present to the distant past, back when she is still a young mother taking care of her loving child. Her lamenting words picture the child as he is kissing her, trying to comfort her, and the childʼs words are quoted directly: I am so sorry, ʻMommyʼ, I canʼt help it, I didnʼt mean to hurt you. The incapacitation caused by death is all-pervasive here. Earlier, at lines 20-21, the father too is pictured as incapacitated with grief, as if all his blood had been forcibly drained from his body.
It is a well-known fact, learned from ethnographic research on laments, that such sad songs centering on the death of loved ones can modulate into love songs.7 And not only can laments modulate into love songs. The converse also happens: love songs can modulate into laments, especially in the case of love songs that center not only on lovers who are lost or dead but also on the loss or death of love itself. Just as laments express sorrow and love together in the course of mourning the death of a loved one, so also love songs can readily express the same two emotions of sorrow and love together. And why should a traditional love song be sad? It is because most traditional love songs are preoccupied with the themes of unrequited love. And, in most song cultures, love songs about unrequited love are felt to be deeply erotic.
Nagy “Ancient Greek Elegy” (2008) 34. This article is available gratis on line at chs.harvard.edu.
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I show here an example. It is a Hungarian love song, from the region of Transylvania, and the name of the love song is Szerelem, which means ʻloveʼ. This song was used
by the director of the film The English Patient (1996), both at the beginning of the film and also in the course of the action in the film, as for example in an intensely erotic love scene where the Hungarian character in the story of the film plays on an old “phonograph” machine a vinyl record of this love song . I give here the words of the first two stanzas only:
When you listen to this song, you hear an example of stylized crying. That is to say, the singer is not really crying, since the crying is stylized.
In most traditional song cultures, including Greek song culture, laments and love songs are performed primarily by women, and many of the formal gestures of lament are specific to women. The performance of songs by women is a most important matter in ancient Greek song culture. And it is a most important matter to consider right now, as we study the Homeric Iliad, since the traditions of such performances pervade the Iliad. And I argue that Homeric poetry needs to be rethought in the light of the womenʼs song traditions that pervade it.
A moment ago, I mentioned formal gestures of lament that are specific to women. Now I point to an example of such a gesture in the singing of ancient Greek laments: women conventionally let down the hair while lamenting. This spontaneous but traditional gesture is an expression of loss of control and order in oneʼs personal life. There are also other spontaneous but traditional ways of expressing loss of control and order, such as tearing your hair, scratching your cheeks, ripping your fine clothing.
In the case of letting down the hair, this ritual gesture is normally preceded by the equally spontaneous but traditional ritual gesture of ripping off the headdress that holds the hair together and keeps it composed.
Szerelem, szerelem, O, love love
átkozott gyötrelem, accursed torture mért nem virágoztál
why did you not blossom minden fatetején?
on every treetop? Minden fa tetején,
On the top of every tree, diófa levelén.
on the leaf of a walnut tree, úgy szakisztott volna
so every maiden and unmarried young man minden leány s legény.
would have plucked it. 41
This is the first time I use the word ritual. I will postpone till later my working definition of this word.
Once the headdress is torn off, the hair gets let down and becomes completely undone. A spectacular example is the scene in Iliad XXII when the wife of Hector, Andromache, rips off her headdress, which is the most elaborate headdress to be
found in Homeric poetry, before she starts to sing a lament over the death of her husband. By ripping off this headdress, Andromache is letting down her beautiful curly hair, violently undoing it. In effect, what the Homeric narration presents here to the mindʼs eye is the complete undoing of a womanʼs composure. Andromache will perform her lament, crying and singing, with her hair completely undone:
Hour 3 Passage C. Iliad XXII 460-477
[460] Her heart beat fast, and as she spoke she rushed from the house like a Maenad, with her waiting-women following after. When she reached the battlements and the crowd of people, she stood looking out upon the wall, and saw Hector being taken away in front of the city –
[465] the horses dragging him without heed or care over the ground towards the ships of the Achaeans. Her eyes were then shrouded as with the darkness of night and she fell fainting backwards, losing her life-breath [psukhē]. She tore the headdress from her head and flung it away, also the frontlet and the snood with its plaited band,
[470] and the veil which golden Aphrodite had given her on the day when Hector of the shining helmet took her with him from the house of Eëtion, after having given countless gifts of wooing for her sake. Her husbandʼs sisters and the wives of his brothers crowded round her and supported her, for she was stunned to the point of dying;
[475] when she again presently breathed and came to, she sobbed and made lament among the Trojans saying, “Woe is me, O Hector; woe, ...”
At this point, the beautiful song of lament sung by Andromache is quoted in full by the master Narrator (XXII 477-514). In order to appreciate this lament in context, we need to understand the scene of dishevelment that leads up to it, which I have studied at length in an article. Here is an abridged version of what I say about it there:8
When Andromache suddenly sees the corpse of Hector, dragged behind the chariot of Achilles, she falls into a swoon (XXII 466-467) while at the same time tearing off her elaborate krēdemnon ʻheaddressʼ (XXII 468-470). In this passionate moment, as her eyes are
Nagy “Did Sappho and Alcaeus ever meet?” (2007) 249-250. This article is available gratis on line at chs.harvard.edu.
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just about to behold the dreaded sight of her husbandʼs corpse, she is described as looking just like a Maenad (XXII 460: μαινάδι ἴση). Earlier in the Iliad, in an analogous context (VI 389), Andromache is pictured as μαινομένῃ ἐϊκυῖα ʻlooking like a woman possessedʼ as she rushes toward the walls of Troy to see for herself the fate of the Trojans on the battlefield.
In this dramatic context, I draw attention to the evocative word krēdemnon ʻheaddressʼ (XXII 470). It refers to the overall ornamental hair-binding that holds together three separate kinds of ornamental hair-binding that serve to keep Andromacheʼs hair in place, under control (XXII 469).9 When Andromache violently tears off from her head this most elaborate headdress, causing her hair to come completely undone, she is ritually miming her complete loss of control over her own fate as linked with the fate of her husband: we see here a ritually eroticized gesture that expresses her extreme sexual vulnerability as linked with the violent death and
disfiguration of her husband. For Andromache to do violence to her own krēdemnon is to express the anticipated violence of her future sexual humiliation at the hands of the enemy. Pointedly, the goddess Aphrodite herself had given this krēdemnon to Andromache on her wedding day (XXII 470-471).
Such explicit association of the krēdemnon with Aphrodite reveals its erotic properties. The undoing of a womanʼs hair, caused by the undoing of her krēdemnon, produces what I will call an Aphrodisiac effect. So long as a womanʼs krēdemnon is in place, her sexuality is under control just as her hair is under control. When the krēdemnon is out of place, however, her sexuality threatens to get out of control.
The lament that is sung by Andromache when she sees the corpse of Hector dragged behind the chariot of Achilles is arguably the most artistic and elaborate of all the laments quoted in Homeric poetry (XXII 477-514). It is also the most lengthy of all Homeric laments. Later on, toward the end of the Iliad, Andromache sings a lament at the funeral of Hector in Troy, and this lament too is quoted in full by the master Narrator (XXIV 725-745). And, earlier on, when Andromache speaks to her husband for the last time in a tearful farewell scene, her words correspond formally to the words of a lament that could have been sung, with adjustments, at the funeral of Hector, and these words too are quoted in full by the master Narrator (VI 407-439).
The three separate terms for ornamental hair-bindings here are ampux ʻfrontletʼ, kekruphalos ʻsnoodʼ, and anadesmē ʻheadbandʼ (Iliad XXII 469); the overall hair- binding or ʻheaddressʼ that keeps it all in place is the krēdemnon (XXII 470). Similarly, Varro (On the Latin language 5.130) speaks of three separate terms for ornamental hair-bindings traditionally used by Roman matrons: lanea ʻwoolen ribbonʼ, reticulum ʻnet-capʼ or ʻsnoodʼ, and capital ʻheadbandʼ. To these three words Varro (7.44) adds a fourth, tutulus (derived from the adjective tutus ʻproviding safetyʼ), which seems to be an overall term for the generic headdress worn by brides and Vestal Virgins as well as matrons.
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I need to say one more thing right now about the first of the three laments performed by Andromache: in this first lament, Andromache is singing and crying over the death of her husband Hector even before he dies. In this case, her lament is an act of premonition.
I offer here a typological parallel to Andromacheʼs first lament as an act of premonition. It comes from the Korean film Chunhyang (2000), which is based on a traditional Korean pansori narrative about a righteous young woman named Chunhyang, who is of low social status but high moral principles.
I am about to show a scene from this narrative, where the young woman breaks out in lament when she absorbs the sad news of a terrible fate that awaits her. In this scene, the secret husband of Chunhyang announces that he will abandon her, though only for a while, he claims. The reaction of Chunhyang is instantaneous grief. Her sorrow is mixed with feelings of love for her husband, and with feelings of fear and anger that she will lose him forever. She bursts into a lament, accompanied by ritual gestures, such as the violent tearing of her clothes, which is a ritual premonition of the violence she will endure because of her low social rank, now that her high-ranking secret husband is leaving her. This violent tearing of clothes dramatizes her sexual vulnerability in the uncertain future that now awaits her. In the plot of the Chunhyang
narrative, that vulnerability will turn out to be a grim reality for this abandoned woman, whose low social status makes her become the tragic victim of predatory men of high social status. Her lament is a premonition that anticipates this reality, as she keeps on crying and singing. And the master Narrator quotes the lament of Chunhyang as she cries and sings. This way, by quoting the lament of Chunhyang, the Narrator performs his own stylized crying and singing, which is more artistic than the lament of Chunhyang. When Chunhyang is lamenting, her crying and singing is more natural, not as musical as the stylized crying and singing of the master Narrator, and her lament echoes in a kind of delayed reaction the singing of her lament as performed by the master Narrator. In the middle of her lament, the macro-Narrative of the film shows flashbacks to happy moments in the past when Chunhyang is seen making love to her secret husband. These erotic flashbacks have the effect of intensifying the sorrow of Chunhyang as she thinks back to those happy moments in the past that preceded her excruciating pain and suffering in the present. And, conversely, her sorrow intensifies the eroticism of these flashbacks.
[[Here I show the first clip from Chunhyang.]]
The macro-Narrative of the film Chunhyang actually shows the master Narrator in action. The camera shows him performing before a large audience representing a broad cross- section of ages and social status. The master Narrator is telling about the excruciating pain and suffering inflicted on Chunyhang by her high ranking tormentor, a magistrate who seeks to alienate her affections from her absent husband. The earlier lament of premonition sung by Chunhyang, accompanied by acts of ritual self-degradation like the ripping of her fine
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clothing, now becomes a lament of actuality, where she cries and sings over the excruciating pain that is being inflicted on her. And the lament that she sings while she is being tortured is quoted by the master Narrator himself, whose stylized crying and singing is foregrounded against the background of the natural crying and singing of Chunhyang as she endures the pain inflicted on her. Her crying and singing are echoing the stylized crying and singing of the master Narrator who is quoting her sad song:
[[Here I show the second clip from Chunhyang]].
Keeping in mind the laments of Chunhyang as a typological parallel, I now turn back to the first lament of Andromache in the Iliad. Here in Hour 3, I quote only a part of this lament, where we see Andromache singing and crying over the death of her husband Hector even before he dies. As I said before, her lament here is an act of
premonition ...
Hour 3 Passage D. Iliad VI 407-416, 421-432
“Dear husband,” said she [= Andromache], “your valor will bring you to destruction; think of your infant son, and on my hapless self who before long shall be your widow - for the Achaeans will set upon you in a body and kill you. It would be better for me, should I lose you, to lie dead and buried, for I shall have nothing left to comfort me when you are gone, except for grief [akhos 413] many times over. I have neither father nor mother now. Achilles slew my father when he destroyed Thebe the beautiful city of the Cilicians. ... I had seven brothers in my fatherʼs house, but on the same day they all went down into the house of Hades. Achilles killed them as they
were with their sheep and cattle. My mother - her who had been queen of all the land under Mount Placus - he brought here with the spoil, and freed her for a great sum, but the archer - queen Artemis took her away from the house of your father. O Hector - you who to me are father, mother, brother, and dear husband - have mercy on me; stay here at this wall; make not your child fatherless, and your wife a widow.”
As we see here in these words of lament, the word akhos ʻgrief, sorrowʼ at verse 413 is used to express the performance, the singing, of lament.
In the course of lamenting her sorrows here, Andromache makes special mention of the death of her father, whose name is Eëtion – as we know from other contexts of the Iliad. From what she says, it is clear that her father would be at the top of her ascending scale of affection - if he were alive. But her father is dead, and so too are her seven brothers and her mother. For Andromache, all she has left is her husband Hector, who is now the entirety of her ascending scale of affections. Hector has become for Andromache her father, brothers, and mother as well as her husband. In effect, Andromache is telling Hector: youʼre my everything.
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The death of Eëtion, Andromacheʼs father, who would have been at the top of her ascending scale of affection, deepens the irony in a passage we saw earlier. Here I repeat only the relevant lines of that passage:
review, Hour 2 Passage D. Iliad IX 185-195
When they [= Phoenix along with his fellow delegates, Odysseus and Ajax] reached the ships and tents of the Myrmidons, they found Achilles playing on a lyre, a beautiful one, of exquisite workmanship, and its cross-bar was of silver. It was part of the spoils that he had taken when he destroyed the city of Eëtion, and he was now diverting himself with it and singing the glories of men [klea andrōn]. He was alone with Patroklos, who sat facing him and said nothing, waiting till he [= Achilles] would leave off singing.
We see Achilles here singing the klea andrōn, the ʻglories of heroes of the pastʼ (Iliad IX 189) - while accompanying himself on a lyre. And the lyre that he is strumming had once belonged to Eëtion, the father of Andromache. You could say that Achilles is strumming the pain of Andromache.10 I think of the wording in the song original sung by Roberta Flack, Killing me softly (1973): “Strumming my pain with his fingers, singing my life with his words, ...”
You have to ask yourself: what is Achilles singing about when he is singing the klea andrōn, the ʻglories of heroes of the pastʼ (Iliad IX 189)? The master Narrator of the macro- Narrative does not say. There is no quoting or even paraphrasing of the subject of the song sung by Achilles here. But there is a hint about that subject, and that hint is embedded in another vitally important nearby mention of klea andrōn in the Iliad. We have already seen it in Hour 2. It happens when Phoenix is telling the story of the hero Meleager and his wife Kleopatra, and the old man refers to his micro-narrative as klea andrōn, the ʻglories of heroes of the pastʼ (Iliad IX 524). And what is the subject of that micro-narrative? From the standpoint of Phoenix as the
narrator, the subject is the love that a hero owes to his comrades. From the standpoint of the master Narrator of the macro-Narrative that is the Iliad, however, the subject is nothing less than the meaning of Kleopatra herself, of her name, which has to do with the ʻglories of the ancestorsʼ, the ʻglories of heroes of the pastʼ.
The meaning of Kleopatra, as well as the meaning of the song about Kleopatra as told by Phoenix, is relevant to the very idea of lamentation. Inside the song about Kleopatra, that is, inside the klea andrōn as performed by Phoenix, Kleopatra is actually shown performing a lament, singing it to her husband Meleager, and her song of lament is actually paraphrased in this song of and about Kleopatra (IX 590-594). In this song, that is, in the klea andrōn as performed by Phoenix (Iliad IX
524), we see that Kleopatra has a second name besides Kleopatra, and that second name is a clear signal of lamentation. That second name is Alcyone,
10 In a forthcoming study, Masterpieces of Metonymy (2012), I argue that we see here a perfect example of metonymy.
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and the meaning of that name is transparent. In ancient Greek traditions, as I noted in Hour 2, the alcyon / halcyon is a bird that is linked with singing songs of lament, and the Iliad makes this link explicit in referring to the name Alcyone, given to the lamenting Kleopatra by her lamenting mother and father:
review, Hour 2 Passage E. Iliad IX 550-602
Her [= Andromacheʼs] father and mother then named her Alcyone, because her mother had lamented with the plaintive strains of the halcyon, a bird of much lamentation [penthos], when Phoebus Apollo had carried her off.
Can we say, then, that the klea andrōn sung by Achilles himself is the song of Kleopatra? Yes and no. It is the song of Kleopatra, but it is not only her song. It is also the song of Patroklos. As we have seen in Hour 2, the meaning of the name of Kleopatra is also the meaning of the name of Patroklos, ʻthe one who has the glory [kleos] of the ancestors [pateres]ʼ, and this meaning recapitulates the epic choice of Achilles, who ultimately opts for kleos over life itself. The name of Kleopatra contains the same elements as does the name of Patroklos, only in reverse: ʻthe one who has the glory [kleos] of the ancestors [pateres]ʼ.
From what we have seen so far, we know that the klea or ʻgloriesʼ of ancestors and heroes as signaled by the names of both Kleopatra and Patroklos are relevant to the idea of singing laments. Now we will see that the expression kleos aphthiton ʻunwilting gloryʼ is also relevant to this same idea of singing laments.
We have already noted this expression in the very first passage we had read in Hour 1: review, Hour 1 Passage A. Iliad IX 413
I [= Achilles] shall lose my safe homecoming [nostos], but I shall have a kleos that is
unwilting [aphthiton].
As we see from this climactic verse in the Iliad, the kleos of Achilles is like a flower so beautiful that it must never lose its divine vitality. But that is also why Achilles himself needs to be lamented, mourned. He will wilt just as a beautiful flower wilts. And thus he will die the death that he chose for himself. And that is why Thetis, the mother of Achilles, laments him, even before he dies, as if he were a beautiful vibrant seedling. As in the case of Andromacheʼs first lament, the lament of Thetis here is an act of premonition. We will analyze this lament in Hour 4, but I already give here a preview: preview, Hour 4 Passage G. Iliad XVIII 54-64
Ah me, the wretch! Ah me, the mother, so sad it is, of the very best. I gave birth to a
faultless and strong son, 47
the very best of heroes. And he shot up like a seedling. I nurtured him like a shoot in the choicest spot of the orchard, only to send him off on curved ships to fight at Troy. And I will never be welcoming him back home as returning warrior, back to the House of Peleus. And as long as he lives and sees the light of the sun, he will have sorrow [akh-nutai 62], and though I go to him I cannot help him. Nevertheless I will go, that I may see my dear son and learn what sorrow [penthos] has befallen him though he is still holding aloof from battle.
Here, then, is a perfect expression of the theme of the man of constant sorrow, and the word that is used in this passage is the verb akh-nutai at verse 62 corresponding to the noun akhos, which as I have argued is the central theme connected with Achilles in the Iliad and which even shapes the name of the hero as it is understood in the formulaic language of Homeric poetry.
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Key word for this hour: aphthiton ʻunwilting, imperishableʼ, as applied to the poetic kleos ʻgloryʼ of Achilles in Iliad IX 413.
I start with the very first passage we had read in Hour 1:
review, Hour 1 Passage A. Iliad IX 413 I [= Achilles] shall lose my safe homecoming [nostos], but I shall have a kleos that is
unwilting [aphthiton].
The poetic theme of the wilting flower, as expressed here in the words of Achilles when he considers the option of giving up his life in return for a kleos or poetic ʻgloryʼ that is aphthiton or ʻunwiltingʼ forever, can be found not only in epic poetry. It can also be found in lyric poetry, as we will see later when we consider a song of Sappho. And we can see this theme also in the lyric songs of Pindar, whose words proudly proclaim his mastery of the prestige conferred by kleos (as in Nemean 7.61-63).37 I focus here on a song of Pindar that actually refers to the unwilting glory of Achilles in song. This song, as we will now see, says that Achilles will die and will thus stop blossoming, that is, he will ʻwiltʼ, phthinein, but the medium that conveys the message of death will never wilt. That medium is pictured as a choral lyric song eternally sung by the Muses as they lament the beautiful wilted flower that is Achilles:38
Hour 4 Passage A. Pindar Isthmian 8 (a victory ode honoring the athlete Kleandros of Aegina and commemorating his cousin Nikokles of Aegina) lines 56a-60
Even when he [= Achilles] died, the songs did not leave him, but the Heliconian
Maidens [= the Muses] stood by his pyre and his funeral mound, pouring forth a song of lamentation [thrēnos] that is famed far and wide. And so it was that the gods decided to hand over the man, worthy as he was when he had wilted [phthinein] in death, to the songs of the goddesses [Muses]. And this, even now, wins as a prize the words of song, as the chariot- team of the Muses starts moving on its way to glorify the memory of Nikokles the boxer.
The wording of this lyric song by Pindar, whose career as a songmaker dates to the first half of the fifth century BCE, makes it clear that Achilles will phthi-n-ein ʻwiltʼ when he is cut down by death just as a natural flower wilts when it is cut down, but the song also makes it clear that this hero is destined to have a poetic glory that will never wilt.
The lyric wording here
37 Nagy Pindarʼs Homer (1990) 6§3 = p. 147. 38 Nagy Pindarʼs Homer (1990) 7§6 =
pp. 204-206.
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corresponds to the epic wording that we have noted in the Iliad (IX 413), where it is prophesied that the poetic kleos ʻgloryʼ of Achilles will be a-phthi-ton ʻunwiltingʼ forever.39
I offer here a brief exegesis of the passage from the song of Pindar that I have highlighted.40
According to Pindarʼs song, the death of the athlete Nikokles (we do not know for sure how he died, but he may have been killed in the Persian War of 480/479 BCE) will not impede the glory that he merited as a victorious boxer: rather, the death of this athlete is said to be the key to the continuation of his glory, just as the death of Achilles was the key to the extension of the glory of heroes into the historical present. Pindarʼs song says that the death of Nikokles, by virtue of his deeds in the historical present, will be honored by the same tradition of song that honored the death of Achilles by virtue of that heroʼs deeds in the heroic past. The name of Nikokles, Nīkoklēs ʻhe who has the glory [kleos] of victory [nīkē]ʼ, thus has a meaning that is relevant to the themes of Pindarʼs lyric song.
And there is another name in this song that is even more relevant. The cousin of Nikokles, whose victory in an athletic event of boxing is highlighted in the song, was a young man named Kleandros, who won in the athletic event of the pankration at the festival of the Isthmia (celebrated at the Isthmus of Corinth) and who was the primary recipient of honor in this lyric song of Pindar. The name of Kleandros, Kleandros ʻhe who has the glories of men [klea andrōn]ʼ, is proclaimed as the first word of this whole song of Pindarʼs (Isthmian 1.1.). This placement of his name at the very beginning of the song composed in his honor is remarkable. In no other victory song of Pindar do we find the name of a victor placed in absolute initial position. And the meaning of this name fits perfectly the meaning of the expression klea andrōn ʻthe glories of menʼ as we have seen it being used in epic:
review, Hour 2 Passage B. Iliad IX 524-525 This is the way [houtōs] that we [= I, Phoenix] learned it, the glories [klea] of men
[andrōn] of an earlier time who were heroes [hērōes], whenever one of them was overcome by tempestuous anger.
The full argument is made in Nagy The Best of the Achaeans (1999) 10§§3-4 = pp. 176-177 and Pindarʼs Homer (1990) 7§6 = pp. 204-206. I disagree with the interpretation by Rodin (2009:296) of the relevant wording of Pindar (Isthmian
8.56a-60). I especially disagree with his argument that the kleos of Achilles is restricted to epic. As we will now see, the kleos of Achilles is pictured as extending into lyric, including such forms as the victory odes of Pindar. See also Nagy “Lyric and Greek Myth” (2007) 36.
There is a fuller version of this exegesis in Nagy Pindarʼs Homer (1990) 7§§6 and 7.
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review, Hour 2 Passage D. Iliad IX 185-195
When they [= Phoenix along with his fellow delegates, Odysseus and Ajax] reached
the ships and tents of the Myrmidons, they found Achilles playing on a lyre, a beautiful one, of exquisite workmanship, and its cross-bar was of silver. It was part of the spoils that he had taken when he destroyed the city of Eëtion, and he was now diverting himself with it and singing the glories of men [klea andrōn]. He was alone with Patroklos, who sat facing him and said nothing, waiting till he [= Achilles] would leave off singing. Odysseus and Ajax now came in - Odysseus leading the way - and stood before him. Achilles sprang from his seat with the lyre still in his hand, and Patroklos, when he saw the guests, rose also.
In these two passages from Iliad IX, as we have seen, the term klea andrōn ʻglories of menʼ refers in the first case to an ainos told by Phoenix to Achilles about Meleager and Kleopatra (524) and, in the second case, to a song sung by Achilles in his shelter (189).
As I will now argue, the epic kleos chosen by Achilles in Iliad IX (413) is also a lyric kleos. And Achilles himself is not only an epic hero: he is also a lyric hero. The epic wording of the Homeric Iliad clearly recognizes that the kleos of Achilles is lyric as well as epic. As we can see in the epic of the Iliad, Achilles is pictured as singing the klea andrōn ʻglories of heroesʼ (IX 189) while accompanying himself on a lyre, by which I mean simply a stringed instrument that typifies ʻlyricʼ poetry in ancient Greek song culture.
Hour 3, Iliad VI 407-416, 421-432.
Passage D of
Here I return to a topic that came up in the previous hour. It has to do with When Andromache laments the death of her father, whose
name is Eëtion, we begin to understand the deep irony of the reference to the lyre of Achilles
in
Passage D of Hour 2, Iliad IX 185-195.
There we see Achilles playing on the lyre that once
belonged to Eëtion, the father of Andromache. He is singing and accompanying himself on the
lyre, and such singing to the accompaniment of the lyre is the basic principle of what we call
lyric poetry. And, as I said before, Achilles is in a way strumming the pain of Andromache. And
what is the lyric poem - or, better, lyric song - that Achilles is performing? He is performing
klea andrōn, the ʻglories of heroes of men of the pastʼ (Iliad IX 189).
There is, as we have already observed, a vitally important parallel to this performance by Achilles. When Phoenix tells Achilles the micro-narrative about the hero Meleager and his
wife Kleopatra, which seems to be an epic within the epic that is the Homeric Iliad, the old man
is likewise performing klea andrōn, the ʻglories of heroes of the pastʼ (Iliad IX 524). When Achilles sings the klea andrōn ʻglories of menʼ in Iliad IX (189), his only audience is his best friend Patroklos, who is waiting for his own turn to sing
(190-191). As we have already seen, the one-man audience of the song is also the
hidden subject of the ainos here. And that is because, as we have also seen, the name Patro-kleēs means ʻhe who has the kleos of the ancestorsʼ. In Iliad IX the kleos of the ainos about the implicit subject of Patroklos is
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appropriated by the epic, which is a kleos that is aphthiton ʻunwiltingʼ (413). The situation is the opposite in Pindarʼs lyric song, where the kleos of the epic about the explicit subject of Achilles is appropriated by the kleos of lyric, since the never-ending kleos of Achilles is imagined as extending all the way into the kleos of the victorious athlete in the historical present.
In Pindarʼs lyric song, as in the epic of the Iliad, the kleos of the ancestors plays a role. In the lyric song, however, the kleos of the ancestors is realized not in the theme and the name of Patroklos but rather in the actual kleos of the victorʼs own ancestors. In this particular song, moreover, the kleos of the victorʼs ancestors is realized in the victorʼs own name, Kleandros. The victor Kleandros is living proof that the kleos or poetic ʻgloryʼ of his family is predicated on the achievements of its members. The victor who is being celebrated here in Pindarʼs lyric song was meant to be celebrated from the start, from the very time that he was named. He was meant to become what he became through his athletic victory. And he was fortunate enough to live up to his name. A personʼs name, which he is given at birth on the basis of his ancestry, commits him to his identity. In the case of Kleandros, we see that a historical person can fit the themes of Pindarʼs songmaking tradition. Even the identity of a historical person, as defined by his name, can fit such themes. This can happen because the familyʼs prestige and their very identity depend on the traditional institution of glorification by way of song.
Here I return to my argument that the epic kleos chosen by Achilles in Iliad IX (413) is also a lyric kleos, as we can see from the fact that Achilles is pictured as singing the klea andrōn ʻglories of heroesʼ (189) while accompanying himself on a lyre, which as we have just seen is the stringed instrument that typifies ʻlyricʼ poetry in ancient Greek song culture. And, I must now emphasize, the lyric that Achilles sings is relevant to the themes of lament. As we have already noticed, this precious musical instrument had been plundered by Achilles when he captured the native city of Andromache (IX 186-189). The link here with Andromache is essential, in view of the fact that this character is featured as singing three of the greatest laments in the Iliad.
The song of klea andrōn ʻglories of heroesʼ sung by Achilles inside the epic of the Homeric Iliad (IX 189) is like an echo of songs of lament about love and bittersweet sorrow as heard in the lyric tradition.41 In that tradition, such songs of lament are typically linked not only with Achilles but also with that most celebrated pair of doomed lovers in ancient Greek song culture, namely, Andromache and the man who earns the ultimate hatred and fury of Achilles in the Iliad, Hector.42 The kleos of Achilles is a form of song that dwells on the hatred and the fury, the love and the sorrow - and on the power of song in expressing all these intensely lyrical feelings.
Nagy “Lyric and Greek Myth” (2007) 36-38. 42 Nagy Homer the Preclassic (2009) II§297.
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This kleos or story of Achilles in epic is interchangeable with the kleos or story of Hector and his wife Andromache in lyric, as we will see from Song 44 of Sappho,
which is about the wedding of Hector and Andromache.
Before I can speak about this song, however, I need to give some background about Sappho. I want to highlight right away that Sappho is a woman, and she is reputed to be the creator of some of the most beautiful songs in world literature. Sappho is relevant to what I already noted in Hour 3, that the performance of songs by women is a most important matter in ancient Greek song culture. And it is a most important matter for us to consider the songs of women as we study the Homeric Iliad, since the traditions of such songs pervade the Iliad.
It makes sense, therefore, for you to take the time to read in the Sourcebook, already at this early stage of your overall reading, all the fragments of surviving poetry and song attributed to Sappho – as also of Alcman. Reading these fragments will take less than half an hour of reading altogether. Especially important are the fragments of Sappho. The earlier you acquaint yourselves with the look and feel of the traditions of song represented by Sappho, the better you will understand the entirety of ancient Greek song culture.
Sappho was a Lesbian, by which I mean simply that she originated from an island called Lesbos, situated off the northern coast of Asia Minor. The people of Lesbos spoke a local version of the Greek dialect known as Aeolic, and they were considered to be Asiatic Greeks, as distinct from the European Greeks of, say, Thessaly, who also spoke a local version of Aeolic.
In the song culture of the island of Lesbos, the woman Sappho was considered the primary representative of womenʼs songs, while a man called Alcaeus was considered the primary representative of menʼs songs. According to the traditions of Lesbos, both Sappho and Alcaeus lived in the late seventh and early sixth centuries BCE. That rough date matches a reference in a song of Alcaeus (Fragment 49.12) to a contemporary event that can be dated independently, namely, the destruction of Ascalon by Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, in 604 BCE (Alcaeus Testimonium 1). (I have written extensively about the songs of Sappho and Alcaeus in the article “Lyric and Greek Myth” [2007], which is also on the Heroes website, and I offer here a short excerpt.)
The songs of Sappho and Alcaeus, taken together, represents the repertoire of the myths and the rituals of the people of Lesbos as expressed in lyric song.
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(Here is a quick working definition of myth and ritual together. Ritual is doing things and saying things in a way that is considered sacred. Myth is saying things in a way that is also considered sacred. So ritual frames myth.)43
The songs of Sappho and Alceaus date back to a period when the city-states of the island of Lesbos were confederated into a single state. This federal state, the political term for which was sunoikisis (Thucydides 3.3.1), was dominated by the city of Mytilene, known as the home of Sappho and Alcaeus. There was a single communal place reserved for the festivals of this island federation, and that place was named Messon, the ʻmiddle spaceʼ.
In the words of Alcaeus, this federal space was called the temenos theōn ʻsacred precinct of the godsʼ (Fragment 130B.13). It was the designated place for celebrating a seasonally recurring festival, described in the words of Alcaeus as the occasion for the seasonally recurring assemblies or ʻcomings togetherʼ of the people of Lesbos
(Fragment 130B). This festival featured as its main spectacle the singing and dancing of choruses of Lesbiades ʻwomen of Lesbosʼ, described as ʻexceptional in their beautyʼ (130B.17 krinnomenai phuan). When I say choruses, I mean singing and dancing ensembles. The Greek word khoros refers to dancing as well as singing. The reality of such a festival in Lesbos featuring the choral performances of women is independently verified by a scholion (which refers to a learned note found in a manuscript) attached to a passage in the Homeric Iliad (IX 130): from this scholion we learn that the name of the festival was the Kallisteia, which can be translated as ʻpageant of beautyʼ. In the relevant Iliadic passage as well as elsewhere in the Iliad, there are references to women from Lesbos, described as exceptional in their beauty, who were captured by Achilles in the years that preceded the final destruction of Troy (IX 128-131, 270-273). These direct references in the Iliad can be analyzed as indirect references to the festival of the Kallisteia in Lesbos.44 Another reference to the Kallisteia is attested in a poem from the Greek Anthology (9.189), which says that this festival takes place within the temenos ʻsacred precinctʼ of Hera: this festival, it also says, was the occasion for choral singing and dancing by the women of Lesbos, with Sappho herself pictured as the leader of their khoros ʻchorusʼ. As I already said, an ancient Greek chorus was an ensemble of singing and dancing performers.
Sappho in her songs is conventionally pictured as the lead singer of a chorus composed of the women of Lesbos, and she speaks as their main choral personality. 45 As we see in the Greek Anthology, she is figured as the lead singer of this chorus of women who sing and dance in
43 I have more to say about ritual and myth in my article “The Epic Hero” (2006), which is “Introduction 3” on the Heroes website. 44 Nagy Homer the Preclassic (2009) II§§289-290, 302. 45 Nagy Pindarʼs Homer (1990) 12§60.
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the federal space of the people of Lesbos. Sapphoʼs songs are pictured as taking place within this sacred place, marked by the deictic word tuide ʻhereʼ (as in Sappho Song 17 line 7).
Elsewhere too, this same federal space of the people of Lesbos is marked by the deictic word tuide ʻhereʼ (Sappho Song 96 line 2) as the sacred place of choral performance, and the noun molpa (line 5) makes it explicit that the performance takes the form of choral singing and dancing. In archaic poetry, the verb for ʻsing and dance in a chorusʼ is melpesthai.46
With this background in place, I am ready to consider Song 44 of Sappho, where we can see that the kleos or story of Achilles in epic is interchangeable with the kleos or story of Hector and his wife Andromache in lyric. This song of Sappho, as I already noted, is about the wedding of Hector and Andromache:
Hour 4 Passage B. Verses, some fragmentary, from Song 44 of Sappho (“The Wedding of Hector and Andromache”)
4 ... and the rest of Asia...unwilting glory [kleos aphthiton]. 5 Hector and his
companions led the dark-eyed
luxuriant Andromache from holy Thebes and...Plakia in ships upon the salty sea. Many golden bracelets and purple robes..., intricately-worked ornaments,
10 countless silver cups and ivory. Thus he spoke. And his dear father quickly leapt up. And the story went to his friends through the broad city. And the Trojans joined
mules to smooth-running carriages. And the whole band of women and...maidens got on.
... 21 looking just like the gods [ikeloi theois]
...holy set forth into Troy... And the sweet song of the pipe mixed...
25 And the sound of the cymbals, and then the maidens sang in clear tones a sacred song and a divinely-sweet echo reached the sky... And everywhere through the streets...
Mixing bowls and cups...
46 Nagy Pindarʼs Homer (1990) 12§29n62 and n64. 55
30 And myrrh and cassia and frankincense were mingled. And the older women cried out elelu.
And all the men gave forth a high-pitched song, calling on Apollo, the far-shooter, skilled in the lyre.
And they sang the song of Hector and Andromache, both looking just like the gods [theoeikeloi].
There is an all-important comparison to be made here: the happy bride and groom, in the wording of line 4 of Song 44 of Sappho, are destined for kleos aphthiton ʻunwilting gloryʼ, and the phrase that we see being used here in Sapphoʼs song is identical with the kleos aphthiton ʻunwilting gloryʼ of Achilles in line 413 of Iliad IX. Since Song 44 of Sappho is about a wedding, it is important to note right away the traditional wording that applies to brides at weddings. That word is numphē, which means both ʻbrideʼ (as in Iliad XVIII 492) and ʻgoddessʼ, that is, ʻnymphʼ (as in Iliad XXIV 616). By implication, the ritual occasion of a wedding, as formalized in a bridal song, collapses the distinction between ʻbrideʼ and ʻgoddessʼ.
Here I highlight the epithet or ornamental adjective theoeikeloi ʻlooking just like the godsʼ, applied to Hector and Andromache in line 34 of Song 44 of Sappho (also relevant is ikeloi theois ʻlooking just like the godsʼ applied to the couple in line 11). This epithet is reserved for Achilles in the Iliad (I 131, XIX 155). No other hero receives this epithet in that epic. So the doomed couple and the doomed Achilles are all part of one song, one kleos. Such is the kleos that Sapphoʼs Song 44 is recreating. In the songmaking traditions of women, as I argued in previous work, this song is morphologically related to but distinct from the epic songs that derive primarily from the songmaking traditions of men. To put it another way, Song 44 of Sappho is an example of “epic” as refracted in womenʼs songmaking traditions.47
47 Nagy, Homeric Questions (1996) 57.
We saw in Iliad IX 413 that the main hero of the Iliad leaves as his signature the kleos of
his own epic, which turns out to be the Iliad. Now we see that the kleos aphthiton
ʻunwilting
gloryʼ of Achilles in Iliad IX is matched by the kleos aphthiton ʻunwilting gloryʼ of Hector and
Andromache in Song 44 of Sappho. In the the first case, the context of winning such glory is
war. In the second case, the context is a wedding. The same can be said, as we will see later, about the
distinction between ʻbridegroomʼ and ʻgodʼ.
At the climax of the wedding of Hector and Andromache as narrated in Song 44 of Sappho, the bride and groom are transformed into gods - at the actual moment of that climax.
As we will see later, something comparable happens at the climactic moment of war. At the
actual moment of that climax, the warrior is transformed into a god. 56
For Sappho, as I will show later, not only is Hector as bridegroom pictured as equal to the gods. So too is Achilles. As I will also
show, Achilles is for Sappho the ideal bridegroom – even the ideal male lover.
And the ideal bridegroom is conventionally ʻequal to the godsʼ. To say this, as we will see, is to ʻlikenʼ the bridegroom to the gods. We find an example of such an act of ʻlikeningʼ in another song of Sappho:
Hour 4 Passage C. Song 31 of Sappho
He appears [phainetai] to me, that one, equal to the gods [isos theoisin], | that man who, facing you | is seated and, up close, that sweet voice of yours | he hears, | and how you laugh a laugh that brings desire. It just | makes my heart flutter within my breast. | You see, the moment I look at you, right then, for me | to make any sound at all wonʼt work any more. | My tongue has a breakdown and a delicate | - all of a sudden - fire rushes under my skin. | With my eyes I see not a thing, and there is a roar | my ears make. | Sweat pours down me and a trembling | seizes all of me; paler than grass | am I, and a little short of death | do I appear [phainomai] to myself. Before I begin a brief exegesis of this song, here is a thesis sentence that is meant to encapsulate my overall argumentation:
Female participation in male experiences is all-consuming in Song 31 of Sappho. Now I proceed to my exegesis:
We see here in Song 31 of Sappho the ritual world of a wedding. The ʻheʼ refers to the bridegroom, who is figured as a god at the moment of the singing of this song. It is as if a god has appeared at a wedding. The ʻyouʼ who is being addressed by the speaker is female: she is the bride, who as we will see is figured as a goddess in her own right at the moment of the singing of this song. The ʻIʼ who is speaking, also female, is the lead singer who sings the song, and she is ʻSapphoʼ. The woman who speaks in the first person here is vicariously speaking for the whole group that attends the wedding. The whole group is notionally participating in the ritual of the wedding, which can be seen as a form of initiation that transforms the bridegroom and the bride from adolescents to adults. In terms of such a ritual of initiation, the bridegroom and the bride experience a figurative death to their old selves as adolescents and a figurative rebirth into their new selves as adults.
I will have more to say in Hour 6 about this idea of a figurative death in ritual. But here in Hour 5 I first need to analyze (1) the likening of the bridegroom to a god, which happens by way of the picturing of the bridegroom as ʻequal to the godsʼ and (2) the likening of Achilles to a tender seedling that is doomed to wilt.
By now we are starting to see that the kleos or story of Achilles is interchangeable with
the kleos or story of Hector and his bride Andromache.
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In the course of my analysis, I will show that there is a crossover of Achilles from the world of epic into the world of lyric, and this crossover highlights the role of this hero as a model for lament. In terms of this crossover, Achilles can be imagined not only as an ideal warrior but also as an ideal bridegroom in both epic and lyric. And the focus of lament for Achilles is his sorrowful fate of dying young, cut down in the bloom of his youth like a tender seedling.
Here are three relevant examples that I find in the songmaking of Sappho:
Hour 4 Passage D. Sappho Fragment 105a Just like the sweet apple that blushes on top of a branch,
the topmost apple on the topmost branch. It has eluded the notice of the apple pickers. Oh, but no. Itʼs not that they havenʼt noticed it. They couldnʼt reach it. Hour 4 Passage E. Sappho Fragment 105b
Himerius (Orations 1.16) reports: ʻSappho compared the girl to an apple....she
compared the bridegroom to Achilles, and likened the young manʼs deeds to the heroʼs.ʼ
Hour 4 Passage F. Sappho Fragment 115 To what shall I liken you, dear bridegroom, to make the likeness beautiful? To a tender seedling, I liken you to that most of all.
The last of these three examples, Fragment 115, is particularly telling: I compare the lament of Thetis in the Iliad (XVIII 54-64). In this lament, sung by the goddess even before the death of her son, Achilles is compared to a vibrant young seedling in an orchard:
Hour 4 Passage G. Iliad XVIII 54-64
Ah me, the wretch! Ah me, the mother, so sad it is, of the very best. I gave birth to a faultless and strong son, the very best of heroes. And he shot up like a seedling. I nurtured him like a seedling in the choicest spot of the orchard, only to send him off on curved ships to fight at Troy.
And I will never be welcoming him back home as returning warrior, back to the House of Peleus. And as long as he lives and sees the light of the sun, he shall have sorrow [akh-nutai 62], and though I go to him I cannot help him. Nevertheless I will go, that I may see my dear son and learn
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what sorrow [penthos] has befallen him though he is still holding aloof from battle. As I noted already in Hour 3, we see here a perfect expression of the theme of the
man of constant sorrow, and the relevant word that is used in this passage is the verb akh-nutai ʻhe (shall) have sorrowʼ at verse 62 corresponding to the noun akhos, meaning ʻsorrowʼ, which as I have argued is the central theme connected with Achilles in the Iliad.
In the Odyssey, we find a retrospective description of the lament sung by Thetis and her fellow Nereids at the actual funeral of Achilles, followed and augmented by the lament of the Muses themselves:
Hour 4 Passage H. Odyssey xxiv 58-64 The daughters of the Old One of the sea stood round you weeping bitterly, and clothed you
[= the corpse of Achilles] in immortal raiment.
[60] The nine Muses also came and lifted up their sweet voices in lament [thrēnos], calling and responding to one another; and one couldnʼt find a single Argive who was not in tears. That is the kind of shrill song that swelled up among them. Days and nights seven and ten we mourned you, mortals and immortals.
This image of Achilles as the focus of lament is attested in other epic traditions as well:
Hour 4 Passage I. Proclus plot-summary of Aithiopis (p. 106 lines 12-16 ed. Allen)
Thetis comes with the Muses and her sisters and makes a lament [thrēnos] for her
son. 20 After that, Thetis snatches him off the pyre and carries him over to the island Leuke.
But the Achaeans heap up his burial mound and hold funeral games.
And, as we have seen in Passage A, taken from a song of Pindar (Isthmian 8.56a-62), such lamentation by the Muses is what propels the kleos aphthiton ʻunwilting gloryʼ of Achilles, as sung in both epic and lyric. In the words of Pindar, this hero who is glorified by glory will die and will thus stop blossoming, that is, he will ʻwiltʼ, phthinein, but he will have as his eternal consolation the prospect that at least his song will never wilt: rather, the song of Achilles will be eternally sung by the Muses as they lament the death of the hero, beautiful wilted flower that he is. That is how Achilles himself can be lamented forever. And Achilles himself shows the way in the Homeric Iliad, pictured as singing to the tune of a lyre that he himself is playing, as we saw in Passage D of Hour 2 (Iliad IX 186-189). This lyre, as we also saw, once belonged to Eëtion, king of the Aeolic city of Thebe, whom Achilles killed when he captured that city (IX 186-189) - and who was the father of that greatest singer of lamentations in the Iliad, Andromache (VI 414-416). What Achilles in the Iliad sings to the tune of this Aeolic lyre, as I
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have argued, evokes feelings of love and bittersweet sorrow as heard in lyric song and poetry.48 An example of such lyric in historical times is Song 44 of Sappho, about the wedding of Hector and Andromache. The lyric kleos aphthiton ʻunwilting gloryʼ of this Aeolic song (line 4) converges with the epic kleos aphthiton ʻunwilting gloryʼ that Achilles is promised in the Iliad (IX 413), and this convergence of lyric and epic is signaled by the klea andrōn ʻglories of heroesʼ that Achilles is singing on the Aeolic lyre (IX 189). This song of Achilles is what makes him the master of lament.
As I come to the end of Hour 4, I close with a preview of the kind of lament that Achilles himself will sing in the Iliad. I have in mind the lament performed by Briseis, the young woman whom Achilles in Iliad IX professes to love as if she were his own wife (verses 342-343). This lament, which I will analyze in detail when we reach Hour 5, is an expression of sorrow over the death of Patroklos, who as we have seen is the single person who means more to Achilles than anyone else in that heroʼs world. And the lament of Briseis for Patroklos will become the model for the lament of Achilles himself for his best friend. Here, then, is the lament of Briseis for Patroklos:
Hour 4 Passage J. Iliad XIX 282-302
Then Briseis, looking like golden Aphrodite,
saw Patroklos all cut apart by the sharp bronze, and, when she saw him,
she poured herself all over him in tears and wailed with a voice most shrill, and with
her hands she tore at
285 her breasts and her tender neck and her beautiful face.
And then she spoke, weeping, this woman who looked like the goddesses:
“O Patroklos, you have been most gracious to me in my terrible state and most gratifying to my heart.
You were alive when I last saw you on my way out from the shelter
and now I come back to find you dead, you, the protector of your people
290 - that is what I come back to find. Oh, how I have one misfortune after the next to welcome me.
The man to whom I was given away by my father and by my mother the queen
I saw that man lying there in front of the city, all cut apart by the sharp bronze, and lying near him were my three brothers - all of us were born of one mother - they are all a cause for my sorrow, since they have all met up with their time of destruction.
295 No, you did not let me - back when my husband was killed by swift-footed Achilles,
48 Nagy Homer the Preclassic (2009) II§297. 60
killed by him, and when the city of my godlike Mynes [= my husband] was destroyed by him
you did not let me weep, back then, but you told me that godlike Achilles
would have me as a properly courted wife, that you would make that happen, and that you would take me on board the ships,
taking me all the way to Phthia, and that you would arrange for a wedding feast among the Myrmidons.
300 So now I cannot stop crying for you, now that you are dead, you who were always so sweet and gentle.”
So she [= Briseis] spoke, weeping, and the women kept on mourning in response. They mourned for Patroklos, that was their pretext, but they were all mourning, each and every one of them, for what they really cared for in their sorrow.
In the logic of the epic narrative here, Briseis is not just weeping, not just speaking words of sorrow: she is represented as singing a lament.49 And the words of her lament are quoted inside the epic narrative. Following this quotation in Iliad XIX (287-300) is the quotation of another lament for Patroklos, this one performed by the hero Achilles himself (315-337); Achilles here is represented as actually singing a lament, just as Briseis actually sings a lament.50
We see in this passage that quotes the lament of Briseis a most remarkable feature of Homeric poetry: If a performer of epic quotes a woman who is singing a lament or love song, then he is singing a lament or love song. The word “quote” here and elsewhere in such contexts is of course anachronistic. From the standpoint of song culture, it would be better for us to say perform. We saw a comparable principle at work when we viewed the clip from the film Chunhyang.
When a character like Briseis – or like Achilles himself - is quoted, that characterʼs words become a “super-star” performance. Conversely, when a “super-star” performer like the master narrator of the Iliad quotes the words of a hero like Achilles, the performer himself becomes the hero in the moment of performance. Hero and
performer develop a reciprocal relationship. The hero becomes a super-star performer in his own right, while the performer becomes heroic, larger-than-life, even god-like in sacred moments (just as the hero becomes god-like in sacred moments). Achilles is pictured as a super-star performer in his own right when he sings the klea andrōn at Iliad IX 189, as we saw in the passage that I quoted in Hour 2.
I bring this analysis to a close by pondering further the implications of the lament of Briseis as quoted in Iliad XIX. In her lament, Briseis sings her bittersweet sorrow not only over the death of Patroklos but also over the death of her own fondest hope: when he was alive,
49 Nagy “Ancient Greek Elegy” (2010) 23. Dué 2002:70-71, 81; 2006:43-44. 50
Tsagalis 2004:86, 139-140
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Patroklos had promised to arrange for her a marriage to Achilles, but, now that Patroklos is dead, the hope of that promise is gone forever (XIX 295-300). As we will see further in Hour 5, the Iliad pictures Patroklos as a stamd-in for Achilles, his another self, in courtship as well as in war.51
51 Nagy “Ancient Greek Elegy” (2010) 23.
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A note on terms... Consider the words polytheism and monotheism. Also henotheism. [[The term henotheism refers to the worshipping of one divinity at a time. I think of the one- at-a-time mentality of henotheism as serial monotheism.]]
On the ritual occasion of a wedding in ancient Greek society, what happens at the climactic moment of the wedding is the equating of mortal humans with the immortal gods. That is what we saw in Hour 4 when we were reading, first, Song 44 of Sappho, about the Wedding of Hector and Andromache, where the bridegroom and the bride are said to be theoeikeloi ʻjust like the godsʼ and, second, Song 31 of Sappho, where the bridegroom is said to be īsos theoisin ʻequal to the godsʼ. Now, as we will see in Hour 5, what happens at the climactic moment of the ritual occasion of fighting in war is again the equating of mortal humans with immortal gods. The ritual of war collapses the distinction between human and divine - but only at the precise moment when the warrior comes face-to-face with his own martial death. I should add that the warrior may not necessarily die when he faces death. Still, the warriorʼs identity is defined by the ritual need for him to face death in war. As we will also see, epic records the actual moment of facing death in war with the expression daimoni īsos ʻequal to a daimōnʼ. The word daimōn can be translated as ʻotherworldly forceʼ. It applies both to gods and to heroes.
In the analysis that follows, I will concentrate on the epithet daimoni īsos ʻequal [īsos] to a daimōnʼ and on other epithets meaning ʻequal to the godsʼ. In the Iliad, these epithets focus on the climax of god-hero antagonism. At the moment of such a climax, the hero can be equated with a daimōn. This word daimōn partially conceals the identity of the god. (Here I repeat my definition of epithet: it is an ornamental adjective.)
In the first passage we will examine, the god whose identity is partially concealed is Apollo. He is the god who is the primary divine antagonist of Achilles. In fact, Apollo will kill Achilles. But we will not see it happen in the Iliad. It happens instead in other epics. One such epic is the Aithiopis, ʻThe Song of the Ethiopiansʼ (as we have seen, only the plot-outline of this epic has survived). So the death of Achilles happens not in the Iliad but beyond the Iliad. In the Iliad, however, the best friend of Achilles, Patroklos, will stand in for Achilles as the victim of Apollo. In the first focus passage, Apollo is about to kill Patroklos. Why Patroklos? As we will see, it is because Patroklos becomes the ritual stand-in for Achilles. For now, however, let us concentrate on the actual antagonism between god and hero on the battlefield:
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Hour 5 Passage A. Iliad XVI 698-711
The sons of the Achaeans would now have taken Troy by the hands of Patroklos, for his spear flew in all directions, had not Phoebus Apollo taken his stand upon the wall to defeat his purpose and to aid the Trojans. Three times did Patroklos charge at an angle of the high wall, and three times did Apollo beat him back, striking his shield with his own immortal hands. When Patroklos was coming on, equal [isos] to a superhuman force [daimōn], for yet a fourth time, Apollo shouted to him with a terrifying voice and said, “Draw back, noble Patroklos, it is not your lot to destroy the city of the Trojan chieftains, nor yet will it be the lot of Achilles, who is a far better man than you are.” On hearing this, Patroklos withdrew to some distance and avoided the anger [mēnis] of Apollo.
Who, then, is the daimōn in the passage we have just read? The context gives the answer away: the daimōn with whom Patroklos is equated turns out to be the god Apollo himself. At the climax of god-hero antagonism here, when the hero becomes the god, that partially concealed god is Apollo. But so far we have seen only a “dress rehearsal.” The real moment of identification between hero and god comes the next time, when Patroklos does not back away from Apollo after three tries but faces him at the fourth try. In the next passage, we finally see that climactic moment of god-hero antagonism, “the real thing”:
Hour 5 Passage B. Iliad XVI 783-806
Then Patroklos sprang, equal [atalantos] to Ares, with fierce intent and a terrific shout upon the Trojans, and three times did he kill nine men; but as he was coming on, equal [īsos] to a superhuman force [daimōn], for a fourth time, then, O Patroklos, was the hour of your end approaching, for Phoebus [Apollo] fought you in grim battle. Patroklos did not see him as he moved about in the crush, for he was enshrouded in thick darkness, and the god struck him from behind on his back and his broad shoulders with the flat of his hand, so that his eyes turned dizzy. Phoebus Apollo beat the helmet from off his head, and it rolled rattling off under the horsesʼ feet, where its horse-hair plumes were all begrimed with dust and blood. Never indeed had that helmet fared so before, for it had served to protect the head and comely forehead of the godlike hero Achilles. ... [805] At this his [= Patroklosʼ] mind went into derangement [atē]; his limbs failed him, and he stood as one dazed.
Here we see the ultimate moment of “fatal attraction,” signaled by the epithet daimoni īsos ʻequal [īsos] to a superhuman force [daimōn]ʼ; this epithet, like others meaning ʻequal to the godsʼ, applies to men and women at climactic ritual moments.
We see an earlier “dress-rehearsal” in the Iliad: Diomedes as daimoni īsos ʻequal [īsos] to a superhuman force [daimōn]ʼ at Iliad V 438 and 459. We may compare also the context of pros daimona ʻface-to-face with the daimōnʼ at XVII 98.
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In all these situations, the use of the word daimōn is mystical in not naming the god - but it is ostentatiously mystical. By that I mean that the identity of the daimōn is obvious. That daimōn is Apollo.
But we also see a complication here. We notice that Patroklos at the climactic moment of his martial death is being compared not only to an unnamed god, a daimōn who turns out to be Apollo, but also to a named god, who is Ares the god of war. As a warrior, Patroklos is ʻequalʼ not only to Apollo at this climactic moment. He is also ʻequalʼ (atalantos) to the war god Ares, who is the god of martial fury (XVI 784). In Hour 6, we will see how and why Patroklos becomes the stand-in for Achilles in this complicated god-hero antagonism involving not one god but two, Ares and Apollo. And we will also see why Achilles is an antagonist of both Ares and Apollo. But here in Hour 5 I have to concentrate on a more basic question, which is in two parts: why is a warrior likened to a god at the moment when he dies in war, and how is this comparison relevant to the likening of a bridegroom and a bride to the gods at the moment when they are married? To arrive at an answer, we must explore the dual identity of Achilles as not only an ideal warrior but also an ideal bridegroom.
I explore this topic of Achilles as an ideal bridegroom in some detail and at some length elsewhere, and here I offer an abridged version.1
I start with a question that arises from what we saw in the last hour: when a bridegroom is equated to a god, who is the god? A key to my answer has to do with the convention of imagining the bridegroom also as a hero, such as Achilles. And there are two divine models for Achilles as an ideal bridegroom: Ares and Apollo. Here in Hour 5, we we will consider the god Ares as a model for the hero Achilles; then, in Hour 6, we will consider the god Apollo as another model.
There is relevant evidence to be found in the songs of Sappho, where we see two primary figures who fill the role of divine models for bridegrooms and brides: they are the gods Ares and Aphrodite. In the case of Ares, he is a model for the gambros ʻbridegroomʼ, who is explicitly described as īsos Areui ʻequal to Aresʼ (Sappho Song 111.5). In the case of Aphrodite, there are many instances of implicit equations of the bride with this goddess: in one song, for example, the bridegroom is said to be infused with the divine charisma of Aphrodite, evidently by way of his direct contact with the bride (Sappho Song 112).
Typical of such contact with divinity is a celebrated wedding song of Sappho that we have already examined, Song 31. Let us look at it again:
Nagy “Lyric and Greek Myth” (2007) and “Homer and Greek Myth” (2007). 65
review, Hour 4 Passage C. Song 31 of Sappho
He appears [phainetai] to me, that one, equal to the gods [isos theoisin], | that man who, facing you | is seated and, up close, that sweet voice of yours | he hears, | and how you laugh a laugh that brings desire. It just | makes my heart flutter within my breast. | You see, the moment I look at you, right then, for me | to make any sound at all wonʼt work any more. | My tongue has a breakdown and a delicate | - all of a
sudden - fire rushes under my skin. | With my eyes I see not a thing, and there is a roar | my ears make. | Sweat pours down me and a trembling | seizes all of me; paler than grass | am I, and a little short of death | do I appear [phainomai] to myself.
It is said here that the bridegroom phainetai ʻappearsʼ to be īsos theoisin ʻequal [īsos] to the godsʼ. Appearances become realities, however. I say that because phainetai means not only ʻappearsʼ but also ʻis manifested in an epiphanyʼ, and this epiphany is felt as real.2
As I argued already in Hour 4, we see here in Song 31 of Sappho the ritual world of a wedding. The ʻheʼ refers to the bridegroom, who is figured as a god at the moment of the singing of this song. It is as if a god has appeared at a wedding. Literally, ʻhe appears in an epiphanyʼ, phainetai. That is what this word phainetai means. In ritual terms, the word phainetai ʻhe appearsʼ signals a real epiphany. And the word kēnos ʻthat oneʼ, as we will see at a later point when we read Philostratus, also signals the epiphany.
As for the ʻyouʼ who is being addressed by the speaker, I already pointed out in Hour 4 that this ʻyouʼ, who is a she, is the bride, and she is figured as a goddess in her own right at the moment of the singing of this song.
And the ʻIʼ who is speaking, who is also a she, is the lead singer who sings the song, and she is ʻSapphoʼ.
Such a female lead singer is a prima donna, to borrow an Italian term used in the world of opera. The lead singer here speaks for the whole group that is attending the wedding. And this lead singer, this female speaker, experiences an attraction to both the bridegroom and the bride. Or, we might say that she experiences an attraction to the attraction between the two. The attraction is both esthetic and erotic. It is a totalizing attraction, creating feelings of total connectedness. And this totalizing connectedness activates all the senses of the speaker, who experiences an “erotic meltdown.” The feelings come to a climax described as just one moment away from death. That is the way the speaker ʻseemsʼ to herself. What is ʻseemingʼ on one level is an epiphany on another level. The female speaker has an epiphany to herself. She experiences fusion with divinity, and this fusion is not only esthetic but also erotic. I think it is too simple to say that this is an auto-erotic moment: it is an auto-epiphany.
Nagy Pindarʼs Homer (1990) 7§2n10.
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Such a moment, when the bridegroom is the god and the bride is the goddess, is signaled by an epithet, that is, by an ornamental adjective. That epithet is īsos theoisin ʻequal to the godsʼ in line 1 of the song.
We have already seen a similar epithet in Song 44 of Sappho, featuring Andromache and Hector as bride and bridegroom; they are described by the epithet theoeikeloi ʻlooking just like the godsʼ, and we must note that they look like gods at their wedding. A derivative of this word phainetai ʻhe appearsʼ that we see in Song 31 of Sappho is phantasia, which in later Greek literature means ʻfantasyʼ, that is, ʻimagined visionʼ or ʻimaginationʼ. The English word fantasy, derived from phantasia, implies a vision that is unreal. In ancient Greek song culture, however, there is no ʻfantasyʼ about an epiphany. It is a vision that is felt as real, not unreal. An epiphany is the appearance of something divine, something that is understood to be absolutely real.
Let me explore further the sense of reality conveyed by the wording phainetai moi
kēnos īsos theoisin | emmenʼ ōnēr ʻhe appears [phainetai] to me, that one, equal [īsos] to the gods, | the man who ...ʼ here in Song 31 of Sappho. The first-person moi ʻto meʼ here in Song 31 refers to the speaker, who is ʻSapphoʼ. In another song of Sappho, we find the wording phainetai woi kēnos īsos theoisin ʻhe appears [phainetai] to her, that one, equal [īsos] to the godsʼ (Song 165). In that song, the third-person woi ʻto herʼ may perhaps refer to the bride.
In the first of these two songs of Sappho (Song 31), the subjectivity is linked to the first- person speaker, who is the vicarious participant; in the second song (Song 165), on the other hand, the subjectivity is linked to the third person, who is the immediate participant. There is a shifting of referents that accompanies the shifting of pronouns from ʻIʼ to ʻsheʼ.
We are now about to see another shifting of referents in Song 1 of Sappho, from ʻyouʼ to ʻIʼ. In this case, the shift in the ownership of pronouns involves the second-person ʻyouʼ of Aphrodite and the first-person ʻIʼ of Sappho. During an epiphany of Aphrodite, Sappho exchanges identifies with the goddess herself. It is a moment of personal fusion with Aphrodite:
Hour 5 Passage C. Song 1 of Sappho = Prayer to Aphrodite
You with pattern-woven flowers, immortal Aphrodite, |2 child of Zeus, weaver of wiles, I implore you,|3 do not devastate with aches and sorrows,|4 Mistress, my heart! |5 But come here, if ever at any other time |6 hearing my voice from afar, |7 you heeded me, and leaving the palace of your father, |8 golden, you came, |9 having harnessed the chariot; and you were carried along by beautiful |10 swift sparrows over the dark earth | 11 swirling with their dense plumage from the sky through the |12 midst of the aether, |13 and straightaway they arrived. But you, O holy one, |14 smiling with your immortal looks, |15 kept asking what is it
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once again this time [dēute] that has happened to me and for what reason |16 once again this time [dēute] do I invoke you, |17 and what is it that I want more than anything to happen |18 to my frenzied heart? “Whom am I once again this time [dēute] to persuade, |19 setting out to bring her to your love? Who is doing you, |20 Sappho, wrong? |21 For if she is fleeing now, soon she will give chase. |22 If she is not taking gifts, soon she will be giving them. |23 If she does not love, soon she will love |24 even against her will.” |25 Come to me even now, and free me from harsh |26 anxieties, and however many things |27 my heart yearns to get done, you do for me. You |28 become my ally in war.
As the female speaker of Song 1, Sappho is being pictured here as the lead singer of a choral lyric performance. She leads off by praying to Aphrodite to be present, that is, to manifest herself in an epiphany. The goddess is invoked from far away in the sky, which is separated from the earth by the immeasurably vast space of ʻaetherʼ. Aphrodite is needed to fill the aching need left by the sorrows of love. And, now that she is invoked, despite the overwhelming sense of separation between the divine and the human, Aphrodite makes her presence felt in a sudden flash, in one single divine moment. So the goddess appears, that is, she is now present in the sacred space of performance, and her presence becomes an epiphany for all those who are present. Then, once Aphrodite is present, she exchanges roles with the prima donna who figures as the leader of choral performance. In the part of Song 1 that we see
enclosed within quotation marks in the visual formatting of modern editions (lines 18-24), the first-person ʻIʼ of Sappho is now replaced by Aphrodite herself, who has been a second-person ʻyouʼ up to this point. We see here an exchange of roles between the first-person ʻIʼ and the second-person ʻyouʼ. The first-person ʻIʼ now becomes Aphrodite, who proceeds to speak in the performing voice of Sappho to Sappho herself, who has now become the second-person ʻyouʼ. During Aphroditeʼs
epiphany inside the sacred space of the people of Lesbos, a fusion of identities takes place between the goddess and the prima donna who leads the choral performance ʻhereʼ, that is, in this sacred space.3
Sappho prays to Aphrodite to give her the power that the goddess has, the power to make love happen. She prays that she may ʻget doneʼ whatever it is that Aphrodite ʻgets doneʼ in the active voice of the verb meaning ʻto get something doneʼ, telessai (Sappho Song 1 line 26), which is to be contrasted with the passive voice telesthēn applying to a passive lover who simply lets love happen (as in Sappho Song 5 line 4, not cited here). To be granted that power is to be the lead singer of the song that has the power to make love happen. Such is the power
Nagy Poetry as Performance 97-103.
As we can see clearly from the closing words of this song, love and war can be estheticized - and eroticized - together. The female speaker of Song 1 of Sappho becomes
identified with Aphrodite and becomes her ʻally in warʼ. 68
of song in the songs of Sappho. Such is the power of the prayer that is powered by Song 1 of Sappho.
Within the archaic context of the myths and rituals of the people of Lesbos, as framed by the sacred space of their federal precinct ʻhereʼ in the middle ground of their political space, Song 1 of Sappho can be seen as a prayer in the sense of a totalizing formula for authorizing choral performances of women at the festival of the Kallisteia. The seasonal recurrences of the festival are signaled by the triple deployment of the adverb dēʼute ʻonce again this timeʼ in Sapphoʼs prayer. Every time in the past when Sappho has invoked Aphrodite by offering to her this prayer that we now hear, the goddess has heeded the prayer and has manifested herself in an ever-new epiphany. And now, once again this time, the goddess appears to Sappho, who will once again this time speak for the whole chorus as she speaks first for herself and then for Aphrodite and then once again this time for herself.
In the postclassical era of literary critics like Menander the Rhetorician, the description of compositions like Song 1 of Sappho as ʻprayersʼ (Sappho Testimonium
47) fails to capture the meaning of an act of prayer in the context of a choral performance. The modern mind, seizing on such descriptions, is quick to infer that such ʻprayersʼ must be mere literary conceits. This is to ignore the dimension of performance, which complements the dimension of composition in the lyric singing that we see in this early period of ancient Greek song culture. It is also to ignore the ritual background of such performance, which complements the mythological background of the composition.4
What appears to be a private ʻprayerʼ uttered by Sappho is at the same time a public act of worship that is notionally sung and danced by the people of Lesbos as
represented by a chorus of their women, legendary as they are for their beauty, and as led by the figure of Sappho as their prima donna. What appears to be the most deeply personal experience of Sappho is at the same time the most widely shared communal experience of the people of Lesbos.
For those who may enjoy seeing coincidental parallels in American popular culture, here is an example. I cite here the lyrics of Madonnaʼs 1979 song, “Like a Prayer”: Life is a mystery | Everyone must stand alone | I hear you call my name and it feels like | [home]|OhmyGodOhmyGodOhmyGodOhmyGod| |Whenyoucallmyname|Likea little prayer | Down on my knees | Going to take you there | In the midnight hour | I can feel your power | Just like a prayer | You know Iʼll take you there. | I feel your voice | Itʼs like an angel sighing | I have no choice | I hear your voice | Feels like flying | I close my eyes | Oh GodIthinkIʼmfalling|outofthesky|Iclosemyeyes|Heavenhelpme.| Likeachild|You whisper softly to me | Youʼre in control | Just like a child | [Now Iʼm dancing] | Itʼs like a
See Yatromanolakis 2003.
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dream | No end and no beginning | Youʼre here with me | Itʼs like a dream | Let the choir sing.5
But let us return to Sappho, and to the identification of the speaker with the goddess Aphrodite in Song 1 of Sappho. This identification happens, as we saw, within what we moderns indicate by way of quotation marks, starting with ʻWhom am I once again this time...ʼ and ending with ʻ... soon she will love | even against her willʼ. At this point, the ʻIʼ of Sappho becomes the ʻIʼ of Aphrodite, while the ʻyouʼ of Aphrodite becomes the ʻyouʼ of Sappho. So the lead singer of Song 1, who is the prima donna of the song, becomes a goddess at this moment. So the lead singer here is not only a prima donna. She is a diva, to borrow another Italian term used in the world of opera. To say it in English, the lead singer is now a goddess.
And what exactly is this moment when the lead singer becomes a goddess? This moment recurs every time the song is sung once again, as at a ritual that marks either a girlʼs coming of age or her wedding. Essential for understanding this concept of recurrence in Song 1 of Sappho is the concept of repetition in ritual, as expressed by the adverb dʼēute ʻonce againʼ. Relevant are the words of Kierkegaard (Repetition, 1843): “The dialectic of repetition is easy, for that which is repeated has been - otherwise it could not be repeated - but the very fact that it has been makes the repetition into something new.” Similarly for us modern readers, every time we look back at this passage, there will be something new for us to see.
In this connection, we may look back at the epithet theoeikeloi ʻlooking just like the godsʼ, which is applied to the bride and the bridegroom in Sapphoʼs Song 44 about the wedding of Hector and Andromache. And we may also look back at the epithet īsos theoisin ʻequal to the godsʼ as applied to the bridegroom in Sapphoʼs Song 31. In the ritual of a wedding, the bride and groom morph into goddess and god, and they stay that way until the wedding is finished, by which time they morph unto wife and husband. To quote from T. S. Eliot (The Dry Salvages, 1941), “you are the music | While the music lasts.”6
So, when a first-person female speaker projects her identity into this divine music by identifying with the bride, which is what happens in Song 31 of Sappho, then the first
person singer becomes the bride herself.
I recall here that the word numphē, as we saw in Hour 4, means both ʻbrideʼ (as in Iliad XVIII 492) and ʻgoddessʼ, that is, ʻnymphʼ (as in Iliad XXIV 616). In a bridal song, as I also noted in Hour 4, the distinction between ʻbrideʼ and ʻgoddessʼ is collapsed. And the same can be said about the distinction between ʻbridegroomʼ and ʻgodʼ.
I note especially the “choral” context of the word choir here. 6 Eliot 1941 [1963]:199. 70
Here is another ancient Greek example of the ritual practice of equating the prima donna - or we can also say prima ballerina - with a goddess. This time, the equation happens not at a wedding but at a “coming out” ritual that marks a coming of age from girlhood to womanhood:
Hour 5 Passage D. From the Partheneion ʻSong of Maidensʼ by Alcman, lines 39-49.
And I sing the radiance of Agido, as I look upon her like the sun, which Agido
summons to shine as witness. But for me to praise her or blame her is not possible, as the illustrious khorēgos [Hagesikhora] does not allow me. For that one [Hagesikhora] appears radiantly outstanding, as when someone sets among grazing beasts a horse, well-built, a prize- winner, with thundering hooves, from out of those dreams underneath the rock.
Here is a thesis paragraph that is meant to encapsulate the argumentation in the exegesis that follows:
The words in this passage indicate a ritual of female initiation in the public space of Sparta, where the entire male and female population is experiencing contact with the divine. The climactic moment in this ritual is marked by an epiphany, as marked by the words ʻ... appears radiantlyʼ.
Now I proceed to the exegesis:
This song, conventionally known as the Partheneion, the ʻSong of Maidensʼ, was reputedly composed by a legendary poet named Alcman for performance at an annually recurring grand public festival in Sparta. Every year, local maidens were specially selected for the occasion of singing and dancing this song in the public space of Sparta, and we have already seen that the word for such singing and dancing was khoros ʻchorus, song-and-dance ensembleʼ. As the girls sang and danced the song, they took on the roles of the names featured in the song. Two names stand out, referring to the two premier roles in the singing and dancing. These names are Hagesikhora and Agido, referring in the song to two competing chorus leaders of what I infer must be two competing choruses.7
I note the use of the word khorēgos ʻchorus-leaderʼ in the song, referring to the girl called Hagesikhora, one of the two chorus leaders. The name Hagesikhora means the same thing as khorēgos. As for the other girl, called Agido, the words of the song identify her with the sun itself, but then, right after this declaration, the girl called Hagesikhora is said to match Agido in her own solar radiance. In modern terms, such descriptions as prima donna or prima ballerina surely apply to both girls.
I also infer that these two competing choruses are representatives of the two royal houses of Sparta.
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So the girls who figure as the center of attention in the choral performance of this
Song of Maidens by Alcman are being identified with the divine force of the sun itself, just as the girl who is getting married in Song 31 of Sappho is identified with the divinity of love and sexuality, Aphrodite.
A typological parallel
Such ritual identification with divinities is well attested in a wide variety of societies around the world. In my research, I have studied as a point of typological comparison the Navajo and Apache rituals of girlsʼ initiation into puberty.8 Such initiation rituals are customarily performed by and in honor of a young female member of the community at a point in her life when she begins to menstruate. The medium for performance is singing as well as dancing.
The focal point of these Navajo and Apache rituals of female initiation is the goddess “Changing Woman.” More literally, her name means “the woman who is transformed time and again.” In the here and now of the Changing Woman ritual, the songs are thought to have the power of re-enacting the prototypical event.
[[During our live meeting in Hour 5, I show a film clip from a videograph recording the climax of an Apache Changing Woman ritual.]]
In the case of the Navajo rituals, the localization of the family building known as the hogan becomes sacred space, where the distinctions between the details of myth and the details of ritual can merge in the minds of those who participate in the ritual.9 Within the sacred space, the young girl to be initiated becomes identified with the goddess Changing Woman. We may also say: the girl identifies with the goddess. [[Here I point to a relevant detail in the clip from the video showing the Changing Woman ritual of the Apache. I notice that the father of the girl being initiated says in the voiceover he made for the video that his daughter is “portraying” a goddess while she dances and notionally sings at the same time. In other words, the girl “seems” like a goddess. That is, the father says this in the English-speaking part of his voiceover. But then he follows up by saying something different in the Apache language: now he says that his daughter at that moment is in fact the goddess. In the world of non-ritual, it is simply a matter of seeming like a goddess.]]
After a pronouncement of blessings in the Navajo ritual that I have been analyzing, the girl initiand goes out of the hogan and runs a race with other young people who are participants in her initiation, and it is ritually prescribed that she must take the lead in the
Nagy Poetry as Performance (1996) ch. 4. In Hour 2, I gave a working definition of the term typological comparison. 9 Nagy Poetry as Performance (1996) 88.
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race. We can find a comparable detail in the ancient Greek ritual as enacted in the Song of Maidens by Alcman. In this ritual as well, there was some sort of ritualized race, as we see from the words of the song referring to the running of the two girls Hagesikhora and Agido in competition the other girls and with each other (lines 58-59).
In the Navajo ritual, the prescribed course of the race to be run by the girl initiand is symbolic of the course of the sun. It has been observed that “the race is, in effect, her pursuit of the sun.”10 In the myth of Changing Woman, which is correlated with the ritualized race of the girl initiand, the goddess actually mates with the Sun, who is envisioned as a male god; at the moment of intercourse, the Sun takes on the form of
a handsome young man.11 As we will see later, there is a comparable theme in Song 58 of Sappho (lines 25-26), where the female speaker declares her powerful attraction to the divine power of the shining sun.
In the Talking God type of hogan songs in Navajo ritual, the goddess is conventionally described as moving towards the ritually decorated family hogan and then signaling her arrival. As she arrives, the references that are made to the goddess in the song shift from the third to the first person, so that the goddess herself, represented in the words of the singer, now speaks as an “I.” It seems that the “I” stands for a composite of the girl initiand and of Changing Woman herself, though the actual performer is the chief singer, not the girl. A phrase continually repeated in Talking God Hogan Song 25 goes like this: “With my sacred power, I am traveling.” This ritual picturing of a traveling goddess whose climactic epiphany in the here and now signals a shift from speaking about her in the third person to speaking for her in the first person is comparable to the ritual picturing of the goddess Aphrodite as she travels from her celestial realm on high all the way down to the sacred space where
Song 1 of Sappho is being performed. In this ancient Greek song, as we have already seen, we see a shift that is comparable to the shift we just saw in the Navajo ritual: in the Greek song, the main performer or prima donna shifts from speaking to Aphrodite in the second person to speaking for her in the first person, so that Sappho as Aphrodite may now speak directly to Sappho as Sappho herself (starting at line 18 and lasting through line 24).
Again I conjure the words of T. S. Eliot: (The Dry Salvages, 1941): “you are the music / While the music lasts.” And while I am conjuring the words of Eliot here, I take this opportunity to go even further: in the long run, these words apply as well to the premier hero of ancient Greek song culture, Achilles. He too is the music, while the music lasts – but this music is destined to last forerver. That is the message of the kleos aphthiton ʻunwilting fameʼ of Achilles in Iliad IX 413.
10 The sources are documented in Nagy Poetry as Performance (1996) 89-90. 11 Nagy Poetry as Performance (1996) 90.
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But now I must stop the conjuring and come back to the argument at hand. And so I come back to conclude my analysis of the ritual practice of equating a prima donna or prima ballerina with the divine. In the case of the Partheneion or ʻSong of Maidensʼ by Alcman, we have seen that a beautiful girl named Agido, who is a prima donna of the choral performance, ʻsummonsʼ the sun to shine. In other words, she makes the sun shine. The song equates the girl Agido with the sun.
This equation of the prima donna or prima ballerina with the sun is strikingly similar to what we see another song of Sappho:
Hour 5 Passage E. Song 16 of Sappho
ο]ἰ μὲν ἰππήων στρότον οἰ δὲ πέσδων οἰ δὲ νάων φαῖσʼ ἐπ[ὶ] γᾶν μέλαι[ν]αν ἔ] μμεναι κάλλιστον, ἔγω δὲ κῆνʼ ὄτ- τω τις ἔραται·12
πά]γχυ δ' εὔμαρες σύνετον πόησαι π]άντιτ[ο]ῦτ̣
',ἀγὰρπόλυπερσκέθ̣ ο̣
ι̣σα̣ κάλ̣λοσ̣ ̣
[ἀνθ]ρώπων Ἐλένα [τὸ]ν ἄνδρα τὸν̣
̣[ ].στον
καλλ[ίποι]σ' ̣ἔβα ʼς Τροΐαν πλέοι[̣σα κωὐδ[ὲ πα]ῖδος οὐδὲ φίλων το[κ]ήων πά̣ [μπαν]
ἐμνάσθη,ἀλλὰπαράγα̣ γʼ ̣αὔταν
Here is a transliteration of the first stanza: oi men ippēōn stroton oi de pesdōn
oi de nāōn phaisʼ epi gān melainan emmenai kalliston egō de kēnʼ ot- tō tis erātai Some say a massing of chariots and their drivers, some say of footsoldiers,
some say of ships, if you think of everything that exists on the surface of this black earth,
is the most beautiful thing of them all. But I say it is that one thing
that anyone passionately loves [= eratai]. Itʼs really quite easy to make this understandable
to everyone, this thing. You see, that woman who was by far supreme in beauty among all humans, Helen, she [...] her husband,
him she left behind and sailed to Troy,
caring not about her daughter and her dear parents, not at all, and she forgot all about them. She was swept along
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[ ]σαν [...]
[...]
..]με̣
̣νῦνἈνακτορί[αςὀ]ν̣έμ̣ ναι- σ' οὐ ] παρεοίσας,
τᾶ]ς <κ>ε βολλοίμαν ἔρατόν τε βᾶμα κἀμάρυχμα λάμπρον ἴδην προσώπω ἢ τὰ
Λύδων ἄρματα †κανοπλοισι [b μ]άχεντας.
[the rest of the song is too fragmentary to understand] [All this] reminds me right now of Anaktoria.
She is not here.
Oh, how I would far rather wish to see her taking a dancing step that arouses passionate love [= eraton],
and to see the luminous radiance from the look of her face than to see those chariots of the Lydians and their armor as they fight in battle [...]
This song captures what could be described as Sapphoʼs own personal ascending scale of affection. In the first stanza, consisting of four lines, there are three things to compare with ʻthat most beautiful thingʼ that anyone ʻpassionately lovesʼ, eratai. But each one of these three things pales in comparison to whatever ʻthat one most beautiful thingʼ may be. And what is ʻthat thingʼ? It is elusive. First the speaker had been speaking about ʻthat thingʼ. But, the next thing you know, she now says ʻthis thingʼ instead of ʻthat thingʼ as she goes on to say that it is quite easy, really, to explain ʻthis thingʼ. The three things that pale in comparsion to that one thing that is so passionately desired are three radiant visions of beauty. The first of these visions is the dazzling sight of magnificent chariot-fighters in their luminous war-chariots as they are massing for frontal assault against their terrified enemy; the second vision is an army of footsoldiers fighting on the battlefield; and the third vision is a fleet of battleships proudly sailing at sea. But none of these three radiant visions of beauty can match that ultimate brightness radiating from the speakerʼs love object, that unique thing of passionate love, who is a beautiful diva called Anaktoria. The song now shows Anaktoria in an exquisite moment of singing and dancing in a chorus, and the words of the song point to her lovely step as she dances, a step that is eraton or ʻarousing passionate kiveʼ. And then there is ʻthe luminous radiance from the look of her faceʼ (kʼamarukhma lampron idēn prosōpō). This luminous vision of Anaktoria, the song is saying, cannot be surpassed by anything in the whole wide world. And
the radiance of Anaktoria is now directly compared with the radiance of the luminous chariots and the two other luminous foils in the first stanza (lines 1-2).
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The first stanza of this song is a striking example of a priamel, which is a rhetorical device where “A” is highlighted by saying that “B” and “C” and “D” and so on cannot match it. The sequence has to be ... D C B and finally A. To cite an example in American popular music...
Some say love, it is a river, that drowns the tender weed, Some say love, it is a razor, that leaves the soul to bleed, Some say love, it is a hunger - an endless aching need, I say love, it is a flower - and you, its only seed.
[[Here I show a clip from Bette Midlerʼs song, “The Rose,” as performed for the 1979 film by the same name.]]
In an article that I wrote about a newly-discovered version of another song of Sappho (I refer to this new version as Π2), I offer this translation of the last line of this other song:
Hour 5 Passage F. Sappho Π2 26: Passionate love [erōs] for the Sun has won for me its radiance and beauty.13
In terms of an alternative interpretation, the translation could be ... Passionate love [erōs] has won for me the radiance and beauty of the Sun.
I prefer the first of these two interpretations, which makes the Sun the objective genitive of erōs ʻpassionate loveʼ. Such a genitive construction would be parallel to the phrase ot|tō tis erātai ʻwhatever one loves passionatelyʼ in the first stanza of the song of Sappho we are now considering, Song 16, where this ʻwhateverʼ (lines 3-4) is described as kalliston ʻthe most beautiful thingʼ in the whole wide world (line 3).
As we have seen in Song 16, no vision of beauty can match that ultimate brightness radiating from the speakerʼs love-object, who is a beautiful diva called Anaktoria. The song focuses on the divine moment when Anaktoria sings and dances in the chorus, and the wording creates a sublime vision of her beauty. In this vision, the beautiful Anaktoria who is imagined in the wording can now come to life, and I have already highlighted the wording that shows ʻher dancing step that arouses passionate love and the luminous radiance from the look of her faceʼ (eraton te bāma | kʼamarukhma lampron idēn prosōpō). This vision cannot be surpassed by anything else in the whole wide world.
In the logic of Sapphoʼs poetic cosmos, nothing can surpass the radiance of the sun. So the all-surpassing radiance of ʻwhateverʼ it is that the speaker says she loves more than anything else on this earth - which is the vision of the singing and dancing Anaktoria -must be the same thing as the sun.
See also Nagy Greek Mythology and Poetics (1990) 261-262; Pindarʼs Homer (1990) 10§18 = p. 285, and Poetry as Performance (1996) 90, 102-103.
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That said, I now pursue even further my analysis of Song 1 and Song 31 of Sappho, restarting with Song 1.
The exchange between the ʻIʼ and the ʻyouʼ of Sappho and Aphrodite in Song 1 of Sappho is reflected also in the wording of another song of Sappho (Song 159), where Aphrodite is imagined once again as speaking to Sappho and addressing her by name. In yet another song of Sappho (Song 134), the speaker says she is dreaming
she has a dialogue (dialegesthai) with Aphrodite.
So much for Song 1. As for Song 31 of Sappho. the erotic experience shared by the ʻheʼ who is the bridegroom and by the ʻyouʼ who is the bride is communalized in the reaction of the ʻIʼ who figures as the vicarious participant in the experience. And this reaction, as we have seen, is an epiphany in itself. In this song, the subjectivity is linked to the first-person speaker who is Sappho. When we hear phainetai moi kēnos īsos theoisin ʻhe appears [phainetai] to me, that one, equal [īsos] to the godsʼ, it is the first-person speaker who is feeling the erotic sensations experienced by the bride in the second-person and by the bridegroom in the third person. At the climax of the erotic experience as spoken by the first-person speaker, she says about her feelings: tethnakēn dʼoligō ʻpideuēs phainomʼ emautāi ʻand a little short of death | do I appear [phainomai] to myselfʼ. The verb phainomai ʻI appearʼ here signals again an epiphany
an epiphany that manifests itself to the self, to the speaking ʻIʼ.
This appearance of the self to the self, as an epiphany, signals the divine presence of Aphrodite. In one sense, then, what is seen is the epiphany of Aphrodite, since she is the goddess of the occasion. In another sense, however, what is seen is the epiphany of the bride, whose identity fuses with that of Aphrodite at the moment of her wedding. And, in still another sense, what is seen is the epiphany of the speaking ʻIʼ who identifies with Aphrodite by virtue of vicariously identifying with the ʻyouʼ of the bride who is Aphrodite at this very moment. For Sappho, then, as I have been arguing, what is seen is an auto-epiphany.
Just as the vicariousness of Sappho in Song 31 fuses the ʻIʼ who is the singer with the ʻyouʼ who is the bride, so also the ʻIʼ of Sappho in Song 1 fuses the ʻIʼ who is the singer with the ʻyouʼ who is Aphrodite.
In Song 31 of Sappho, the projection of identity that we see going on in this song makes it possible for the singer of the song to become the bride herself and even Aphrodite herself, at least for a moment, just as the singer of Song 1 of Sappho becomes Aphrodite herself for the brief moment when Aphrodite is being quoted by the singer. In the logic of Song 31, seeing Sappho as Aphrodite for a moment is just as real as seeing the bride as Aphrodite and just as real as seeing the bridegroom as Ares.
As we will see in Hour 6, the visualization of the model bridegroom as Ares in the songs of Sappho is linked with the visualization of the hero Achilles as a model warrior at the
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moment of his death in epic, when he, too, like the model bridegroom in lyric, can be seen as ʻequal to Aresʼ. And this hero Achilles, as we have seen in Hour 4, can be visualized as the model bridegroom in lyric as well as in epic. I refer here again to the relevant testimony of the songs of Sappho:
review, Hour 4 Passage E. Sappho Fragment 105b
Himerius (Orations 1.16) reports: ʻSappho compared the girl to an apple ... she compared the bridegroom to Achilles, and likened the young manʼs deeds to the heroʼs.ʼ
And the image of Achilles as a bridegroom is linked with his image as a tender seedling:
review, Hour 4 Passage F. Sappho Fragment 115 To what shall I liken you, dear
bridegroom, to make the likeness beautiful? To a tender seedling, I liken you to that most of all.
Just as the model bridegroom in Song 31 of Sappho can be seen as the hero Achilles, so also the model bride can be seen as a heroine. In Aeolic traditions, such heroines figured in myths about the conquests of Achilles - not only martial but also amorous conquests - in the years that preceded the destruction of Troy. These myths told of beautiful Aeolic girls of Asia Minor and the outlying island of Lesbos who had once been immune to love and thus unreachable to their frustrated suitors. But then they fall helplessly in love with Achilles - that dashing young Aeolic hero who had sailed across the sea from his home in Hellas to attack the Aeolic people of Asia Minor and Lesbos.14
Comparable to these once-unreachable Aeolic girls is a prize apple, unreachable to the apple-pickers, which ʻblushesʼ enticingly from the heights of a “shooter-branch” in a song of Sappho:15
review, Hour 4 Passage D. Sappho Fragment 105a
Just like the sweet apple that blushes on top of a branch, the topmost apple on the topmost branch. It has eluded the notice of the apple pickers. Oh, but no. Itʼs not that they havenʼt noticed it. They couldnʼt reach it.
[[Here I show a picture of apples ripening on a tree, photographed on the island of Lesbos.]] And the brides of Sapphoʼs songs are conventionally compared to apples, as we have just seen:
Nagy Homer the Preclassic (2009) II§§49, 321. 15 On the cultivation of apples in ancient and modern Lesbos, see Mason 2004. These applies are yellow when they ripen, showing only a ʻblushʼ of red.
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review, Hour 4 Passage E. Sappho Fragment 105b
Himerius (Orations 1.16) reports: ʻSappho compared the girl to an apple....she compared the
bridegroom to Achilles, and likened the young manʼs deeds to the heroʼs.ʼ
Like Sapphoʼs prize apple, these contemporary brides are imagined as unreachable. But they are unreachable only up to the moment when they take the place of Aeolic heroines who had once upon a time fallen in love with Achilles, that model bridegroom. These Aeolic girls of the heroic past are imagined as throwing themselves at Achilles. That is, they throw a metonymic extension of themselves at Achilles by throwing an apple at him: such a theme is attested in the bittersweet story of a lovelorn girl from the Aeolic city of Pedasos (Hesiod Fragment 214).16 In the logic of myth, the love felt by such heroines is doomed from the start, and, in the end, they die for their love. In the logic of ritual, however, that same love promises to be requited. Such is the love expressed by girls pictured in the act of throwing apples at their prospective lovers in the songs of Sappho (Song 214A).
As we have seen, then, in the songs of Sappho, Achilles in his role as the model bridegroom can be imagined as a stand-in for the god Ares.17 And, just as the Aeolic hero Achilles can stand in for the god Ares at moments that center on the ritual of a wedding, so also various Aeolic heroines can stand in for a goddess, who is none other than Aphrodite, goddess of love and sexuality. A case in point is the captive woman Briseis in the Iliad. As I noted already in Hour 4, Briseis is overtly associated
with the Aeolic women of Lesbos whom Achilles captured as beauty-prizes in the years that preceded the destruction of Troy (IX 128- 131, 270-273; XIX 245-246). And the point is, Briseis is likened to Aphrodite in a most telling context:
review, Hour 4 Passage J. Iliad XIX 282-302
Then Briseis, looking like golden Aphrodite,
saw Patroklos all cut apart by the sharp bronze, and, when she saw him,
she poured herself all over him in tears and wailed with a voice most shrill, and with her hands she tore at
285 her breasts and her tender neck and her beautiful face.
And then she spoke, weeping, this woman who looked like the goddesses:
“O Patroklos, you have been most gracious to me in my terrible state and most gratifying to my heart.
You were alive when I last saw you on my way out from the shelter - and now I come back to find you dead, you, the protector of your people
16 Nagy The Best of the Achaeans (1999) 7§29n6 17 Nagy “Lyric and Greek Myth” (2007) 28-37.
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290 - that is what I come back to find. Oh, how I have one misfortune after the next to welcome me.
The man to whom I was given away by my father and by my mother the queen
I saw that man lying there in front of the city, all cut apart by the sharp bronze, and lying near him were my three brothers - all of us were born of one mother - they are all a cause for my sorrow, since they have all met up with their time of destruction.
295 No, you did not let me - back when my husband was killed by swift-footed Achilles,
killed by him, and when the city of my godlike Mynes [= my husband] was destroyed by him
you did not let me weep, back then, but you told me that godlike Achilles
would have me as a properly courted wife, that you would make that happen, and that you would take me on board the ships,
taking me all the way to Phthia, and that you would arrange for a wedding feast among the Myrmidons.
300 So now I cannot stop crying for you, now that you are dead, you who were always so sweet and gentle.”
So she [= Briseis] spoke, weeping, and the women kept on mourning in response. They mourned for Patroklos, that was their pretext, but they were all mourning, each and every one of them, for what they really cared for in their sorrow.
Most remarkably, Briseis is likened to the goddess Aphrodite here in Iliad XIX (282) in the context of her beginning to lament for Patroklos, who had been likened to the god Ares at the moment of his death in Iliad XVI (784),
The epic quotes, as it were, Briseis in the act of singing a choral lyric song of lament for the death of Patroklos (XIX 287-300), and this quotation of Briseis, along with the framing narrative concerning the antiphonal response of the women attending Briseis (XIX 301-302), re-enacts most accurately the morphology of a genuine choral lyric lament.18
In her lament, Briseis sings her bittersweet sorrow not only over the death of Patroklos but also over the death of her own fondest hope: when he was alive, Patroklos had promised to arrange for her a marriage to Achilles, but, now that Patroklos is dead, the hope of that promise is gone forever (XIX 295-300). So the Iliad pictures Patroklos as a stand-in for Achilles in courtship as well as in war.19 I will have much more to say in Hour 6 about Patroklos as such a stand-in for Achilles.
18 Dué 2002:70-71; Nagy Homer the Preclassic (2009) II§§303-317. 19 Nagy “Lyric
and Greek Myth” (2007) 32-34.
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At the beginning of Hour 5, I had explored the meaning of the expression daimoni īsos ʻequal [īsos] to a superhuman force [daimōn]ʼ as applied to heroes in contexts of epic. And here I end the hour with a preview of the same expression as applied to heroes in contexts of hero cult:
Hour 5 Passage G. Homeric Hymn to Demeter 235-236, 237-241
She nurtured him in the palace, and he grew up equal [isos] to a daimōn, not eating food, not sucking from the breast ... She used to anoint him with ambrosia, as if he had been born of the goddess, and she would breathe down her sweet breath on him as she held him at her bosom. At nights she would conceal him in the menos of fire, as if he were a smoldering log, and her parents were kept unaware. But they marveled at how full in bloom he came to be, and to look at him was like looking at the god.
As we will see in the hours to come, such descriptions of the cult hero match perfectly the descriptions of the epic hero in the Iliad.
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Key word for this hour: therapōn ʻattendant, minister; ritual substituteʼ (this is the definition in the Glossary). A word related to therapōn is therapeuein ʻheal, cureʼ (compare the English borrowings “therapy,” “therapeutic,” etc.).
Hour 6 Passage A. Iliad XVI 233-248
[Achilles is praying to Zeus:] “King Zeus,” he cried, “lord of Dodona, god of the Pelasgoi, who dwells afar, you who hold wintry Dodona in your sway, where your prophets the Selloi dwell around you with their feet unwashed and their couches made upon the ground - if you heard me when I prayed to you aforetime, and did me honor while you sent disaster on the Achaeans, grant me now the fulfillment of yet this further prayer. I shall stay here at my assembly [agōn] of ships, but I shall send my comrade into battle at the head of many Myrmidons. Grant, O all-seeing Zeus, that victory may go with him; put your courage into his heart that Hektor may learn whether my attendant [therapōn] is man enough to fight alone, or whether his might is only then so indomitable when I myself enter the turmoil of war. Afterwards when he has chased the fight and the cry of battle from the ships, grant that he may return unharmed, with his armor and his comrades, fighters in close combat.” Thus did he pray, and all-counseling Zeus heard his prayer. Part of it he did indeed grant him - but not the whole. He granted that Patroklos should thrust back war and battle from the ships, but refused to let him come safely out of the fight.
Patroklos is the generic therapōn of Achilles, as we see from the context of Iliad XVI 165 here. Should we interpret therapōn in this context as (a) ʻattendantʼ or (b) ʻritual
substituteʼ? (Both these definitions of therapōn are given in the Glossary.) My answer is that both meanings apply. Patroklos is the ʻattendantʼ of Achilles on the surface, but he is his ʻritual substituteʼ in the deeper meaning of the Master Narrative.
I now turn to the ritual background of the word therapōn: it was borrowed into the Greek language from Anatolian languages, as represented especially by Hittite and Luvian, sometime in the 2nd millennium BCE. The corresponding word in those Anatolian languages means ʻritual substituteʼ. Someone who is very close to the king must die in place of the king, year after year.1
To understand how such a concept of ritual substitute was used in the ancient Greek song culture, I find that the best starting point is a climactic passage I quoted in Hour 5 from Rhapsody XVI of the Iliad where the warrior hero Patroklos is killed in battle: at this moment, the hero is visualized as atalantos Arēi ʻequal to Aresʼ (line 784). Now we will see that Patroklos in such a context is a stand-in for Achilles, or, in other words, Patroklos is a ritual substitute
Nagy “The Epic Hero” (2006) §29. 82
for the main hero of the Iliad. And just as Patroklos as ritual substitute of Achilles qualifies as ʻequal to Aresʼ, we can expect Achilles himself to qualify for epithets meaning ʻequal to Aresʼ.
Here I find it most relevant to consider some basic facts about the use of the word therapōn in epic, the plural form of which is therapontes. In the Homeric Iliad, warriors are conventionally called the therapontes of Ares as the god of war (II 110, VI 67, XV 733, XIX 78). The first example we saw was in Hour 1 Passage C (Iliad XIX 78). With these facts in mind, I will now make an argument that can be encapsulated in the following thesis:
When a warrior is killed in war, he becomes a ʻritual substituteʼ who dies for Ares by becoming identical to the war god at the moment of death; then, after death, the warrior is eligible to become a cult hero who serves as a sacralized ʻattendantʼ of the war god.2
As an epic warrior, Achilles is a therapōn or ʻritual substituteʼ of Ares by virtue of becoming identical to the war god at the moment of death. In the Iliad, however, this relationship between Achilles and Ares is expressed only by way of an intermediary, who is Patroklos. This warrior is described not as the therapōn of Ares but rather as the therapōn of Achilles, and, as such, he is not only that heroʼs ʻattendantʼ but also his ʻritual substituteʼ, since he actually dies for Achilles. So Achilles in the Iliad dies only indirectly as the therapōn of Ares through the intermediacy of Patroklos, who dies in this epic as the therapōn of Achilles.
As an epic warrior, Achilles qualifies as īsos Arēi ʻequal to Aresʼ, just like Patroklos. This description suits Achilles in the Iliad - though it applies to him only vicariously by way of Patroklos, who takes upon himself the role of a ritual substitute for Achilles. As we saw in Passage B of Hour 5 (Iliad XVI 784), Patroklos is called atalantos Arēi ʻequal to Aresʼ at the exact moment when he is killed. And, as we will soon see, Patroklos is actually called īsos Arēi ʻequal to Aresʼ at the exact moment when the story of his fatal impersonation of Achilles begins.
Besides being equated with Ares, however, we saw that Patroklos is also being equated with Apollo. It happens in both Passages A and B of Hour 5, when Patroklos
is called daimoni īsos ʻequal to a daimōnʼ (XVI 705 and 786). As we see from the contexts of these passages, the daimōn or ʻotherworldly forceʼ here is the god Apollo himself. So in these contexts Patroklos is ʻequalʼ to Apollo, though his identification with this god is not fully spelled out, since the word daimōn partly masks the identity of the god.
As one who is equal to Apollo at the moment of his death, Patroklos participates in a specialized god-hero relationship. By being equal to Ares at the moment of his death, Patroklos participates in a generic god-hero relationship that is typical of heroes who are warriors. In identifying with both Ares and Apollo, however, Patroklos is experiencing something very
A longer version of what I argue here is presented in Nagy The Best of the Achaeans (1999) 17§§5-6.
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special that will later be experienced by Achilles himself, who will also be identifying with both Ares and Apollo at the moment of his own heroic death, though his death scene is not directly pictured in the Iliad.
In this way, Patroklos is a stand-in for the main hero of the narrative, Achilles, whose specialized ritual antagonist is Apollo. Although Achilles, just like other warriors, can have as his generalized ritual antagonist the god Ares, he also has as his specialized ritual antagonist the god Apollo.
Patroklos is drawn into the specialized relationship of Achilles with Apollo at the precise moment when he is equated with Ares and thus marked for doom: Hour 6 Passage B. Iliad XI 599-606
Achilles ... was standing on the stern of his ship watching the hard stress [ponos] and
struggle of the fight. He called from the ship to his comrade Patroklos, who heard him in the tent and came out, equal [īsos] to Ares, and here indeed was the beginning of the doom that presently befell him. “Why,” said he, “Achilles do you call me? what do you want with me?”
Here Homeric poetry declares explicitly that the application of the epithet ʻequal to Aresʼ will doom Patroklos to death.3
A generic warrior, as we have noted, is called a therapōn of Ares. Generically, then, heroes as warriors die for Ares. More specifically, however, a special hero will die for his special divine antagonist.
Generically, then, Achilles would be a therapōn of Ares; specifically, however, we can say that he is a therapōn of Apollo, because it is Apollo who will directly kill him, as we know from the plot summary of the epic called the Aithiopis, or ʻSong of the Aethiopiansʼ. And, while the therapōn of Apollo must be Achilles, the therapōn of Achilles must be, as we have seen, Patroklos.
Patroklos must die for Achilles, who must die for Apollo. The death of Patroklos is caused by Ares generically but it is brought to fulfillment by Apollo personally.
I return here to the moment when Patroklos dies. At that moment, as we saw in Passages A and B of Hour 5, he is called daimoni īsos ʻequal to a daimōnʼ (XVI 705 and 786). And, at that precise moment, he is in sacred space. Since war is ritual, the battleground is for the warrior a sacred space. Patroklos is doomed for death, and that is why he is ʻequal to a daimōnʼ. But this sacred space is not only sacred: it is also violent and and even sinister. When you are a
Nagy The Best of the Achaeans (1999) 2§8, 17§5. 84
warrior fighting in the sacred space of Ares, being ʻequal to a daimōnʼ is to have martial fury. Ares is not only the god of war, he is the god of martial fury in war. The martial fury of Patroklos in his death scene mirrors the martial fury of Achilles himself, which is previewed by the death scene of Patroklos in the Iliad. And this
martial fury of Achilles is relevant to the second of the three characteristics of the hero that we considered in Hour 1, namely, that the hero is “extreme” both positively and, on special occasions, negatively. Achilles is extreme mostly in a positive sense, since he is ʻbestʼ in many categories and since he is even the ʻbest of the Achaeansʼ in the Homeric Iliad. Occasionally, however, he is extreme in a negative sense, as in his moments of martial fury.4 In war, the warrior who is possessed by the god of war experiences this kind of fury, which is typically bestial. For example, martial fury in Greek is lussa, meaning ʻwolfish rageʼ.5 Comparable is the Old Norse concept berserkr and the Old Irish concept of ríastrad ʻwarp spasmʼ or ʻdistortionʼ.6 To experience such a warp spasm or distortion is be beside oneself, and to be beside oneself is to be possessed - possessed by Ares.
I return here to the ritual background of the word therapōn: it was borrowed into the Greek language, as I pointed out earlier, from Anatolian languages, as represented especially by Hittite and Luvian, sometime in the 2nd millennium BCE. The corresponding word in those Anatolian languages meant ʻritual substituteʼ. Someone who is very close to the king, as I also pointed out, must die in place of the king, year after year.
Such a death has the effect of healing society by way of healing the king, who is seen as the embodiment of society, of the body politic. The healing is an act of purifying the king and his society from impurities, from pollution. If the king is polluted, then society is polluted. That is why the pollution of the king has to be transferred to a ritual substitute who will die for the king and thus remove his pollution while also removing the pollution of society. This principle of purification is known as the transfer of evil. Evil must be passed on, to a sacrificial victim. In Greek visual art, Patroklos can be represented as a sacrificial ram, with his throat slit open.7
The meaning of the Greek word therapōn as ritual substitute and the function of such a therapōn as a healer helps explain why the related Greek word therapeuein actually means
Nagy The Best of the Achaeans (1999) 20§5 = p. 321. 5 Lincoln 1975. 6 For a comparison of the Old Norse and Old Irish concepts, see Sjoestedt 1940:86. See also Henry 1982. For the translation of Old Irish ríastrad as ʻwarp spasmʼ, see Kinsella 1969. For a lively description of ʻwarp spasmʼ, see Rees and Rees 1961:248-249. 7 Tarenzi 2005, who makes major improvements on the interpretation of Griffiths 1985 and 1989.
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ʻhealʼ; we still see such a meaning embedded in the English-language borrowings therapy and therapeutic.
Here is a parallel. The Greek word pharmakon means ʻdrug used for healingʼ or, more generally, ʻdrug used for medication or for poisoningʼ, and we see the more specific meaning ʻdrug used for healingʼ embedded in the English-language
borrowings pharmacy and pharmacology. The meaning of this word pharmakon as ʻdrug used for healingʼ helps explain the meaning of a related Greek word, pharmakos, which designates a person who serves a very special ritual function. That person is a ʻscapegoatʼ, that is, someone who takes the blame for an evil that afflicts the whole society. Here again we see at work the principle of a transfer of evil. Simone Weil (1909-1943) was a philosopher who reflected about the transfer of evil, le transfert du mal. In “Void and Compensation” (published 1947), she writes: “The wish to see others suffer exactly what we are suffering. It is because of this that, except in periods of social instability, the spite of those in misfortune is directed against their fellows. That is a factor making for social stability.” From the same work: “The tendency to spread the suffering beyond ourselves. If through excessive weakness we can neither call forth pity nor do harm to others, we attack what the universe itself represents for us. Then every good or beautiful thing is like an insult.” From “Human Personality” (1943): “When harm is done to a man, real evil enters into him; not merely pain and suffering, but the actual horror of evil. Just as men have the power of transmitting good to one another, so they have the power to transmit evil.” Here, I think is the essence of le transfert du mal.
From the standpoint of a thinker like Weil, Patroklos is an existential hero who refuses to pass on the suffering to the next person. He absorbs the suffering and dies by doing so. He short-circuits evil.
Such a way of thinking about Patroklos may lead us to a rethinking of this heroʼs status as the one person who is at the very summit of the ascending scale of affection that is felt by the hero Achilles. As we have seen, Achilles considers Patroklos to be the most philos ʻnear and dearʼ of them all. Or, if we were to express this idea in terms of the noun philos, meaning ʻfriendʼ, instead of using the adjective philos, meaning ʻnear and dearʼ, we would say that Patroklos is the very best friend of Achilles.
Here I recall the ascending scale of affection in the compressed story of Meleager and Kleopatra, a story called klea andrōn | hērōōn ʻglories [= kleos plural] of men, heroes [hērōes]ʼ in the Iliad (IX 524-525). This story, as told by Phoenix to Achilles and Patroklos and the other heroes assembled in the shelter of Achilles, is a story that is meant to be understood by
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ʻfriendsʼ, philoi (IX 528). Or, to put it more accurately, it is a story that is meant for an audience who are presumed to be friends, philoi:
Hour 6 Passage C. Iliad IX 524-528
[Thus] we have heard in song the glories [klea] of heroes of old time, how they quarreled when they were roused to fury, but still they could be won over by gifts, and fair words could soothe them. I totally recall [memnēmai] this action that happened a long time ago - it is not something new - recalling exactly how it was. I will tell it in your company - since you are all friends [philoi].
In his essays on morality, Aristotle defined a true friend as an allos egō ʻanother Iʼ – and this terminology helps explain the use of the pseudo-scientific Latin term alter ego in the official English-language translation of the works of Freud.
As we saw in Hour 2, the Greek word houtōs ʻthusʼ that introduces this story about the meaning of friendship is a marker of a form of speech called ainos. As we also saw, you have to have three qualifications for understanding an ainos. That is, you have to
be
1) sophos ʻskilledʼ or ʻwiseʼ, indicating a mental qualification 2) agathos ʻgoodʼ or ʻnobleʼ, indicating a moral qualification 3) philos ʻnear-and-dearʼ, indicating an emotional or affective qualification.
Now the “moral” of the ainos about Meleager and his wife Kleopatra is not only the fact that Kleopatra is at the summit of her husbandʼs ascending scale of affection but also the fact that the name of Kleopatra means the same thing as the name of Patroklos, Patrokleēs – and the fact that both names mean the same thing as the klea andrōn | hērōōn ʻglories of men who were heroesʼ, which is the medium of the epic that is the Homeric Iliad.
So I return to the question: what is at stake for Achilles in his own epic? We saw that the answer is the epic itself, to which Achilles refers as his own kleos aphthiton, his ʻunwilting gloryʼ (IX 413). But we also saw that Achilles does not yet know the answer to the question I just asked, what is at stake for him in his own epic, at the moment when he speaks about this kleos aphthiton. Full knowledge of what is at stake can only be achieved when the epic is fully told.
As the plot of the Iliad evolves, we can see along the way some indications of the heroʼs incomplete knowledge of his own epic glory or kleos. In Iliad IX, for example, Achilles himself gives two alternative views of his priorities. In terms of the first of these two alteratives, what matters most for Achilles is his love for a woman, Briseis: 87
Hour 6 Passage D. Iliad IX 340-343
[Achilles is speaking:] Are the sons of Atreus the only men in the world who love their wives? Any man of common right feeling will love and cherish her who is his own, as I this woman, with my whole heart, though she was but the prize of my spear.
Here in Iliad IX, we have already come a long way from Iliad I, where Briseis was simply the property of Achilles and thus an extension of his honor. Now Briseis is a would-be wife.
In terms of the second of the two alteratives we are now considering, what matters most for Achilles is his love for a his own life:
Hour 6 Passage E. Iliad IX 401-408
[Achilles is speaking:] My life [psukhē] is more to me than all the wealth of Ilion while it was yet at peace before the Achaeans went there, or than all the treasure that lies on the stone floor of Apolloʼs temple beneath the cliffs of Pytho [= Delphi]. Cattle and sheep are to be had by raiding, and a man can buy both tripods and horses if he wants them, but when his life [psukhē] has once left him it can neither be bought nor raided back again.
Besides the heroʼs love for a would-be wife and besides his love for his own life, what about his love for his comrades? The words of the hero Ajax, who is one of these comrades, show that he misunderstands the priorities of Achilles:
Passage F. Iliad IX 622-638
Ajax son of Telamon then said, “Odysseus, noble son of Laertes, let us be gone, for I see that our journey is vain. We must now take our answer, unwelcome though it be, to the Danaans who are waiting to receive it. Achilles is savage and remorseless; he is cruel, and cares nothing for the love his comrades lavished upon him more than on all the others. He is implacable—and yet if a manʼs brother or son has been slain he
will accept a fine [poinē] by way of amends from him that killed him, and the wrong- doer having paid in full remains in peace in his own locale [dēmos]; but as for you, Achilles, the gods have put a wicked unforgiving spirit in your heart, and this, all over one single girl.”
Ajax here is thinking that the main hero of the Iliad has already made up his mind, preferring Briseis and himself over his companions. In the long run, however, Achilles will prefer neither Briseis nor himself nor his companions as represented by Ajax. He will prefer the klea andrōn | hērōōn ʻglories of men who were heroesʼ as represented by Patroklos, his other self. The life that he shares with this other self is to be valued above everything else, and the value of that life is beyond measure. It becomes impossible to put a price on the value of that life. This impossibility is summed up in a timeless scene pictured on the Shield of Achilles:
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Passage G. Iliad XVIII 497-500
Meanwhile the people were gathered in assembly, for there was a quarrel [neikos], and two men were wrangling about the blood-price [poinē] for a man who had died, [500] the one claiming to the population of the district [dēmos] that he had the right to pay off the damages in full, and the other refusing to accept anything.
Here the narrative zooms in on a litigation between an anonymous plaintiff and an anonymous defendant. The plaintiff, who can be seen as a stand-in for Achilles, refuses to accept compensation offered by the defendant, who can be seen as a stand-in for Agamemon. The defendant seeks to compensate for the loss of a human life, but whose life is it? From the standpoint of the macro-Narrative that is the Iliad, this life belongs to Patroklos and Achilles together.
From the standpoint of this timeless picture on the Shield of Achilles, we can now reconsider the three alternative priorities we have been considering for Achilles as the main hero of the Iliad, (1) love for a would-be wife or (2) love for his own life or (3) love for his comrades. All three of these alternative priorites are merely foils for the ultimate priority for this hero, which is his love for the klea andrōn | hērōōn ʻglories of men who were heroesʼ, which includes and transcends all the other priorities. And this love is embodied in the figure of Patroklos, ritual substitute of Achilles in the Iliad. Viewing Achilles through the lens of his ritual substitute Patroklos, I return to the picturing of the model bridegroom in a song of Sappho that we have already seen twice in the previous five hours. It is Song 31, and I return to it for a third time here in the sixth hour:
review, Hour 4 Passage C. Song 31 of Sappho
phainetai moi kēnos īsos theoisin emmenʼ ōnēr ottis enantios toi isdanei kai plāsion
ādu phōnei- sās upakouei
kai gelaisās īmeroen to mʼ ē mān kardian en stēthesin eptoaisen ōs gar es sʼ idō brokheʼ ōs me phōnai- sʼ oudʼ en etʼ eikei
alla kam men glōssa eāge lepton dʼ autika khrōi pūr upadedromāken oppatessi dʼ oudʼ en orēmmʼ epirrom-
He appears to me, that one, equal to the gods, the man who, facing you, is seated and, up close, that sweet voice of yours he listens to
and how you laugh your charming laugh. Why, it makes my heart flutter within my breast, since, the moment I look at you, right then, for me to make any sound at all wonʼt work any more.
My tongue has broken down and a delicate - all of a sudden - fire rushes under my skin. With my eyes I see
not a thing, and there is a roar
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beisi dʼ akouai
kad de mʼ idrōs kakkheetai tromos de paīsan agrei khlōrotera de poias emmi tethnakēn dʼ oligō ʻpideuēs phainomʼ emʼ aut[āi
that my ears make.
Sweat pours down me and a trembling seizes all of me; paler than grass am I, and a little short of death do I appear to me.
The epiphany of Song 31 induces a near-death experience for the first-person
speaker here, and such a stylized personal death is modeled on a realized mythical death. As I will now argue, death in myth is a prototype for whatever it is that the first- person speaker experiences vicariously in her interaction with the second-person bride and with the third-person bridegroom, who are respectively the vision of Aphrodite and the corresponding vision of Ares.8
I start with the third-person bridegroom. Here I recall an observation I had made in Hour 5, that the bridegroom is visualized as īsos Areui ʻequal to Aresʼ in another song of Sappho (Song 111 line 5). Comparable to the bridegroom who gets married in lyric is the warrior who gets killed in epic. As we have already seen from the climactic passage I quoted in Hour 5 from Rhapsody XVI of the Iliad where the warrior hero Patroklos is killed in battle, he is visualized at that moment as atalantos Arēi ʻequal to Aresʼ (line 784). And by now we have seen that Patroklos in such a context is a stand-in for Achilles, or, in other words, that Patroklos is a ritual substitute for the main hero of the Iliad. So, just as Patroklos as ritual substitute of Achilles qualifies as ʻequal to Aresʼ, we can expect Achilles himself to qualify for epithets meaning ʻequal to Aresʼ. What is vital here for my argument is the fact that a bridegroom can be visualized not only as īsos Arēi ʻequal to Aresʼ but also as Achilles himself in the songs of Sappho.
The figure of Patroklos as a ritual substitute for Achilles in the Iliad helps us understand what has been up to now a missing link in the picturing of the bridegroom in Song 31 of Sappho. Patroklos as the ritual substitute of Achilles prefigures Achilles at the moment of his own death in epic, when he, too, like the model bridegroom in lyric, is ʻequal to Aresʼ.
Here I rewiew how the model bridegroom in lyric, as we have seen in Hour 4, can be visualized as Achilles himself:
review, Hour 4 Passage E. Sappho Fragment 105b
Himerius (Orations 1.16) reports: ʻSappho compared the girl to an apple....she compared the bridegroom to Achilles, and likened the young manʼs deeds to the heroʼs.ʼ
A longer version of what I argue here is presented in Nagy “Lyric and Greek Myth” (2007) 31- 36.
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review, Hour 4 Passage F. Sappho Fragment 115 To what shall I liken you, dear bridegroom, to make the likeness beautiful? To a tender seedling, I liken you to that most of all.
Such a lyric convention in the songs of Sappho can be explained as an organic correlation of myth and ritual.
(I repeat here my quick working definition of myth and ritual together. Ritual is doing things and saying things in a way that is considered sacred. Myth is saying things in a way that is also considered sacred. So ritual frames myth.)
In the logic of myth, Achilles never becomes a model husband because War personified, Ares, cuts him down like a flower in the bloom of his youth. In the logic of ritual, on the other hand, Achilles is the perfect model for a bridegroom precisely because he is cut down in war and thus cannot ever became a husband. For love to find its self-expression in the ritual of a wedding, it needs someone to die for love.9 Such a ritual need is expressed in the relationship of Eros, personified as the god of erotic love, with Aphrodite, the goddess of erotic love. As we see from an imagined dialogue between Sappho and Aphrodite in a song of Sappho mentioned earlier, the goddess says in her own words that Eros is her therapōn (Sappho Song 159). As in epic, this word in lyric means not only ʻattendantʼ but also ʻritual substituteʼ, that is, someone who ritually dies for the sake of the one he attends. Pictured as a pubescent (not prepubescent) boy, Eros is doomed to die for the sake of Aphrodite. In the poetics of Sappho, as later ancient sources tell us (Sappho Fragment 172), the death of erotic Love personified is a most persistent theme.
The death of Eros could be pictured as a martial death resulting from the warfare of love. We see clearly the language of love as war in Song 1 of Sappho, where Aphrodite is invoked in prayer to become a summakhos ʻally in battleʼ for Sappho in speaking the words of lyric love song (Song 1 line 28). Conversely, Sappho as the speaker of a lyric love song is offering herself as an ʻally in battleʼ for Aphrodite, thus crossing over into the themes of epic. Similarly in the Iliad, Aphrodite crosses over into the themes of epic by intervening in the epic action - and she gets wounded in doing so, as if she were a mortal (V 327-354).10
Parallel to the wounding of the goddess Aphrodite are the two woundings of the god Ares in the Iliad: he too gets wounded as if he were a mortal (V 855-863, XXI
401-408). More than that, the woundings of Ares are in both cases described as mortal woundings, and the Iliad
Nagy “Lyric and Greek Myth” (2007) 31-32. 10 Nagy “Lyric and Greek Myth” (2007)
32. The paragraphs that follow are taken from the this same essay. 91
actually shows Ares in the act of going through the motions of a stylized martial death. Such an epic experience is for Ares a mock death.11 Similarly, the lyric experience of Eros in dying for love can be viewed as a mock death, and such ritualized mockery is typical of “divine burlesque,” which represents one of the oldest features of Greek myth. There are striking parallels to be found in Near Eastern sources dating back to the second millennium BCE.12
The stylized death of the god Ares in the Iliad is an extreme case of divine mirroring: the immortal god of war gets involved not only in the martial actions of heroes but even in their martial deaths. And he gets so involved because god and hero mirror each other at the moment of a heroʼs death, which is the climax of the inherent antagonism between them.13
At the moment when he dies a warriorʼs death in place of Achilles, Patroklos is vicariously experiencing such a moment of mirroring between Achilles as warrior and Ares as god of warriors: that is why Patroklos looks just like Ares at that moment.14
As mutual antagonists, the hero Achilles and the god Ares match each other in life as well as in death. In the case of Achilles, as we see from surviving traces in the epic Cycle, this hero was pictured as an irresistible lover in the imaginations of lovelorn girls hoping to make him their husband.15 In the case of Ares, as we will see when we read the second song of Demodokos in the Homeric Odyssey, this god is imagined as an irresistible lover by the goddess of love and sexuality herself, Aphrodite (viii 266-366).
Among other related characteristics shared by the hero Achilles and the god Ares is their superhuman speed. In the case of Achilles, his success in war is closely connected with the use of such epithets as podōkēs ʻswift-footedʼ in the Iliad. In the case of Ares, his own swiftness of foot is pictured as ideal for success in courtship as well as in warfare. In the song of Demodokos about the love affair of Ares and Aphrodite in the Odyssey, we find that one of the war godʼs most irresistible attributes is his nimbleness of foot in choral lyric dancing.16 And yet, despite his irresistible attractiveness in courting Aphrodite, the dashing young Ares will never marry. Like the dashing young Achilles, Ares is eternally the bridegroom and never the husband. Back in Hour 1, I had described the basic idea of god-hero antagonism as a kind of fatal attraction. But now I want to highlight an even more basic idea: whatever is human in us is
11 Nagy “The Epic Hero” (2006) §76. 12 Burkert 1960:132. 13 Nagy “The Epic
Hero” (2006) §§105, 108, 110, 115. 14 Nagy The Best of the Achaeans (1999) 2§8, 17§5 15 Nagy “The Epic Hero” (2006) §56. 16 Nagy Homer the Preclassic (2009) I§214. 92
irresistibly attracted to the divine. Here is a relevant formulation by a Greek thinker who lived in a period straddling the first and the second centuries CE, Dio of Prusa (12.60):
Through their longing for the divine all people have a powerful urge to worship and serve the deity from nearby. Like children that have been taken away from their father and mother, they are filled with a strange longing and often in their dreams reach out their hands to their parents who are not there, so too do people in their love for the gods seek - and properly so because of their benefits and affinity - in all possible ways to be with them and in their company.
In the epic narrative of the Iliad, however, there is a sinister twist to this kind of attraction: whatever it is that attracts a hero like Patroklos to a god like Apollo on the battlefied makes that hero want to kill the god. In trying to kill the god, of course, the hero only brings about his own death. In other words, fatal attraction experienced by the hero is not even recognized as fatal until it is too late for the hero.
Having looked at the third-person bridegroom in Song 31 of Sappho, I now proceed to look at the second-person bride. Just as the generic bridegroom looks like a local cult hero such as Achilles, so also the generic bride looks like a local cult heroine. In Aeolic traditions, such heroines figured in myths about the conquests of Achilles - not only martial but also amorous conquests - in the years that preceded the destruction of Troy. These myths told of beautiful Aeolic girls of Asia Minor and the outlying island of Lesbos who had once been immune to love and thus unreachable to their frustrated suitors. But then they fall helplessly in love with Achilles - that dashing young Aeolic hero who had sailed across the sea from his home in Hellas to attack
the Aeolic people of Asia Minor and Lesbos.17
Comparable to these once-unreachable Aeolic girls is a prize apple, unreachable to the apple-pickers, which ʻblushesʼ enticingly from the heights of a “shooter-branch” in a song of Sappho:18
review, Hour 4 Passage D. Sappho Fragment 105a
Just like the sweet apple that blushes on top of a branch, the topmost apple on the topmost branch. It has eluded the notice of the apple pickers. Oh, but no. Itʼs not that they havenʼt noticed it. They couldnʼt reach it.
[[Here I show a picture of apples ripening on a tree, photographed on the island of Lesbos.]]
It is no coincidence that the brides of Sapphoʼs songs are conventionally compared to apples, as we have already seen:
17 Nagy Homer the Preclassic (2009) II§§49, 321. 18 On the cultivation of apples in ancient and modern Lesbos, see Mason 2004. These applies are yellow when they ripen, showing only a ʻblushʼ of red.
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review, Hour 4 Passage E. Sappho Fragment 105b
Himerius (Orations 1.16) reports: ʻSappho compared the girl to an apple....she compared the
bridegroom to Achilles, and likened the young manʼs deeds to the heroʼs.ʼ
Like Sapphoʼs prize apple, these contemporary brides are imagined as unreachable. But they are unreachable only up to the moment when they take the place of Aeolic heroines who had once upon a time fallen in love with Achilles, that ideal bridegroom. These Aeolic girls of the heroic past are imagined as throwing themselves at Achilles. That is, they throw a metonymic extension of themselves at Achilles by throwing an apple at him: such a theme is attested in the bittersweet story of a lovelorn girl from the Aeolic city of Pedasos (Hesiod Fragment 214).19 In the logic of myth, the love felt by such heroines is doomed from the start, and, in the end, they die for their love. In the logic of ritual, however, that same love promises to be requited. Such is the love expressed by girls pictured in the act of throwing apples at their prospective lovers in the songs of Sappho (Song 214A).
As we have seen from the songs of Sappho, Achilles in his role as the ideal bridegroom can be imagined as a stand-in for the god Ares.20 And, just as the Aeolic hero Achilles stands in for a god at moments that center on the ritual of a wedding, so also various Aeolic heroines can stand in for a goddess, who is none other than Aphrodite, goddess of love and sexuality. A case in point is the captive woman Briseis in the Iliad. She is overtly associated with the women of Lesbos whom Achilles captured as prizes in the years that preceded the destruction of Troy (IX
128-131, 270-273; XIX 245-246). In an earlier hour, I already quoted the song of lament performed by this Briseis over the death of Patroklos:
review, Hour 4 Passage J. Iliad XIX 282-302
Then Briseis, looking like golden Aphrodite,
saw Patroklos all cut apart by the sharp bronze, and, when she saw him,
she poured herself all over him in tears and wailed with a voice most shrill, and with her hands she tore at
285 her breasts and her tender neck and her beautiful face.
And then she spoke, weeping, this woman who looked like the goddesses:
“O Patroklos, you have been most gracious to me in my terrible state and most gratifying to my heart.
You were alive when I last saw you on my way out from the shelter
and now I come back to find you dead, you, the protector of your people
290 - that is what I come back to find. Oh, how I have one misfortune after the next to welcome me.
19 Nagy The Best of the Achaeans (1999) 7§29n6 20 Nagy “Lyric and Greek Myth” (2007) 28-37.
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The man to whom I was given away by my father and by my mother the queen
I saw that man lying there in front of the city, all cut apart by the sharp bronze, and lying near him were my three brothers - all of us were born of one mother - they are all a cause for my sorrow, since they have all met up with their time of destruction.
295 No, you did not let me - back when my husband was killed by swift-footed Achilles,
killed by him, and when the city of my godlike Mynes [= my husband] was destroyed by him
you did not let me weep, back then, but you told me that godlike Achilles
would have me as a properly courted wife, that you would make that happen, and that you would take me on board the ships,
taking me all the way to Phthia, and that you would arrange for a wedding feast among the Myrmidons.
300 So now I cannot stop crying for you, now that you are dead, you who were always so sweet and gentle.”
So she [= Briseis] spoke, weeping, and the women kept on mourning in response. They mourned for Patroklos, that was their pretext, but they were all mourning, each and every one of them, for what they really cared for in their sorrow.
As Briseis begins to sing her choral lyric song of lament for Patroklos, she is likened to Aphrodite (XIX 282).
Here I need to repeat some details that I highlighted in Hour 4 when I previewed this lament of Briseis in the Iliad. The epic quotes, as it were, Briseis in the act of singing a choral lyric song of lament for the death of Patroklos (XIX 287-300); this quotation of Briseis, along with the framing narrative concerning the antiphonal response of the women attending Briseis (XIX 301-302), re-enacts most accurately the morphology of a genuine choral lyric lament.21 In her lament, Briseis sings her bittersweet sorrow not only over the death of Patroklos but also over the death of her own fondest hope: when he was alive, Patroklos had promised to arrange for her a marriage to Achilles, but, now that Patroklos is dead, the hope of that promise is gone forever (XIX
295-300). So the Iliad pictures Patroklos as a ritual substitute for Achilles in courtship as well as in war.22
In the logic of myth, as we will see in Hours 05 and 06, a heroʼs identity at the moment of death can merge with a godʼs identity, and, at that moment, the hero can be likened to a god. In the logic of ritual, on the other hand, such a merger of identity leads only to a figurative or stylized death.23 In the ritual of a wedding, for example, the likening
of the
21 Dué 2002:70-71; Nagy Homer the Preclassic (2009) II§§303-317. 22 Nagy “Lyric
and Greek Myth” (2007) 32-34. 23 Nagy Poetry as Performance (1996) 87-97.
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bridegroom to a god and of the bride to a goddess leads only to a figurative death. Death in ritual is not physical but psychic. For example, from cross-cultural surveys of rituals of initiation as practiced in traditional societies around the world, it becomes evident that initiands who are identified with divinities at the moment of initiation are imagined as dying to their old selves as members of a given age-class and being reborn into their new selves as members of the next age-class.24
In the ritual of a wedding as celebrated by the songs of Sappho, there is the prospect of a happy ending as the identity of the Aeolic numpha ʻbrideʼ shifts from girl to goddess to woman. In the process of becoming a goddess for a moment, the bride dies to her old self as a girl and is reborn to her new self as a woman. In the corresponding myth, by contrast, there is the prospect of a sad but compellingly erotic ending to the story. The bride-to-be will never get married to the ideal bridegroom, imagined as Achilles.
The death of Achilles himself in war is the climax of his erotic charisma. In general, the martial death of heroes is eroticized as the beautiful death, la belle mort; even the body of the dead hero is eroticized - as the beautiful corpse, le beau mort Achilles is pictured as a beau mort in the Iliad, as when the goddess Thetis and her fellow Nereids lament the future death of her beloved son in war; in this context,
Such themes of eroticized death are relevant to the near-death experience of the ʻIʼ in Song 31 of Sappho. Having started with the third-person bridegroom in this song and having continued with the second-person bride, I conclude with this first-person speaker. The woman who speaks in the first person here is vicariously speaking for the whole group that attends the wedding. The whole group is notionally participating in the stylized deaths of the male and the female initiands - in this case, of the bridegroom and the bride.
The stylized death of the bridegroom in a wedding as described by Sappho matches the realized death of Achilles in war. Premarital death in ritual marks the transition from bridegroom to husband, while martial death in myth marks an eternal deferral of such a transition. By dying in war, Achilles becomes the very picture of the ultimate bridegroom in eternally suspended animation, forever on the verge of marrying. In the logic of ritual, what is needed for female initiands, especially for brides, is such an eternal bridegroom.27 A
24 Nagy Poetry as Performance (1996) 101-103. 25 Nagy Homer the Classic (2008) 4§§259-270; Homer the Preclassic (2009) II§425. 26 Nagy The Best of the Achaeans (1999) 10§11 = pp. 182-184. 27 Dué 2006:82-83.
(Tyrtaeus Poem 10).25
as we have seen, the hero is
compared to a beautiful plant that dies in full bloom (XVIII 54-60).26 In a song of Sappho that
we have already noted (Song 105c), we see a comparable image of a beautiful plant at the
moment of death (also comparable is the image of a bridegroom as a beautiful plant
in Song 115).
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comparable model of unfulfilled desire and unrequited love is the hero Hippolytus in the Hippolytus of Euripides: at the end of this drama (1423-1430), we find an anthropologically accurate description of a ritual of female initiation featuring a chorus of girls performing a lament for the death of Hippolytus as their local cult hero. 28 As this drama illustrates, the identity of the female initiand depends on the program, as it were, of the ritual of initiation. The nuptial Aphrodite and the prenuptial / postnuptial Artemis reveal different phases of erotic engagement in the life cycle of a woman, determining when she is attainable - and when she is unattainable.29
The symmetry of figurative death in the ritual of a wedding with real death in the ritual of warfare is parallel to the symmetry of kleos aphthiton ʻunwilting gloryʼ in epic and lyric, since this expression applies not only to the epic theme of a heroʼs death in war, as in the case of Achilles in the Iliad (IX 413), but also to the lyric theme of a wedding, as in the case of Hector as bridegroom and Andromache as bride in Song 44 of Sappho (line 4). The expression kleos aphthiton links the doomed warrior in epic with the wedded couple in lyric. Parallel to the linking effected by this expression is the linking effected by the god Apollo himself: he too links Achilles in epic with Hector and Andromache in lyric. The celebrants at the wedding in Song 44 of Sappho sing Apollo as the subject of their song by invoking the gods epithet Paean (Pāōn in the local dialect) when they celebrate Hector and Andromache as bridegroom and bride (line 33). To sing a paean is to sing a song from Lesbos, as we see from the wording of Archilochus (Poem 121). To sing a paean in the Iliad is to sing Apollo as Paean, though Paean is a god in his own right in more archaizing contexts of the Iliad (as at V 401 and V 899-901). Elsewhere in the Iliad, Achilles calls on the Achaeans to sing a paean, that is, to sing Apollo as Paean when they celebrate the death of Hector in war (XXII 391).30
As we have already seen, there are also other linkings of the doomed warrior in epic with the wedded couple in lyric. Achilles is theoeikelos ʻjust like the godsʼ as a warrior in the Iliad (I 131, XXIII 155), and so too Hector and Andromache as bridegroom and bride are theoeikeloi ʻjust like the godsʼ at the moment of their wedding in Song 44 of Sappho (at line 34; also i]keloi theoi[s ʻjust like the godsʼ at line 21). And Achilles is in fact the only recipient of the epithet theoeikelos ʻjust like the godsʼ in the Homeric Iliad. So the warrior who kills Hector attracts the same epithet in epic that Hector attracts in lyric.
It remains to ask about the god with whom Achilles is identified in epic and with whom Hector and Andromache are identified in lyric. For this god, epic and lyric are undifferentiated, just as the kleos aphthiton of Achilles as warrior in epic is undifferentiated from the kleos aphthiton of Hector and Andromache as bridegroom and bride in lyric. This god is Apollo.
28 Nagy Poetry as Performance (1996) 94-96. 29 Nagy “Lyric and Greek Myth” (2007)
34-36. 30 Nagy “Lyric and Greek Myth” (2007) 36-37.
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So here we turn from Ares to Apollo as the other divine antagonist of Achilles - and as his other divine model.
At the moment of his death, the hero Achilles is destined to confront not only the god Ares as the generic divine antagonist of warriors but also the god Apollo as his own personal divine antagonist. This personalized destiny of Achilles is made explicit in the epic Cycle, that is, in the Aithiopis, but it is only implicit in the Iliad, where Patroklos substitutes for Achilles in his antagonism with Apollo just as he substitutes for him in his antagonism with Ares.
What makes this destiny of Achilles so personalized is his special connection with song, a medium signaled as kleos aphthiton ʻunwilting gloryʼ. The god of this medium is Apollo, who is the god of poetry and song. And such poetry and song are conceived as lyric. To put it another way, such poetry and song can be conceived as a form of epic that is not yet differentiated from lyric.31 Apollo is the god of an older form of epic that is still sung to the accompaniment of the lyre.
Correspondingly, Achilles is the hero of such an older form of epic. In this role, he is imagined as looking exactly like Apollo - beardless and wearing long hair. Like Apollo, Achilles is the essence of a beautiful promise in the making, of a telos or ʻfulfillmentʼ realized only in performance, only when the song is fully performed.32 As I will now argue, there is a visual signature of this shared role of god and hero in
the Iliad. I start with the fact that Achilles is pictured in this epic as singing to the tune of a lyre that he himself is playing (IX 186-189). As we have seen, Achilles had plundered this lyre from the Aeolic city of Thebe, ruled by the king Eëtion (IX
186-189), whom he killed when he captured that city - and who was the father of that greatest singer of lamentations in the Iliad, Andromache (VI 414-416). As I have argued, what Achilles sings to the tune of this Aeolic lyre is an echo of the loves and bittersweet sorrows heard in lyric song.33
Such a lyrical image of Achilles evokes a correspondingly lyrical image of Apollo. Even in epic, this god is conventionally pictured as a lyric personality. In fact, Apollo controls the medium of lyric, of choral lyric. A prime example is the conventional description of Apollo as the Mous(h)ēgētēs, that is, as the choral leader of the Muses. 34 Such a description is attested in lyric (an example is Song 208 of Sappho) and even in epic (Iliad I 603-604). Apollo accompanies himself on the lyre as he sings and dances, while the Muses in the chorus also sing and dance (Homeric Hymn to Hermes 475-476). It can even be said that Apollo himself performs kleos aphthiton ʻunwilting gloryʼ. As we saw in Hour 1, Apollo actually sings sad songs about the
31 Nagy Pindarʼs Homer (1990) 12§§44-45. 32 Nagy Homerʼs Text and Language (2004) 138-143. 33 Nagy Homer the Preclassic (2009) II§297.
34 Nagy Pindarʼs Homer (1990) 12§29.
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wilting of heroes: at line 350 in the tragedy Herakles, by Euripides, it is said that the hero Linos is ʻwilted [phthitos] in his beautyʼ, but Apollo sings ʻhimʼ. By implication, the song of Linos thus becomes unwilting, just as the kleos of Achilles in Iliad IX 413 is aphthiton or ʻunwiltingʼ.
The god Apollo controls not only lyric. He controls all song and poetry, and he is ultimately in control of all occasions for the performance of song and poetry. In this overarching role, he embodies the authority of poets, that is, of craftsmen who compose song and poetry. This authority transcends such categories as epic and lyric. And it transcends the genres that figure as subcategories of epic and lyric, as
well as the occasions that shape those genres. This authority is linked to the authorship of song and poetry.
So I would even say that the fatal attraction of Achilles for Apollo in the context of their ritual antagonism centers on the fact that the god controls the medium that gives kleos aphthiton ʻunwilting gloryʼ.
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Key word for this hour: sēma, pl. sēmata ʻsign, signal, symbol; tomb, tomb of a heroʼ; sēmainein (verb) ʻindicate, use a sēmaʼ.
This word sēma is the “video” equivalent of the “audio” word ainos.
In order to understand more clearly the meaning of sēma, we need to consider again the meaning of the word ainos. It is an authoritative utterance for and by a social group. In some contexts (not in the contexts we have considered so far), it can be translated as ʻpraise; fableʼ. A derivative of ainos is ainigma, which means ʻenigma, riddleʼ. We have already seen one of the clearest examples of ainos: it is the klea andrōn ʻglories of heroesʼ In Iliad IX 524, referring to a narrative that is ʻtotally recalledʼ by Phoenix for Achilles and for the other assembled philoi who are listening. The ainos of Phoenix is signaled by what anthropologists call an “index” expression (houtō ʻthusʼ at IX 524). Here is a comparable example of an “index” expression in English: “once upon a time... .”
One who sees or hears a sēma (“video”), just as one who hears an ainos (“audio”), must have the following qualifications:
1) to be sophos ʻskilledʼ or ʻwiseʼ - indicating a mental qualification 2) to be agathos ʻgoodʼ or ʻnobleʼ - indicating a moral qualification 3) to be philos ʻnear-and-dearʼ - indicating an emotional or affective qualification
I review here some concepts that we will need to apply all over again:
The ascending scale of affection in the micro-narrative about Meleager (which is a compressed parallel to the expanded macro-Narrative about Achilles).
This micro-narrative is called klea andrōn hērōōn ʻglories [= kleos plural] of men, heroes [hērōes]ʼ (IX 524-5), which is told in the midst of philoi (IX 528). That is, the narrative is being told to listeners who are presumed to be philoi.
The meaning of philos: as an adjective it means ʻnear and dearʼ; as a noun it means ʻfriendʼ. - The ascending scale of affection for Meleager in Iliad IX, as measured by the term philos:
elders / priests / father / sisters / mother / companions [hetairoi] / wife - The name of Meleagerʼs wife, Kleopatra, which parallels in meaning the name of Patroklos
(/ Patroklēs / Patrokleēs).
The narrative of the klea andrōn of IX 524-525 is a narrative that can be compressed into one word, one name, and that one word is the name of Patroklos (/ Patroklēs / Patrokleēs). The name of Patroklos is the story of Patroklos. That is the story that is being told in the ʻglories of
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heroesʼ, the klea andrōn. To put it another way, the deep meaning of the story is the name of Patroklos. The story means Patroklos.
Even the fact that the names Kleopatra / Patroklos are interchangeable is itself an ainos.
In ancient Greek song culture, the act of “reading,” which may be simply the act of listening to song, can be considered an “initiation” or “ordeal,” which is a testing of the three requirements that we have been considering: that the “reader” must be sophos, agathos, and philos.
Patroklos is not just the dearest hetairos ʻcompanionʼ of Achilles: he is his “alter ego.” The relationship between these hetairoi is represented by the Iliad as even more intimate than sexual: it operates on the mentality of being willing to die for someone else. It is as if one person were to declare to another person: “I will die for you” - and really mean it.
The “message” of the “code” of the narrative of Patroklos is this: Patroklos is for Achilles the most philos of them all (as in XVIII 80-82).
The kind of love implied by the word philos in situating Patroklos at the very top of Achillesʼ ascending scale of affection is not necessarily sexual. The Iliad does not explore the relationship of Achilles and Patroklos on a sexual level, any more than it explores the relationship of Meleager and Kleopatra on a sexual level.
Having considered a case where Patroklos is the ultimate meaning of an ainos, let us now consider a case where Patroklos is the ultimate meaning of a sēma.
I note here a relevant saying, attributed to the poet Simonides (6th/5th c. BCE): whereas a picture is silent poetry, poetry is talking pictures. In the history of filmmaking, when audio was first successfully combined with the video of the film, the word for the audio/video combination was in fact “talking pictures.” So Simonides anticipated the concept, even though the technology for the concept was invented only two and a half millennia later.
Hour 7 Passage A. Iliad XXIII 303-348
“Antilokhos,” said Nestor, “you are young, but Zeus and Poseidon have loved you well, and have made you an excellent charioteer. I need not therefore say much by way of instruction. You are skillful at wheeling your horses round the post, [310] but the horses themselves are very slow, and it is this that will, I fear, mar your chances. The other drivers know less than you do, but their horses are fleeter; therefore, my dear son, see if you cannot hit upon some artifice [mētis] whereby you may insure that the prize shall not slip through your fingers. [315] The woodsman does more by skill [mētis] than by brute force [biē]; by skill [mētis] the helmsman guides his storm-tossed ship over the sea [pontos], and so by skill [mētis] one driver can beat another. [320] If a man go wide in rounding this way and
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that, whereas a man of craft [kerdos] may have worse horses, but he will keep them well in hand when he sees the turning-post [terma]; he knows the precise moment [325] at which to pull the rein, and keeps his eye well on the man in front of him. I will give you this certain sign [sēma] which cannot escape your notice. There is a stump of a dead tree-oak or pine as it may be - some six feet above the ground, and not yet rotted away by rain; [330] it stands at the fork of the road; it has two white stones set one on each side, and there is a clear course all round it. It may have been a tomb [sēma] of someone who died long ago, or it may have been used as a turning-post in days gone by; now, however, it has been fixed on by swift-footed radiant Achilles as the mark [terma] round which the chariots shall turn; hug it as close as you can, [335] but as you stand in your chariot lean over a little to the left; urge on your right-hand
horse with voice and lash, and give him a loose rein, but let the left-hand horse keep so close in, [340] that the nave of your wheel shall almost graze the post; but mind the stone, or you will wound your horses and break your chariot in pieces, which would be sport for others but confusion for yourself. Therefore, my dear son, mind well what you are about, for if you can be first to round the post [345] there is no chance of any one giving you the go-by later, not even though you had Arion the horse of Adrastos, a horse which is of divine race, or the horses of Laomedon, which are the noblest in this land.”
When Nestor says to his son here, ʻI will give you this certain sign [sēma] which cannot escape your noticeʼ, the idea of ʻescape oneʼs noticeʼ is expressed by way of the verb-root lēth-, which means ʻmentally disconnectʼ. This root is found in the mythological name Lethe, which is the river of forgetfulness. More precisely, Lethe is the name of a river in the underworld that separates the living from the dead, those awake from those asleep, those conscious from those unconscious.
The idea that you must not be mentally disconnected from the sēma ʻsignʼ, as we see here in Iliad XXIII 326, shows that the word sēma has to do with a state of mind, a mentality. Just a few lines later, however, at Iliad XXIII 331, the same word refers to a ʻtombʼ or ʻgrave- markʼ. And this ʻtombʼ or ʻgrave-markʼ, as we see in this context, is used as a terma or ʻturning pointʼ for a chariot race. The word terma ʻturning pointʼ, which we see in Iliad XXIII 331, can be used metaphorically to refer to turning points in oneʼs own life. Such a metaphorical use is preserved in the English borrowing of the word, term.
The symbolism of the left turn in a chariot race works like this... You need to be more impulsive on your right side and more restrained on your left side by whipping the horses with your right hand and reining in the horses with your left hand. This way, you are not only making the most successful left turn possible. You are also achieving a balance or equilibrium of impulsiveness and restraint at this particular moment in your life. In terms of this balance, the impulsiveness is dominant and the restraint is recessive.
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I note that Antilochos does not interpret literally the sēma or ʻsignʼ given to him by his father. Instead, he inteprets the sign metaphorically. In driving his chariot past the chariot of Menelaos, nearly “fishtailing” his competitor, Antolokhos is more impulsive than he is restrained. His action is a blend of impulsiveness and restraint that favors the impulsive side, which is the right, more than the restraining side, which is the left. And what about ʻthe grave-mark of someone who died long agoʼ? If there were a name to be given to ʻsomeone who died long agoʼ, what would that name be? The answer is surely: ʻan ancestorʼ. So the grave-mark is a fitting mark or sign for the man who carries the glory of the ancestors, Patroklos. But it will also be a fitting mark or sign for Antilokhos himself, who will give up his life by being killed in battle in place of his father Nestor at a later epic moment, beyond the Iliad (see the plot summary of the epic called the Aithiopis, or ʻSong of the Aethiopiansʼ, which is in the Sourcebook). Once again we see the mentality of expressing a desire to die for someone else: “I will die for you.”
We should note the mysterious take-it-or-leave-it attitude of Homeric narrative here: in terms of the words said by Nestor the father to Antilokhos the son, the sēma at Iliad
XXIII 331 is either grave-mark or a turning point for a chariot race.
In the historical period, starting with the adoption of chariot-racing in the athletic “program” of the Olympics (this adoption as been dated at around 680 BCE), the turning-point of chariot-races could be conceptualized as the tomb of a hero, whose restless spirit was capable of “spooking” the horses at the most dangerous moment of the chariot-race, the left- turn around the sēma. Race-car drivers who race in the “Indianapolis 500” have a saying about how to succeed in that race: “keep to the left and drive like hell” (Indianapolis 500). In general, we may compare the metaphor of “sudden death” in modern athletic events.
The idea of using the tomb of a hero as the turning point in a chariot race stems from the fact that the activity of athletics, like the activity of warfare, was considered to be a ritual. Moreover, the ritual activities of athletics and warfare were conceived as parallel to the mythical deeds of heroes. The same wording was used to refer to the ordeals of athletes and warriors in the rituals of athletics and war as was used to refer to the ordeals of heroes in myth. In the ritual ordeals of athletics and warfare, real people re-enacted the mythical ordeals of heroes. From the very start, when I looked at the Labors of Herakles in Hour 1, I had highlighted the fusion of heroic and athletic actions..
We see, then, a fusion of heroic myth and athletic ritual in the story about the chariot race in Iliad XXIII and about all the other athletic events that are narrated there. The athletic events in which the heroes participate here are a matter of ritual, but they are also a matter of myth, because it is the heroes of the heroic age who participate in the athletic events of Iliad XXIII, not real people in the post-heroic age who re-enact the mythical ordeals of heroes.
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What makes the athletic events of Iliad XXIII different from the “real” athletic events of the historical period is that the events of Iliad XXIII appear to happen only once, whereas “real” athletic events happen on a seasonally recurring basis. We will see this concept of seasonally recurring re-enactments when we look at the relevant passages in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter.
But appearances are deceiving. Even the athletic events narrated in the Iliad are not really “one-shot” events, since they are narrated again and again on a seasonally recurring basis at such festivals as the Panathenaia in Athens. I will have more to say in Hour 8 about this particular festival. For now, however, I need to say only this much: the athletic events of Iliad XXIII are actually performed again and again in the recycled performances of Homeric poetry at the festival of the Panathenaia.
One of the Greek words for the ritual ordeal of the athlete in the post-heroic age who re-enacts the mythical ordeal of the hero in the heroic age is aethlos or athlos. Someone who participates in such an ordeal is an athlētēs. As we saw already in Hour 1, this word is borrowed into English as athlete.
The rituals of athletic ordeals, as we will see later, were understood to be a compensation for the myths of heroic ordeals. I recall here the observation of Simone Weil, as we studied it in Hour 6, about the way humans feel about suffering. She observed that suffering needs compensation: I want you to suffer exactly the way I suffered.
The hero, whose sufferings were imagined to be larger-than-life, would have such a
need for compensation. But how can you suffer exactly the way a hero suffered?
To endure such suffering, as an athlete, is to re-enact a prototypical ordeal of a hero. The Greek word for such ʻre-enactmentʼ, as we will see later, is mimēsis. In Hour 8, I will offer a working definition of this word.
When it comes to re-enacting the primal ordeals of heroes, there is a seemingly limitless variety of individual experiences to be matched with the individual experiences of heroes. Every individual has his or her own way of going through an ordeal, as we see in the staggering varieties of violent death in the Iliad.
A sign of this ordeal is the word psukhē, the plural of which is psukhai. It refers to the ghost of Patroklos, appearing in an epiphany to Achilles:
Hour 7 Passage B. Iliad XXIII 57-92
As soon as they had had enough to eat and drink, the others went to their rest each in his own tent, [60] but the son of Peleus lay grieving among his Myrmidons by the shore of the sounding sea, in an open place where the waves came surging in one after another. Here a
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very deep slumber took hold upon him and eased the burden of his sorrows, for his limbs were weary with chasing Hector round windy Ilion. [65] Presently the sad spirit [psukhē] of unhappy Patroklos drew near him, like what he had been in stature, voice, and the light of his beaming eyes, clad, too, as he had been clad in life. The spirit hovered over his head and said-”You sleep, Achilles, and have forgotten me; [70] you loved me living, but now that I am dead you think for me no further. Bury me with all speed that I may pass the gates of Hadēs; the spirits [psukhai], vain shadows of men that can labor no more, drive me away from them; they will not yet permit me to join those that are beyond the river, [75] and I wander all desolate by the wide gates of the house of Hadēs. Give me now your hand I pray you, for when you have once given me my dues of fire, never shall I again come forth out of the house of Hadēs. Nevermore shall we sit apart and take sweet counsel among the living; the cruel fate which was my birth-right has yawned its wide jaws around me – [80] I tell you, Achilles, you too, peer of gods, are doomed to die beneath the wall of the noble Trojans. One plea more will I make to you, if you will grant it; let not my bones be laid apart from yours, Achilles, but with them; even as we were brought up together in your own home, [85] what time Menoitios brought me to you as a child from Opoeis because by a sad spite I had killed the son of Amphidamas - not of set purpose, but in childish quarrel over the dice. The charioteer Peleus took me into his house, [90] entreated me kindly, and named me to be your attendant [therapōn]; therefore let our bones lie in but a single urn, the two-handled golden vase given to you by your mother.”
We see this word psukhē also in the painting on the Münster Hydria. I give a preview here in Hour 7, and will return to the picture of this painting in Hour 8. For now I emphasize simply the fact that, in this picture, psukhē is a sign of the heroʼs ordeal just as psukhē is a sign of the heroʼs ordeal in the passage I just quoted from Iliad XXIII.
The use of the word sēma as the sign of Patroklos in particular and as a sign of the ʻfathersʼ or ʻancestorsʼ in general is relevant to the scene where Priam appeals to Achilles to take pity and allow a funeral for the dead Hector:
Hour 7 Passage C. Iliad XXIV 486-512
“Think of your father, O Achilles like unto the gods, who is such even as I am, on the sad threshold of old age. It may be that those who dwell near him harass him, and there is none to keep war and ruin from him. [490] Yet when he hears of you being still alive, he is glad, and his days are full of hope that he shall see his dear son come home to him from Troy; but I, wretched man that I am, had the bravest in all Troy for my sons, and there is not one of them left. [495] I had fifty sons when the Achaeans came here; nineteen of them were from a single womb, and the others were borne to me by the women of my household. The greater part of them has fierce Ares laid low, and Hector, [500] him who was alone left, him who was the guardian of the city and ourselves, him have you lately slain; therefore I am now come to the ships of the Achaeans to ransom his body from you with a great ransom.
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Have respect, O Achilles, for the gods; think on your own father and have compassion upon me, who am the more pitiable, [505] for I have steeled myself as no man yet has ever steeled himself before me, and have raised to my lips the hand of him who slew my son.” Thus spoke Priam, and the heart of Achilles yearned as he turned his thoughts to his father. He took the old manʼs hand and moved him gently away. The two wept bitterly [510] - Priam, as he lay at Achillesʼ feet, weeping for
manslaughtering Hector, and Achilles now for his father and now for Patroklos, till the house was filled with their lamentation.
We see here Achilles weeping alternately for his father Peleus and for Patroklos, whose name refers to the glory of the ʻfathersʼ or ʻancestorsʼ. The prompt that activates the heroʼs emotion of sorrow here is the very act of thinking about fathers or ancestors. Achilles thinks of his own father when he sees the sorrow of another father, Priam, over the death of his son Hector.
Here I return to the subject of ritual ordeals that re-enact the mythical ordeals of heroes. There is a clear example in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, where we see a myth about the establishment of an athletic ritual in compensation for the ordeal of a hero who experienced death when he was still a baby. The marker for the status of this baby as a hero is the use of the use of the expression ʻequal to a daimōnʼ at the moment when the baby is ready to become a hero. That moment happens when the goddess Demeter nurtures the baby Demophon by galvanizing him in fire in order to make him exempt from death:
Hour 7 Passage D. Hymn to Demeter 235-236, 237-241
She [= Demeter] nurtured him in the palace, and he [= Demophon] grew up like a daimōn, not eating food, not sucking from the breast ... She used to anoint him with ambrosia, as if he had been born of the goddess, and she would breathe down her sweet breath on him as she held him at her bosom. At nights she would conceal him in the menos of fire, as if he were a smoldering log, and her parents were kept unaware. But they marveled at how full in bloom he came to be, and to look at him was like looking at the god.
The mortal mother of the baby Demophon inadvertently ruins the plan of the goddess Demeter to make Demophon exempt from death, and the goddess angrily announces that the baby will not be subject to death, like all other mortals. But there will be a compensation for the ordeal of this death, says the goddess to the mortal mother of
the baby Demophon:
Hour 7 Passage E. Homeric Hymn to Demeter 259-267
I [= Demeter] swear by the Styx, the witness of oaths that gods make, as I say this: immortal and ageless for all days would I have made your philos little boy, and I would have given him timē that is unwilting [a-phthi-tos]. But now there is no way for him to avoid death and doom. Still, he will have an honor [timē] that is unwilting [a- phthi-tos], for all time, because he had once sat on my knees and slept in my arms. At the right hōra, every year, the sons of
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the Eleusinians will have a war, a terrible battle among each other. They will do so for all days to come.
The death of the ʻbaby heroʼ will be compensated by seasonally recurring athletic re- enactment, as expressed by the word timē ʻhonorʼ, which refers here to the honor conferred upon cult heroes in the rituals of hero-cult. In this case, the rituals take the form of athletic competitions that simulate warfare.
We see in this passage a reference to a ritual mock-battle at Eleusis, a quasi-athletic event known as the Ballētus, which was officially held on a seasonally-recurring basis to compensate for the death of the baby cult-hero Demophon. This mock-battle seems to have been the ritual kernel of a whole complex of events known as the Eleusinian Games. Other historical parallels include the Nemean and the Isthmian Games, which were pan-Hellenic athletic events held on a seasonally-recurring basis to compensate for the deaths of two other baby cult-heroes, Arkhemoros and Melikertes respectively.
The timē aphthitos ʻunwilting honorʼ of a seasonally-recurring athletic event that the hero Demophon receives as a compensation for his death in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter can be compared with the kleos aphthiton ʻunwilting gloryʼ that the hero Achilles receives as a compensation for his own death in the Iliad:
Hour 7 Passage F = Hour 1 Passage A. Iliad IX 410-416
My mother Thetis tells me that there are two ways in which I may meet my end [telos]. If I stay here and fight, I shall not have a return [nostos] alive but my glory [kleos] will be unwilting [aphthiton]: whereas if I go home my name [kleos] will perish, but it will be long before the end [telos] shall take me.
The kleos of the Iliad, as we will see in the next hour, is in its own right a seasonally- recurring ritual event, since both the Iliad and the Odyssey were performed at the seasonally- recurring festival of the Panathenaia in Athens. As we will also see, there was also a seasonally- recurring athletic event at that same festival, and this athletic event was closely linked to the poetic event of the Iliad.
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This key word is actually the only piece of text that we will read in this hour. As we saw from the previous hour, psukhē is written out as ph-s-kh-e on an art object that I have been calling the Münster Hydria.
Now we will see that the meaning of the word “hydria” is relevant to the meaning of
the word psukhē. Note the spelling: hydria, not “hydra.” The second of these two words, “hydra,” comes from a Greek word for a venomous dragon. This second word would be the wrong word to use here. The right word is first of these two words, hydria. This word hydria comes from the Greek word hudria, which designates a vessel used for libations (= ritual pourings) of water on occasions that include the worship of ancestors and the worship of heroes. Libations poured from hydrias, as we will see, are relevant to the meaning of psukhē. I will concentrate on two hydrias.
One of these two hydrias was previewed the last time. It was the Münster Hydria (dated around 520 BCE). On it is a Black Figure painting that shows a picture of Patroklos hovering over the sēma or ʻtombʼ that was destined to be shared by the bodies of Patroklos and Achilles. And the picture is identified by the lettering that spells out psukhē. We will now concentrate on the meaning of psukhē in the context of the picture of Patroklos. Such a picture would be called in Greek a sēma, just as the tomb of a hero is called in Greek a sēma. And the same word sēma can refer not only to the tomb of a hero or to a picture of the hero but also to any sign of the hero, such as the lettering that identifies the picture in the Black Figure painting on the Münster Hydria. That is what I mean when I say “a psychology of signs.” The word psukhē is a marker of such psychology. And, as I said at the start, this word psukhē will be the only word that figures in this presentation of signs about the psukhē of the hero.
The other one of the two hydrias on which I will concentrate in this hour is housed in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. It is the Boston Hydria (also dated around 520 BCE). This hydria as well features a Black Figure painting.
I now offer an analysis of both Black Figure paintings:1 II§91 I argue that both these paintings, as we see them on the Boston Hydria and the
Münster Hydria, depict an athletic event known as the apobatōn agōn, which means
ʻcontest of
Nagy Homer the Preclassic (2009) II§§91-111 (abridged here). These paragraphs are based on Nagy 2009b.
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the apobataiʼ or ʻapobatic contestʼ.2 This event was part of the athletic program of the festival of the Panathenaia in Athens, and it featured a spectacular sudden-death moment of athletic bravura. We can imagine all eyes focused on the action that leads up to that moment when the competing athlete, riding on the platform of a four-horse chariot driven at full gallop by his charioteer, suddenly leaps to the ground from the speeding chariot. The term for such an athlete is apobatēs, meaning literally ʻone who steps offʼ.3 At the death-defying moment when he literally steps off the platform of the speeding chariot, the apobatēs is fully armed as a warrior. The various attested representations in vase paintings show the apobatēs armed with helmet, breastplate, shin guards, spear, sword, and shield.4 Weighted down by all this armor, the apobatēs must hit the ground running as he lands on his feet in his high-speed leap from the platform of his chariot. If his run is not broken in a fall, he continues to run down the length of the racecourse in competition with the other running apobatai, who have made their own leaps from their own chariots.5 In one of the two paintings that I will be considering, as well as in other paintings, the athletic event of this apobatic contest is correlated with an epic event that takes place in the Homeric Iliad.
The hero Achilles, infuriated over Hectorʼs killing of his dearest friend Patroklos, tries to avenge this death by dragging behind his speeding chariot the corpse of Hector (XXII 395-405, XXIV 14-22).6 In the painting on the Boston Hydria, we see Achilles at the precise moment when he cuts himself off from the act of dragging the corpse of Hector. This moment is synchronized with the precise moment when he leaps off, in the mode of an apobatēs, from the platform of the chariot that is dragging the corpse. The leap of Achilles here is the leap of the apobatēs. This moment, captured in the painting we see on the Boston Hydria, is what I will call the apobatic moment. I argue that this moment can be understood only in the context of the poetic as well as athletic program of the Panathenaia.
Photius Lexicon α 2450, see also α 2449 and Suda α 3250. 3 Dionysius of Halicarnassus Roman Antiquities 7.73.2-3; Harpocration s.v. In Eratosthenes Katasterismoi chapter 1, section 13, lines 19-22, we read that the figure of an apobatēs is a re- enactment of the prototypical chariot fighter (carrying a shield and wearing a three-plumed helmet) who rode next to Erikhthonios as chariot driver when Erikhthonios founded the festival of the Panathenaia in Athens. This prototypical apobatēs was traditionally imagined as the goddess Athena herself: for iconographic evidence, see Schultz 2007, especially p. 60; also Shear 2001:47-53. On the north side of the Parthenon Frieze (North XII), there is a depiction of an apobatēs who is being crowned with a garland: see Schultz p. 65. 4 Stähler 1967 gives a survey; also Schultz 2007. There is a vivid reference to the athletic event of the apobatai in a speech attributed to Demosthenes (61.24). 5 Dionysius of Halicarnassus Roman Antiquities 7.73.3. According to other sources, the apobatēs can leap on as well as off the platform of a racing chariot: see Etymologicum magnum p. 124 lines 31-34 ed. Kallierges and Photius Lexicon α 2450. Paintings of mythological scenes showing a warrior mounting his chariot may correspond to athletic scenes where the apobatēs mounts his chariot: see Vermeule 1965:44 on the Amphiaraos Krater. 6 Vermeule 1965 and Stähler 1967 survey a wide variety of relevant pictures besides the two that concern me primarily here, the pictures painted on the Boston Hydria and the Münster Hydria.
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Some think, however, that the moment I am describing here shows Achilles in the act of stepping on rather than off his chariot, but such an interpretation makes it difficult to account for the fact that the hero is shown turning his head away from the chariot. My interpretation, as we will see, helps explain why his head is turned away.
II§92 The first time that the Iliad pictures Achilles dragging the corpse of Hector, the event is witnessed by the dead heroʼs mother, father, and wife: Hecuba, Priam, and Andromache together lament the terror and the pity of it all (XXII 405-407, 408-429, 430-436, 437-515). As in the Iliad, the lamenting figures of Hecuba and Priam are pictured on one of the two Black Figure vases that presently concern me, the Boston Hydria (Figure 1). This vase, like the Iliad, pictures Achilles dragging the corpse of Hector - while the lamenting figures of Hecuba and Priam view this scene of terror and pity from a portico.
II§93 The next time the Iliad pictures Achilles dragging the corpse of Hector behind his chariot, we see this chariot being driven three times around the sēma ʻtombʼ of Patroklos (XXIV 14-18). At an earlier point in the narrative of the Iliad, this tomb is
described as incomplete: it will not be complete until Achilles himself is buried there together with his friend Patroklos (XXIII 83-84, 91-92, 245-248).
II§94 As in the Iliad, this tomb of Patroklos is pictured on the Boston Hydria. The chariot of Achilles is shown furiously circling around the tomb, with the corpse of Hector in tow. In terms of my interpretation, we see the hero at the very moment when he leaps off the speeding chariot, with his fierce gaze fixed on the portico where Priam and Hecuba lament the cruel fate of their son.
II§95 Every time we look through the painted window that frames this painted scene, we return to this same precise moment. As Emily Vermeule says: “The technique gives the impression that the myth is circling around in another world, outside the window frame through which the spectator views it, in endless motion which is somehow always arrested at the same place whenever we return to the window.”7 This moment, I argue, is the critical moment of the apobatēs, the apobatic moment. II§96 In the Iliad, a council of the gods is convened, and they express their collective moral disapproval of Achilles for his attempt to mutilate the corpse of Hector by dragging it behind his chariot (XXIV 22-76). Just before, we see that the god Apollo miraculously prevents the actual mutilation of the corpse (18-21). But now the council of the gods, headed by Zeus, decides to go one step further: the dragging of the corpse by Achilles must stop altogether. The divine course of action in stopping Achilles is explicitly said to be indirect: Iris as messenger of the gods is sent off to summon Thetis (74-75), who will be asked by Zeus to persuade her son to return the corpse of Hector to Priam (75-76); then Iris is sent off to Priam, who will receive
Vermeule 1965:45.
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from the goddess a divine plan designed to make it possible for him to persuade Achilles to return the corpse of his son (143-158).
II§97 By contrast with the narration of the Iliad, the divine course of action narrated by the painting on the Boston Hydria is explicitly direct: the goddess sent from on high will personally stop the dragging of the corpse of Hector by Achilles. The painting shows the goddess in flight, just as she reaches the moment of her landing on earth: her feet, gracefully poised as if in a dance, are about to touch ground at the center of the picture, and her delicate hands make a gesture of lament evoking pity as she looks toward the lamenting Priam and Hecuba, whose own hands make a parallel gesture of lament evoking pity as they look toward Achilles. The fierce gaze of the furious hero is at this precise point redirected at Priam and Hecuba, who take their cue, as it were, from the gesture of lament shown by the goddess. The gaze of Achilles is thus directed away from the figure of Patroklos, who is shown hovering over a tomb that for now belongs only to him but will soon belong to Achilles as well. The charioteer of Achilles, oblivious to the intervention of the goddess, continues to drive the speeding chariot around the tomb. But, meanwhile, we find Achilles in the act of stepping off the platform. That is what I am arguing: he must be stepping off not on, and that is why he is turned away from his chariot. And Achilles steps off at the precise moment when he redirects his fierce gaze from his own past and future agony to the present agony of Hectorʼs lamenting father and mother. Here, I argue, is the heroʼs apobatic moment.
II§98 The pity of Achilles for the parents of Hector in the painting of the Boston Hydria
is achieved by way of a direct divine intervention that takes place while the dragging of the corpse is in progress. Once Achilles steps off his furiously speeding chariot, the fury that fueled that speed must be left behind as he hits the ground running and keeps on running until that fury is spent.
II§99 To be contrasted is the pity of Achilles for the father of Hector in the Iliad as we have it. This pity cannot be achieved by way of any direct divine intervention while the dragging of the corpse is in progress. In this case, the divine intervention is indirect: it is only after the gods guide Priam behind enemy lines to the tent of Achilles that the lamenting father succeeds in evoking the pity that the Iliadic hero will ultimately get to feel in Iliad XXIV.
II§100 The convergences between the painted and the poetic versions of the narrative far outweigh the divergences, and I infer that the internal logic of the Iliadic narrative that we see at work in the visual medium of the Boston Hydria is morphologically parallel to the internal logic of the Iliadic narrative that we see at work in the verbal medium of the Homeric Iliad.
II§101 It cannot be said, however, that the narrative of the painting must be derived from the Iliad as we know it. Such a further inference is unjustified. It cannot even be said that
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the narrative of the painting was derived from an Iliad that was different from the one we know. It would be simplistic to think that a narrative inherent in a painting that dates from the last two decades of the sixth century BCE was derived from any text. The visual medium of heroic narrative by way of painting did not have to depend on the verbal medium of heroic narrative by way of poetry.8
II§102 On the other hand, it can be said that both the visual and the verbal media of heroic narrative were dependent on the basic principle of making contact with the traditional world of heroes - who were honored by way of ritual as well as myth. As I have argued extensively elsewhere, the rules of heroic narrative in the archaic period of Greek civilization were governed by the myths and rituals linked with the cult of heroes.9 What applies to the medium of poetry applies equally to the medium of painting.
II§103 In the case of the Black Figure images we see on the Boston Hydria (Figure 1), the medium of the painting is evidently referring to a specific context, that is, to the festival of the Panathenaia in Athens sometime within the last two decades of the sixth century BCE, featuring the athletic event of the apobatic contest. The same can be said about the Black Figure painting we see on the Münster Hydria (Figure 2). In this second painting, Achilles is represented as engaging in a personalized apobatic race with himself. In the narrative of the Münster Hydria, Achilles is seen running alongside the speeding chariot. In terms of my interpretation, he has already leapt off its platform. Meanwhile, the psukhē of Patroklos - which can double for the psukhē of Achilles - is shown hovering over the heroʼs tomb or sēma, which occupies the dead center of the picture. This psukhē of Patroklos, labeled as ΦΣΥΧΕ in the painting, is running in the air - a miniature version of the running Achilles who is racing at ground zero in a re-enactment of the race being run by the other self who is running in the air. II§104 In the Münster Hydria, as in the Boston Hydria, a goddess directly intervenes. The figure of this goddess, just barely visible on the fragmentary right side of the
picture, is standing in the way of the onrushing chariot. Meanwhile, a council of the gods is in session on high - in a picture framed on the shoulder of the vase, situated above the main picture framed along the body of the vase.
II§105 It has been argued that the main picture on the Münster Hydria represents the notional beginnings of a hero cult shared by Achilles with his other self, Patroklos.10 The two of them preside as cult heroes of the athletic event of the apobatai at the festival of the Panathenaia. The death of Patroklos, which is the prototype for the death of Achilles himself, is figured as the aetiology of this athletic event, which shows the ritual dimension of the cult hero as a complement to the mythical dimension that we see played out in narratives
Lowenstam 1997. 9 Nagy The Best of the Achaeans (1999) Preface §3 (= p. vii); Introduction §§13-15 (= pp. 6-8). 10 Stähler 1967, especially p. 32.
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conveyed by painting as well as by poetry. The painting on the Münster Hydria shows Achilles as a prototypical participant in this hero cult by way of participating in this athletic event. Through his prototypical participation, Achilles shows the way for future athletes to participate in this athletic event of the apobatai at the seasonally recurring festival of the Panathenaia for all time to come.
II§106 A parallel argument can be made about the Funeral Games for Patroklos in Iliad XXIII.11 Here too Achilles is shown as a prototypical participant in the hero cult of his other self, Patroklos. Here too he shows the way for future athletes to participate in his own hero cult by way of participating in the athletic events we see described in Iliad XXIII, especially in the chariot race. In this case, however, Achilles does not himself participate in the athletic events of the Funeral Games for Patroklos: rather, it is the other surviving Achaean heroes of the Iliad who serve as prototypical participants in the athletic events, while Achilles himself simply presides over these events as if he were already dead, having already achieved the status of the cult hero who will be buried in the tumulus to be shared with his other self, Patroklos.12
II§107 So we have seen that the Black Figure paintings on the Boston Hydria and on the Münster Hydria are both referring to a specific context: that is, to the festival of the Panathenaia in Athens sometime within the last two decades of the sixth century BCE, featuring the athletic event of the apobatic contest. But we must not forget that this festival also featured an all-important poetic event: competitive rhapsodic recitations of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey. Just as the Black Figure paintings focus on a single moment in the athletic program of the Panathenaia, so also they are focusing on a single moment in the poetic program of the same festival. That moment is what I have been calling the apobatic moment. At the quadrennial Panathenaic festival held in the year 510 BCE (and the same could be said about the earlier festivals of 514 BCE and before, or about the later festivals of 506 BCE and thereafter), the version of the Iliad performed in that era could have featured the same apobatic moment featured in the Black Figure paintings that art historians date back to the same era. It is the moment when the apobatēs steps off his chariot and runs the rest of the course on foot. The killer instinct of the fired-up athlete may now run itself out in the full course of the time it takes for him to run to the finish line.
II§108 This is also the apobatic moment when Achilles steps off his chariot and keeps on running until his fury finally runs out. Then he may finally engage with the feeling
of pity - and re-engage with his own humanity.
11 Nagy Greek Mythology and Poetics (1990) 88, 94, 217, 220. 12 Nagy Pindarʼs
Homer (1990) 7§§10-19 (= pp. 207-214).
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II§109 Such a version of the Iliad, I argue, was current in the era when the Boston Hydria and the Münster Hydria were painted. It was in this era when the poetic program of the Panathenaia was being reformed by the tyrant Hipparkhos son of Peisistratos. This Athenian tyrant played a role in shaping the ultimate form of the Panathenaic Homer, that is, of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey as we know them.13 II§110 Hipparkhos left his mark in defining the festival of the Panathenaia in Athens not only by way of instituting the Panathenaic Regulation. He actually died at the Panathenaia: he was assassinated on the festive quadrennial occasion of the Great Panathenaia held in the year 514 BCE, and his death is memorialized by both Thucydides (1.20.2 and 6.54-59) and Herodotus (5.55-61).
II§111 In short, the apobatic moment for Achilles as athlete goes back to this era, the late sixth century BCE, in the evolution of Homeric poetry as performed at the Panathenaia.
So we have seen that the Black Figure paintings on both the Münster Hydria and the Boston Hydria depict an athletic event that was part of the ritual program of the greatest festival of the Athenians, the Panathenaia.
Both depictions mix the ritual of an athleteʼs ordeal with the myth of a heroʼs ordeal. Here, to repeat, are my working definitions of “ritual” and “myth”:
Ritual is doing things and saying things in a way that is considered sacred. Myth is saying things in a way that is also considered sacred. So ritual frames myth.
And now I add this to the working definition:
Epic is a kind of myth. Like all myths, epic is framed by ritual - the ritual of performance. And perfromance is re-enactment. You can re-enact not just by acting out a ritual but even by telling or retelling a myth that is framed by ritual.
A Greek word for the re-enactment of myth in ritual is mimēsis. And the ritual process of mimēsis as the re-enacting of an ordeal leads to a ritual process of purification or katharsis of emotions. Here I turn to a celebrated formulation of Aristotle, who links mimēsis and katharsis in his definition of tragedy. Here is how he says it:
Tragedy is the mimēsis of a serious and complete action that has magnitude, with seasoned speech, ... by performers instead of through narrative, bringing about through pity and fear the purification [katharsis] of such emotions [pathos].
13 Nagy Homer the Preclassic (2009) ch. 1. Aristotle Poetics 1449b24-28
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I sum up, then, what we have learned so far about mimēsis: it is the process of re- enactment in sacred space. What you re-enact is myth, and how you re-enact it is ritual, which brings about a purification of emotions, especially the emotions of pity and fear.
This formulation is relevant to the following two points I made already in Hour 1:
Aristotle thought that the Iliad was a prototype of tragedy. - In tragedy, the emotion of pity is a force of attraction while the emotion of fear is a force
of repulsion.
And the same formulation is also relevant to the following two points that I will be making in the hours to come:
The heroʼs moments of brutality were as shocking to the ancients as they are to us. - The witnessing of brutality activates the emotions of fear and pity.
Here I return to the pictures we see painted on the Münster Hydria and on the Boston Hydria. I start with the first of the two.
We see painted on the Münster Hydria the picture of Achilles as an athlete / warrior engaging in a chariot contest, and we see Achilles honoring Patroklos by way of participating in that chariot contest. Achilles himself is participating in a ritual by way of running alongside the speeding chariot that rushes round and round the sēma of Patroklos.
The picture shows ritual and myth together, just as poetry shows ritual and myth together in the chariot race described at Iliad XXIII.
I return to the formulation of Emily Vermeule about a “window effect” created by the picture frame of the Boston Hydria, since her comment can apply to the picture frame of the Münster Hydria as well: “The technique gives the impression that the myth is circling around in another world, outside the window frame through which the spectator views it, in endless motion which is somehow always arrested at the same place whenever we return to the window.”
I append here a question about this window: as you are looking through the window, are you looking in from the outside or are you looking out from the inside?
With that question in place, I return to the picture painted on the Münster Hydria. We see here the figure of Achilles running around a turning point (terma), a point of concentration. We may compare what Nestor tells Antilokhos in Iliad XXIII: concentrate on the sēma. The medium of the tomb (sēma) of the hero (or ancestor) is the message of the hero (or ancestor.
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Next I turn to the picture painted on the Boston Hydria. We see painted on this hydria the picture of Achilles as an athlete / warrior engaging in the same chariot contest, but the gesture of honoring Patroklos by way of participating in that chariot contest is displaced by the brutal gesture of dishonoring Hector by way of dragging that heroʼs corpse behind the chariot. And, unlike the Münster Hydria, which shows Achilles already running alongside the speeding chariot that rushes round and round the sēma of Patroklos, the Boston Hydria shows Achilles stepping off the speeding chariot. That is how I interpret this picture.
In the logic of the picture we see painted on the Boston Hydria, the participation of Achilles in the ritual of the chariot race is a re-enactment of the myth about Achilles and his relationship with Hector and Hectorʼs parents. In this myth, as we have seen, Achilles displays both excessive force and restraint, just as a chariot driver. Achilles finally emerges from the depths of brutality and ascends to new heights of humanity by way of identifying with his deadliest enemy. A fatherʼs tears are what finally moves him. He thinks of his own father and, that way, he can think more clearly about the meaning of Patroklos.
Here are further details to observe as we compare the picture of the Münster Hydria (=M) with that of the Boston Hydria (=B):
a. The axis of vision centers on the sēma in M, while the sēma is off-center in B. b.
The chariot is also off-center in B. Study question: what is centered in B, and why?
The homunculus (= smaller-than-life-size body-double) has no wings in M; it does have wings in B.
The homunculus is labeled as psukhē in M and as Patroklos in B. Question: whose psukhē is the homunculus in M? Of Achilles? Of Patroklos? Of both?
Note the picture on the shield of the homunculus in both M and B.
The Greek word for ʻpicture on a shieldʼ is sēma.
The sēma on the shield of a hero is supposed to symbolize his identity.
A running leg (or foot: the Greek language does not make the same distinctions between ʻlegʼ and ʻfootʼ that the English language does) is symbolic of which hero in the Iliad?
When there are three running legs spinning around a center (the technical Greek word for this visual device is triskeles = ʻthree-legsʼ), the idea of superhuman running speed is implied.
The “winged lady” is still in the process of landing when we look at B; on the other hand, she has already landed when we look at M.
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In B, The “winged lady” makes a gesture toward the portico situated on your far left. The old couple in the portico repeat the gesture. Achilles is making eye-contact with the gesture. Notice that he is not making eye-contact with the sēma, nor with the psukhē of Patroklos. So I return to my question: Is he getting on the chariot or getting off? In terms of my argument, he is getting off.
Consider the painting of the council of the gods on the upper part or “shoulder” of the Münster Hydria. We see here Zeus and Hermes (with his caduceus = his magic wand) at center left and center right, while Athena is at the right. Dionysus is at the extreme left. Note the goddess, making a gesture, between Dionysus and Zeus. Study question: how does this council of the gods compare with the council of the gods at the beginning of Iliad XXIV?
How does the action of “the winged lady” in B (and, probably, in M) compare with the action of a certain character in Iliad XXIV?
Here are other details to look for as we compare the pictures of M and B with other pictures. 1. Note each image (sēma) on each heroʼs shield. Compare with the pictures of animals
guarding the tomb (sēma) of the hero.
2. Note the details that convey an epic event (by “epic” we mean the kind of macro- narrative represented by the Iliad) and details that convey an athletic event. Where are epic / athletic details distinct and where are they not? Compare the epic / athletic events of the Funeral Games of Patroklos in Iliad XXIII. Compare Pindarʼs Pythian 8, available in the Sourcebook. Where are epic / athletic details distinct and where are they not?
The rage of the hero translates into the killer instinct of the athlete. Compare the dragging of Hectorʼs corpse, presented as an athletic event. This detail about the “dragging” is an aetiology (myth) for the athletic event (ritual) of the chariot race featuring apobatai at the Panathenaia in Athens.
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Greek Heroes Hour 9 October 3, 2011
Return of the king (Both Physical and Mental Return)
Key word: Nostos 1. Return or homecoming OR song about homecoming 2. Return to light and life
Nostos is a genre, type of a story about a hero’s return from Troy. There were many other stories about the return of other heroes from Troy (other than Odysseus).
Note: Correlation between Nostos and (mind, thinking). These words are not only related but both are derived from the same root (nes). Nes means “saving oneself”.
Now let’s take a look at the beginning of the Odyssey: • Note that in the handout there is a very literal translation. • We can see already in the first two lines that in the original Greek,
the “noos” is unclear what it is in reference to. It could be his own “noos” or the “noos” of other people.
Next two lines: he suffered many pains while sailing at sea struggling to save his own “psukhe” (life) and to achieve the safe homecoming [nostos] of his companions.
Comparison we can draw between the Iliad and the Odyssey: • Iliad about a monolithic hero (Achilles) but he is a savior.
He stuck to his principles. Very single sided. Uncompromising. • The Odyssey, Odysseus is a “company man” who wants to
save everyone but by the time he gets back from Troy he isn’t able to save a single one of his companions. When he gets his “nostos” no one is left. Odysseus is a man of many sides (he has capacity to turn into many different identities). Multiform.
It will be harder to agree about what is going on in the Odyssey. It is about a very complex person and the epic itself is very complex. Outside the Odyssey, Odysseus has very bad press.
These two epics are very complementary. You cannot understand one without the other. Keep in mind the Iliad as we read the Odyssey. You cannot separate the two. • Now let’s look at passage B:
Athena goes in disguise as Mentes and later on as Mentor. She goes to Ithaca to set Telemachos straight. Telemachos is clueless mentally, morally, and emotionally. He is a perfect candidate to receive the wisdom of the ancestors. In this passage, she will ensure the “nostos” of Odysseus. They will get kleos as a result of this.
Noos
Our Homeric
Odyssey is the only song in Greek song culture where he comes out relatively well.
Consider the comparison with Achilles. Achilles chooses between “nostos” and eternal “kleos aphthiton.” It is either or for this monolithic hero.
For Odysseus, he gets both. He will not get any “kleos” unless he has a “nostos”. Odysseus does not have to choose. He is again a man of many sides.
Telemachos means (tele: far, mache: battle). His identity and his name are defined from his father being far away at Troy (fighting far away from his countryland) and from his father’s ability to fight from afar that is using his arrows for example. His name will be a micronarrative for the hero.
Odysseus will get his epic by virtue of his homecoming. He will not get kleos for the destruction of Troy. Although Odysseus succeeds where Achilles failed, Odysseus will not get the kleos for the destruction of Troy. Odysseus instead gets kleos from a safe homecoming. •
Symbolism of Nostos: (nostos as return to light and life)
Metaphor: meaning by • Metonymy: meaning by • When metaphor “goes wild” it becomes allegory.
(Aristotle) • The Postman: about the life and times of Pablo Neruda. He
got exiled. Leftist. A postman who delivers letters to Pablo Neruda and asks him what is a metaphor.
Starship Enterprise: The crew is trying to establish relationship with people on this celestial body who can only speak in metaphor. You need to know the imagery and story behind the imagery to understand the metaphor. You need to read the whole Odyssey so you know the narrative (the grammar). • Passage C: we have a singer (equivalent of court poet)
Nasty suitors are the audience. This singer is singing a nostos. This is a really perfect performance of a “nostos”
substitution association
• • • • •
It makes Penelope come down and stop the singer. It is a “penthos” for her and “kleos” for the suitors listening.
Emotional response different for different people. Time is not linear (cf. Proust). Past is reconstructed from memory and feeling.
Generally the return of the Greeks was a sad story. Algea (pains) and sufferings of those returning. They have sad endings.
Consider comparison between the algea that Achilles has caused for the Achaens and the Trojans (line 1 of Iliad) and the algea of Odysseus as he is returning home.
Now let’s look at sufferings expressed by lament. • Example: Agamemnon has to sacrifice his daughter
Iphigeneia. • Much of the sorrows of the Trojan war, we cannot understand without the personal grief.
Example: The Death of Polyxena. She is sacrificed because Achilles’ spirit demands the blood of a virgin.
These are scenes of terror of pity. These moments of suffering we need to feel and know so that we can understand the characters of the heroes. • Passage E:
Achilles as representative of brute force: bie • Odysseus: metis • Which is more likely to destroy Troy? We know that
Odysseus is the one who destroys Troy.
Passage F: We see a summary of an Epic that is not a part of the Odyssey.
It provides details regarding the destruction of Troy through the ruse of the Trojan horse.
There are many gruesome deaths.
We see Priam die, Helen taken by Menelaos, Ajax takes Kassandra and rapes her, Polyxena is killed, the city is put to the torch.
Odysseus kills Astyanax (son of Hektor). Odysseus throws him from the Walls.
Andromache is forced to be the wife of the son of Achilles (Neoptolemos).
What kinds of memories does Odysseus carry when we get to Odyssey 8?
Passage G: The song of Demodokos (singer of the Phaeacians) • We see an interesting choice of the poet. He chooses not to
include the scene when Odysseus kills Astyanax. The poet is reciting the song and when we get to this part we see instead Odysseus crying as a woman weeps when she is about to be taken as a captive (cf. Andromache).
11
Greek Heroes Hour
Tuesday 5-7 Video of Chunhyang. Be There. A crisis in reading signs:
Key Word- Krisis “judgment, crisis” English derivative is crisis. Derivitive: hupokrisis: answer that generates a crisis.
Related to “criteria” “critical.” Help us come to terms with the code as played out in the Odyssey. Passage A: Book xix 535-569: Odysseus has returned home but is not yet identified. Penelope is not sure. Testing each other. The plot tests us, Are we up to understanding? He is still a beggar and he is asked to interpret a dream.
Dream: she has 20 geese; an eagle swoops down and kills them. She weeps in her room because the eagle had killed the geese. LAMENT. Penelope’s dream explains itself. The eagle tells her to stop crying. geese are the suitors and the eagle is Odysseus.
Why does she ask for interpretation?
Interpretation: There is only one meaning, The death of the suitors is fated? Note answer creates crisis.
Loaded with meaning: Two dreams, False and True. Gate of (true) Horn and (false) Ivory that dreams flow through.
If the geese are the suitors, why is she crying about their deaths? How long has Odysseus been away? 20 years is a long time. Reading is also about interpreting signs as incorporated in dreams. She has grown used to the suitors even though they are not Odysseus. She would grieve at their loss? Penelope is complex.
Horn sounds like ‘to get things right’. Implies sexuality. Ivory sounds like things that are wrong. The word play is very intense.
There is an extra-long handout, so refer to that.
Odysseus’ scale of affection. The Dog, lowest, recognizes him first through smell. His name means return to light and life. The higher on the scale of affection the more difficult it is to
rebuild a relationship after 20 years. 2011.10.12
scribe: George Mills
Yenching Auditorium [[not Fong Auditorium, as previously announced. It is stated that the
the Greek verb for the word for Argos
Jim Morrison “wrote the song” for Pamela.
Songs are written for particular audiences. Consider Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro.
Cherubino’s divinalh to the countess. Unrequited love.
Cherubino is singing, “see handout” Cherubino is conventionally played by a woman.
The sema of Achilles vs The sema of Odysseus
Hero is also about hero worship. Achilles’ death is about the saving of his own people. Odysseus is not as mono-lithic. He changes constantly. Nothing is straightforward.
Passage B: Underworld. A seer foretells the rest of the Odyssey and continues after the end of the Odyssey. What happens when Odysseus dies: Teiresias says: I will give you this sema which cannot escape your notice. Also said by Nestor in Iliad 23. Teiresias predicts what the tomb of Odysseus will look like.
When you have accomplished your mission put an Oar on your shoulder and walk inland, People will not be able to recognize that your Oar is an Oar at a certain point. Plant your Oar there and that is where you will perish.
Recognizing vs Reading: Anagnorisis- ‘to recognize’ but also means ‘to read’. They are interconnected.
Aristotle’s Poetics: You recognize someone when your sense of philos “heats up.” This recognition is both negative and positive.
The Shining: The wife recognizes/reads that the writer is a fraud/psycho. Negative recognition. Island of Circe switches from west to east.
Shovel (a winnowing shovel, to be exact) is the same as an Oar. It is both for Odysseus because he has odysseys. Winnowing Shovel- You separate wheat from chaff and you take a winnowing shovel and you stick it on top of the pile and have a celebration.
In silhouette, the tomb of a sailor and the grain-pile of a farmer are the same. Tomb around an oar vs. winnowing shovel in a pile of wheat grains.
This is the sign of a cult hero.
Krisis: Judgement, Crisis, Critical moment.
Greek Christians in the ancient era refer to him as St. Elias.
Dream Traveler: Japanese movie. Man finds his tomb in another world and places an offering at his grave own.
Notes for Dialogue 12 10/17/11 Scribe: Peter Hadar Longing for a Hero Words of the Day:
• •
Hora- “season, seasonality, the right time, the perfect time” o Related to Hera, similar o Heros- Heroes
Pothos-“longing, yearning, desire” • Thesis: People in song culture long for the seasonality (hora) that comes with a
hero/goddess Passage A: Philostratus On Heroes 2.6-3.6
3rd Century C.E. (from an era that is much later than the eras we have studied so far), gives away secrets of hero-cult
Original guardedness about talking about heroes; considered taboo, primarily due to local nature of the phenomena
This is the reason hero-cult not spelled out in Iliad/Odyssey, but rather in Philostratus
Passage deals with uninitiated Phoenician sailor (educated, non-Greek intellectual who doesn’t understand Greek religion) and an anonymous initiated Greek vinekeeper (like the show “Lost”).
Phoenician sailor stumbles upon a cult site of a hero o Shows how people relate to hero in daily life o Relate it to Iliad/Odyssey, preparing for Greek tragedy
Pay attention to link of “right time” (hora) with beauty, and the tie-in of beauty to perfection o Beauty is the corpse, which serves to help community ! Death is also most beautiful moment in life
Connection of hero to the varied (poikile) garden ! Beauty is glory in variation, like flowers on Aphrodite’s robe in
Sappho (metaphor for different experiences of love) ! Poikile (variation) relates to wondrous works of humans as well
Groundskeeper thinks of hero as living consciousness o Vinedresser says that hero Protesilaos lives there, farms together with him
(gardening is sacred activity, sailing is unnatural).
•
Asks about anabiosis (resurrection), coming back to life o Hero comes from Phthia region, similar to Achilles o Had two resurrections: groundskeeper only understands one of them
cult-hero system is competing with Christianity ! Introduces concept of “faith,” belief in mysteries of hero, comparable
to Christianity o Hero exercises in beautiful garden
Beautiful naked hero exercise in beautiful nature vinedresser doesn’t use
Erotic, beautiful longing for perfect hero o Similar epiphany of married people turn in to gods in
Sappho, same language Secondary historical reading on website can supplement understanding of Philostratus
Ties in to Iliad and Odyssey ! Multi-dimensionality of heroes Passage B: Protesilaos in Iliad II 695-90
Dead, but people long and desire erotically for him • Pothos survives until modern day: Seferis (famous 20th century Greek poet, Nobel
laureate) poem of Arnisi (denial) o On the secret beach/ white like a dove/ we thirsted at noon/ but the water was
brackish/ on the beach, the blond beach/ we wrote down her name/ beautiful the way the sea breeze blew/ but the writing was extinguished/ with what heart, with what breath/ with what longings and with what passion/ we seized (or messed up) our life, got it wrong/ And we changed life
Orea (modern greek word for beautiful) is same word as hora, functioning as immediate
beauty
In garden description, there was beautiful aroma of hero’s breath/flower’s blossom
Nice Greek music of Theodorakis: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9IqV5SazpU
See torso sculpture of Apollo or young man (in ritual climax, can’t tell which one) o Rilke (secretary of Rodin) had poem “Archaic Torso of Apollo,” which inspired
Seferis o Says that “You must change your life,” while Seferis says “we changed it”
Tradition continues in Greek song culture today Passage C: Philostratus On Heroes 9.1-3
Talk of how nymphs created trees around a kolonos, part of a sema (tomb)
Branches pointing toward Troy die, while trees that live on other side of tomb will prosper
Hero and sacred space connected through metonymy Passage D: Philostratus On Heroes
51.12-1
Tell uninitiated stranger (xenos) about story of Achilles o Reason why Acheans can no longer grow out hair o Desire to embrace hero by throwing themselves on sema o Stimulated by aroma of hero (breath of a flower)
Philostratus spells out metonymy of sema and touching the hero, gives away secrets •
Achilles in Hellespont, a kolonos
Touching is like embracing him Passage E: Philostratus Heroikos 53.8-1
Offer garlands (on hair) to dead Achilles • Hymns sung to Thetis • Ties back to
Iliad IX, such that Achilles has a kleos
There is a flower used in garland that does not wilt, still used in Greece today (used as a metonymy for dead person)
Dry, has color, has smell, and used for ritual Passage F, G, and H from Iliad
•
Return to Iliad o Achilles talks about himself as a cult hero
In passage F (Iliad II 232-244), Achilles talks about how people will miss him (pothe) and scepter will not sprout leaves again
In passage G (Iliad XVII 687-69), Patrokles dies and best of Achaeans is considered dead
Longing (pothe) lasts forever ! In passage H (Iliad XIX 319-32), the lament of Achilles for Patrokles uses
pothe (longing for his friend) • Death of Patrokles worse than if the father or son of Achilles had
died • Achilles longing for himself, by longing for Patrokles Akira Kurosawa Film Clip • Longing for his youth, ties into pothos
Child sees a cut-down orchard, realize some things will never come back (no more peach blossom festival)
Boy longs for little girl, she has bell that is also tied to tree • Peach trees are represented by choral ensemble who mock child until they realize he is
worthy of seeing the blossoms one more time
Introduction
“One is no longer at home anywhere, so in the end one longs to be back where one can somehow be at home because it is the only place where one would wish to be at home: and that is the world of Greece.” -
Friedrich Nietzsche [[from part Two of “Der Wille zur Macht”]] !
For a five-minute sketch of the history of this course on concepts of the heroic and anti-heroic in Greek civilization, see Introduction 1, on the Heroes website under the heading Commentaries under the heading Texts, Commentaries, More.
For a five-minute sketch of ancient Greek history, see Introduction 2, on the Heroes website, again under the heading Commentaries.
Chapter 01. The glory of the hero.
Key word for this chapter: kleos ‘glory, fame, that which is heard’; or, ‘the poem or song that conveys glory, fame, that which is heard’.
This word was used in ancient Greek poetry or song to refer to the poetry [“epic”] or the song [“lyric”] that glorifies the heroes of the distant heroic past. (Since the references to kleos in archaic Greek poetry and song make no distinction between poetry and song, I will simply use the word “song” hereafter.)
The song of kleos glorifies not only the heroes of the distant past, which is a “heroic age.” It glorifies also the gods - as they “existed” in the heroic age and as they continued to “exist” for their worshippers at any given moment in historical time.
Why did the ancient Greeks glorify heroes? Partly because they worshipped not only gods but also heroes. This is a fundamental fact of ancient Greek history: the ancient Greeks practiced hero-worship. See Introduction 1; for detailed argumentation, I refer to Introduction 3, which is my article “The Epic Hero.” This article, which we will read later on in the course, is likewise available on the Heroes website, again under the heading Commentaries.
Let us return to the main topic of this chapter, as signaled by the key word kleos. This word was used to refer to both the medium and the message of the glory of heroes. The dictum of Marshall McLuhan applies here (his main interest was popular culture): the medium is the message.
I begin by concentrating on the medium of song as marked by the word kleos. In ancient Greece, kleos was the primary medium for communicating the concept of the hero, which is the primary topic (or “message”) of this course. (For other media that we will study in this course, see Introduction 1.)
A. Iliad IX 410-414 In the Iliad, the main hero of the Iliad, Achilles, is quoted as saying:
My mother Thetis, goddess of the silver feet, tells me that there are two ways in which I may meet my end [telos]. If I stay here and fight, I will not have a return [nostos] alive but my glory [kleos] will be unwilting [aphthiton]: whereas if I go home my glory [kleos] will perish, but it will be a long time before the end [telos] shall take me.
This translation, based on that of Samuel Butler, has been adjusted by me to fit as accurately as possible the meaning of the original Greek. The original wording of Butler is as follows:
My mother Thetis tells me that there are two ways in which I may meet my end. If I stay here and fight, I will not return alive but my name will live for ever: whereas if I go home my name will die, but it will be long ere death shall take me.
This is a literary translation, not a literal one. In general, Butler’s translation of the Iliad is literary, meant to be pleasing to the ear when read out loud. In the case of this passage, it successfully captures the general idea of what is being said by Achilles. I focus our attention on the part that I highlighted:
I will not return alive but my name will live for ever.
In place of this literary version, I substituted a more literal translation of the original Greek, which is contained in one single verse:
I will not have a return [nostos] alive but my glory [kleos] will be unwilting [aphthiton]. Iliad
Scroll IX verse 413 Here is an even more literal translation of the original Greek: I shall lose my
safe homecoming [nostos], but I will have a kleos that is unwilting.
Iliad Scroll IX verse 413
(You notice I said “Scroll IX” of the Iliad, not “Book IX.” My intent was to drive home the reality of the “scrolls” or “rolls” of papyrus on which the performance-units of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey were written in the ancient world. In ancient Greek, these Homeric performance- units were called rhaps"idiai or ‘rhapsodies’.)
In the next paragraph, I offer my interpretation of this verse. From here on, I will refer to this kind of interpretation as exegesis, which is an ancient Greek term referring to a close reading of a given text.
Achilles has started to understand the consequences of his decision to reject the option of a safe homecoming. He is in the process of deciding to choose the other option: he will stay at Troy and continue to fight in the Trojan War. Choosing this option will result in his death, and he is starting to understand that. In the fullness of time, he will be ready to give up his life in exchange for getting a kleos that will never ‘wilt’. Unlike natural flowers that go through the cycle of blossoming and then wilting, this kleos is an unnatural or mutant flower that will forever stay the same, never losing its color, aroma, and overall beauty. Here we see a very ancient theme that is built into the traditional symbolism of kleos, which we will explore in more detail later. Like a
natural flower, Achilles will ‘wilt’. But his kleos will never wilt because it is not a thing of nature: it is a thing of art, a song. This kleos is the story of Troy, the Iliad (the name of the poem, Iliad, means ‘story of Ilion’; Ilion is the other name for ‘Troy’). Achilles the hero gets into the Iliad by dying a warrior’s death. The consolation prize for his death is the kleos of the Iliad.
We can see a parallel theme in the tragedy Herakles, by Euripides: at line 350, the hero Linos is ‘wilted [phthitos] in his beauty’, but Apollo sings ‘him’. By implication, the song of Linos thus becomes unwilting, just as the kleos of Achilles in Iliad IX 413 is aphthiton or ‘unwilting’.
In ancient Greek culture, the distinction between art and nature, between the artificial and the natural, is not the same as in our culture. Their culture was what anthropologists call a song culture.
In our culture, artificial implies “unreal” and natural implies “real.” (I quote the words of an old commercial: “Is it real - or is it Memorex?”) In a song culture, the artificial can be just as real as the natural. In a song culture, the words of an “artificial” song can be just as real as the words of “natural” speech in a real-life experience. In a song culture, the song can be just as real as life itself.
A modern attempt to capture a sense of the “trueness” of song is a poem by Wallace Stevens, “Peter Quince at the Clavier.” You will find it on the Heroes website under the heading More under the heading Texts, Commentaries, More.
{LINK: Wallace Stevens, “Peter Quince at the Clavier”}
In ancient Greek song culture, the “story” of the Iliad was felt to be not only “real” but also “true.” As we will see in later chapters, the Homeric Iliad was felt to convey the ultimate truth- values of the ancient Greek song-culture.
Because we English-speakers have a different cultural perspective on the word story, which implies fiction and is therefore not expected to be “true,” I will ordinarily use the more neutral word narrative in referring to the story of the Iliad and other such stories.
I return to my point: in a song culture, the song can be just as real as life itself. To experience song in a song culture is to experience a real-life experience. For the Greek hero, as we will see, the ultimate real-life experience is death. (Which can be an alternative to sex, as we will also see.) The hero must struggle against the fear of death, in order to achieve the most perfect death. Such a
perfect moment must be recorded in song, which brings kleos ‘glory’.
In ancient Greek traditions, a hero’s dying words can be pictured as a swan song (see Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1444-1445, where the last lament of Cassandra before she dies is pictured as her swan song). According to such traditions, the swan sings his most beautiful song at the moment of his death. We will consider this myth at the end of this course, when we read Plato’s Phaedo: in that work, Socrates talks about the concept of the swan song at the moment of his own death by hemlock. What Socrates is quoted as saying in the Phaedo, as we will see, turns out to be his own swan song.
That said, I am ready to move on to the next passage to be considered in this chapter. 01 B. Iliad
XI 218-227
Tell me now you Muses dwelling on Olympus, who, whether of the Trojans or of their allies, was first to face Agamemnon? It was Iphidamas son of Antenor, a man both brave and of great stature, who was brought up in fertile Thrace the mother of sheep. Kiss#s, his mother’s father, brought him up in his own house when he was a child - Kiss#s, father to fair-cheeked Theano. When he reached manhood, Kiss#s would have kept him there, and was for giving him his daughter in marriage, but as soon as he had married he went off to seek the kleos of the Achaeans with twelve ships that followed him.
This passage, like the first passage I analyzed, is about a hero’s obsession with the goal of dying the right way, that is, by being remembered forever in the kleos or ‘glory’ of song. In this case, however, the hero is not a major figure of the Iliad, like Achilles. This other hero is mentioned only one time in the Iliad, in what amounts to a short story embedded inside the overall story of the Iliad.
To distinguish the story of the Iliad from such short stories that exist inside the story of the Iliad, I will as a rule refer to the Iliad as the Narrative, with an upper-case N, and to the stories inside the Iliad as narratives, with lower-case n. Such narratives are micro-narratives in comparison to the macro-Narrative that is the Iliad. Also, I will as a rule use the word Narrator in referring to ‘Homer’, who was a prehistoric culture-hero venerated by the ancient Greeks as the ultimate ‘singer’ of the Iliad and Odyssey. (I will return to the concept of culture-hero in later chapters.)
In order to appreciate the poetic artistry that produced this micro-narrative, we must consider the artistic device of compression in the traditional media of ancient Greek songmaking. This device of compression is to be contrasted with the device of expansion. Whereas expansion produces macro-narratives, such as the monumental composition of the Iliad itself, compression produces micro-narratives, such as the story-within-a-story that we are now considering. In many ways, a “trailer” in today’s culture of film-making is produced by techniques of compression that resemble the techniques used in producing such micro- narratives in ancient Greek songmaking. I concentrate on the last verse of this micronarrative, which I now translate more literally: Married, he went away from the bride chamber, looking for kleos from the Achaeans.
Iliad XI 227
This micro-narrative is about a hero who decides to interrupt his honeymoon and go to Troy to fight on the side of the Trojans against the ‘Achaeans’, which is an epic name - along with ‘Argives’ and ‘Danaans’ - for the Greeks of the heroic age. At this point in the narrative, he has just been killed in battle. Why did this hero give up his life, a life of newlywed bliss, just to fight and die at Troy? The Narrator of the macro-Narrative gives the answer to this question: this hero did it in order to get included in the kleos of the Greek song culture. He was ‘looking for kleos from the Achaeans’. This kleos is the macro-Narrative of the Iliad.
We see here a hero getting into the Iliad by dying a warrior’s death. To that extent, he is like the
major hero Achilles, whose death is the core theme of the Iliad. But this minor hero, Iphidamas, dies for just a “bit part.” By contrast, Achilles will die for the lead part.
These “parts” in the epic master Narrative of the Iliad are just as real to these heroes as their very own lives are real to them. For Achilles, the major hero of the Iliad, the song of kleos is just as real as his very own life is real to him. The infinite time of the artificial song, the kleos aphthiton or ‘unwilting glory’ (IX 413), is just as real to him as the finite time of his natural life.
Similarly, the infinite time of the gods, who are everlasting, is just as real to Homeric heroes as is the finite time of their natural lives. The gods are “artificial” but real, just as kleos is “artificial” but real. Even the sky, which is the abode of the gods, is “artificial.” The movements of the celestial bodies - the patterns of the stars and even sunrise and sunset - belong to the realm of immortality. By contrast, the earth, which is the abode of humans, is “natural”: it is mortal territory. In chapters coming up, I will have more to say about this opposition of mortal / natural and immortal / artificial.
Here is further reading about mortal / natural and immortal / artificial, not required for the course: Nagy, G. 1999. “As the World Runs Out of Breath: Metaphorical Perspectives on the Heavens and the Atmosphere in the Ancient World.” In Ker, Keniston, Marx 1999:37-50.
{Ker, J. C., Keniston, K., and Marx, L. 1999. ed. Earth, Air, Fire, Water: Humanistic Studies of the Environment. Amherst MA.}
A second key word for this chapter: h"ra (plural h"rai) ‘season, seasonality; time; timeliness’. This word h"ra stood for natural time, natural life, natural life-cycle. The English word hour is derived from ancient Greek h"ra. Relevant are such expressions as The hour is near.
The goddess of h"ra (plural h"rai) was H#ra (the two forms h"ra and H#ra are linguistically related to each other). She was the goddess of seasons, in charge of making everything happen on time, happen in season, and happen in a timely way.
Related to these two words h"ra and H#ra is h#r"s (singular) / h#r"es (plural), meaning ‘hero’. As we will see, the precise moment when everything comes together for the hero is the moment of death. The hero is ‘on time’ at the h!ra or ‘time’ of death.
In Passage A, we have seen Achilles thinking about his future death as glorified by the medium of kleos. In a sense, we see him “scripting” his death. And this “scripting” is all about timing. The timing of heroic death is all-important for the hero.
Here is a point of comparison taken from modern popular culture. It is a clip from the film Bladerunner, directed by Ridley Scott (1982), based on the science fiction novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (1968). The film clip centers on the moment when Roy, an artificial human, “scripts” his own death, which is meant to be natural.!
{LINK “Like tears in rain. Time to die,” from Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner (1982)}
I draw attention here, for the first time, to a collection of film clips, with commentaries that accompany them, under the heading “Multimedia” on the Heroes website, which is available to those who are enrolled in the course.
We now turn to a model for Achilles in the “scripting” of his own death. This model is a hero from an earlier age, who exemplifies the perfect timing of his own death. That hero is Herakles, otherwise known by the Romanized version of his name, Hercules.
Herakles is more than a model for Achilles. He is a model for all heroes. As we will see, his story brings to life the meaning of the ancient Greek word for hero, h#r"s, and the meanings of the related words for seasonality, h"ra, and for the goddess of seasonality herself, H#ra. As we will also see, even his name tells the story: H#rakl#s means ‘he who has the kleos of H#ra’.
In the Iliad, we find an embedded micro-narrative that tells the story of Herakles as it relates to the
story of Achilles in the macro-Narrative that is the Iliad. I quote the entire micro-narrative: 01 C. Iliad XIX 75-133
Then Agamemnon spoke, rising in his place, and not going into the middle of the assembly. “Danaan heroes,” said he, “attendants [therapontes] of Ares, it is well to listen when a man stands up to speak,
[80] and it is not seemly to interrupt him, or it will go hard even with a practiced speaker. Who can either hear or speak in an uproar? Even the finest orator will be disconcerted by it. I will expound to [Achilles] the son of Peleus, and do you other Achaeans heed me and mark me well. [85] Often have the Achaeans spoken to me of this matter and upbraided me, but it was not I who was responsible [aitios]: Zeus, and Fate [Moira], and the Fury [Erinys] that roams in darkness struck me with derangement [at"] when we were assembled on the day that I took from Achilles the prize that had been awarded to him.
[90] What could I do? All things are in the hands of the gods, and At#, eldest of Zeus’ daughters, shuts men’s eyes to their destruction. She walks delicately, not on the solid earth,
but hovers over the heads of men to make them stumble or to ensnare them.[95] Time was when she [At#, goddess of derangement] fooled Zeus himself, who they say is greatest whether of gods or men; for Hera, female though she was, beguiled him on the day when Alkmene was to bring forth mighty Herakles in the fair city of Thebes.
[100] He told it out among the gods saying, ‘Hear me all gods and goddesses, that I may speak even as I am minded; this day shall Eileithuia, helper of women who are in labor, bring a man child into the world who shall be lord over all that dwell about him
[105] who are of my blood and lineage.’ Then said Hera all crafty and full of guile, ‘You will play false, and will not hold to the finality [telos] of your word. Swear me, O Olympian, swear me a great oath, that he
[110] who shall this day fall between the feet of a woman, shall be lord over all that dwell about him who are of your blood and lineage.’ Thus she spoke, and Zeus suspected her not, but swore the great oath, to his much ruing thereafter. For Hera darted down from the high summit of Olympus,
[115] and went in haste to Achaean Argos where she knew that the noble wife of Sthenelos son of Perseus then was. She being with child and in her seventh month, Hera brought the child to birth though there was a month still wanting, but she stayed the offspring of Alkmene, and kept back the goddesses of childbirth [Eileithuiai].
[120] Then she went to tell Zeus the son of Kronos, and said, ‘Father Zeus, lord of the lightning - I have a word for your ear. There is a fine child born this day, Eurystheus, son to Sthenelos the son of Perseus; he is of your lineage; it is well, therefore, that he should reign over the Argives.’ [125] Then Zeus was stung to the very quick with grief [akhos], and in his rage he caught At# by the hair, and swore a great oath that never should she again invade the starry heavens and Olympus, for she was the bane of all.
[130] Then he whirled her round with a twist of his hand, and flung her down from the heavens so that she fell on to the fields of mortal men; and he was ever angry with her when he saw his son groaning under the cruel labors [athloi] that Eurystheus laid upon him.”
The speaker here is Agamemnon, who is telling the story about Herakles and his inferior cousin Eurystheus. The goddess Hera accelerated the birth of Eurystheus and retarded the birth of Herakles, so that Eurystheus the inferior hero became king, entitled to give commands to the superior hero Herakles. As we see in the Herakles of Euripides, Herakles qualifies as the supreme hero of them all, the aristos ‘best’ of all humans (150; cf. 183, 209, 1306). Still, his heroic
superiority to all is trumped by the social superiority of Eurystheus, who is entitled by birth to give orders to Herakles as his king. Similarly, the heroic superiority of Achilles is trumped by the social superiority of Agamemnon at the beginning of the Iliad.
The irony of this story told by Agamemnon, in micro-narrative form, is contextualized by the macro-Narrative of the story that is the Iliad. In terms of Agamemnon’s micro-narrative, the point of his story is that At# the goddess of derangement made it possible for Zeus himself to make a mistake in the story about Herakles, just as she made it possible for Agamemnon to make a mistake in the story of the Iliad. In terms of the macro-Narrative of the Iliad, however, the parallel extends much further: the mistake in the story about Herakles and Eurystheus is that the hero who was superior as a hero became socially inferior, and that is also the mistake in the story about Achilles and Agamemnon as narrated in the overall Iliad: Achilles is superior to Agamemnon as a hero, but he is socially inferior to him, and that is why Agamemnon seemed to get away with the mistake of asserting his social superiority at the expense of Achilles. Like Herakles, who is constrained by the social superiority of Eurystheus and follows his commands in performing athloi ‘labors’ (XIX 133), so also Achilles is constrained by the social superiority of Agamemnon in offering no physical resistance to the taking of Briseis, his war prize, by the inferior hero.!!
!The performance of athloi ‘labors’ by Herakles is mentioned in passing by this micro-narrative in the Iliad (XIX 133). As we are about to see from other sources, these Labors of Herakles lead to the kleos ‘glory’ that Herakles earns as a hero, and these labors would never have been performed if Hera the goddess of seasons had not made Herakles the hero unseasonal by being born after rather than before his inferior cousin. So, Herakles owes the kleos that he earns from his Labors to Hera.
There are many different kinds of Labors performed by Herakles, as we see from an extensive retelling by Diodorus of Sicily. Though we will not be reading this author, who flourished in the first century BCE, I summarize here some highlights in his narrative (4.7.4-4.39). One of the Labors of Herakles, as we see from Diodorus (4.14.1-2), was the foundation of the Olympics. The story says that he not only founded this major festival: he also competed in every athletic event on the prototypical occasion of the first Olympics. On that occasion, he won first prize in every Olympic event. This tradition about Herakles is the perfect illustration of a fundamental connection between the labor of a hero and the competition of an athlete at athletic events like the Olympics. As we will see later on, the hero’s labor and the athlete’s competition are the “same thing,” from the standpoint of ancient Greek concepts of the hero. The Greek word for the hero’s labor and for the athlete’s competition is the same: athlos. Our English word “athlete” is derived from this Greek word.
Before we consider further Labors performed by Herakles, I offer a paraphrase of the beginning of the story of these Labors as narrated by Diodorus of Sicily:
The supreme god and king of gods, Zeus, impregnates Alkmene, a mortal woman (4.9.2). The wife of Zeus, the goddess Hera, is jealous; she decides to intervene in the life of the hero who is about to be born, Herakles (4.9.4). If this hero had been born on schedule, on time, in time, he would have been the supreme king of his time; but Hera makes sure that Herakles is born not on schedule, not on time, not in time. Herakles’ inferior cousin, Eurystheus, is born ahead of him and thus is fated to become king instead of Herakles (4.9.4-5). During all of Herakles’ lifetime, Eurystheus persecutes him directly; Hera persecutes him indirectly. The superior hero has to spend his entire lifespan obeying the orders of the inferior king (4.9.5). The orders add up to the Labors of Herakles.
In the Classical era, as represented most famously in the relief sculptures of the metopes of the Temple of Zeus in Olympia, built in the fifth century BCE, there is a focus on a canonical number of twelve Labors performed by Herakles. The narrative of Diodorus of Sicily gives the following sequence of these Twelve Labors:
Herakles kills the Nemean Lion (4.11.3-4)
Herakles kills the Lernaean Hydra (4.11.5-6)
Herakles kills the Erymanthian Boar (4.12.1-2)
Herakles hunts down the Hind with the Golden Horn (4.13.1)
Herakles clears the Stymphalian Marsh of the birds that infested it (4.13.2)
Herakles cleans the Augean Stables (4.13.2-3)
Herakles captures the Cretan Bull alive and taking it to the Peloponnesus (4.13.4)
Herakles corrals the Horses of Diomedes, eaters of human flesh (4.15.3-4)
Herakles captures the cincture or “girdle” of the Amazon Hippolyte (4.16.1-4)
Herakles rustles the Cattle of Geryon (4.17.1-2)
Herakles descends to Hades and brings up Cerberus the Hound of Hades from the realm of darkness to the realm of light and life (4.26.1)
Herakles gathers the Golden Apples of the Hesperides (4.26.2).
In the catalogue of the Labors of Herakles as sung in praise of the hero by the chorus in the Herakles of Euripides (lines 348-439), the last of these Labors to be mentioned is the descent of Herakles to Hades (425-439); in the imagery of Euripides, and elsewhere in Greek poetry, as we will see later on, going into Hades is explicitly the experience of dying, and coming back out of Hades is implicitly the experience of resurrection (lines 143-146).
Herakles’ heroic deeds in performing these Labors and many others are the contents of the heroic song, kleos, that is sung about him. The connection of the name of Herakles with these deeds and with the medium of kleos that glorifies the hero is made explicit in the Herakles of Euripides (lines 270, 1334, 1369). This connection of the hero’s name with such deeds of kleos is also made explicit by Matris of Thebes FGH 39 F 2, as transmitted by Diodorus of Sicily 1.24.4 (where the attribution is made to Matris) and 4.10.1 (where the version of Matris is actually retold). And, as I have already noted, Herakles owes the kleos that he earns from his Labors to Hera. Hence his name H#rakl#s, which means ‘he who has the kleos of H#ra’.[1] The goddess of being on time makes sure that the hero should start off his lifespan by being not on time and that he should go through life by trying to catch up and never quite managing to do so until the very end. Herakles gets all caught up only at the final moment of his life, at the moment of death.
I continue here my paraphrase of Diodorus of Sicily:
At the final moment of Herakles’ heroic lifespan, he experiences the most painful death imaginable, climaxed by burning to death. This form of death is an ultimate test of the nervous system, by ancient Greek heroic standards. Here is how it happens. Herakles is fatally poisoned by the semen of a dying Centaur. His ex-wife Deianeira gave it to him in a phial as a “wedding present” on the occasion of the hero’s re-marriage to the girl Iole: the ex-wife had mistakenly thought it was a love-drug that could win back the love of her ex-husband (4.38.1-2). Burning up on the inside with the excruciatingly painful poison that is consuming his body from the outside, Herakles arranges with the people of Trachis to have them build for him a funeral pyre on the peak of Mount Oita, Herakles climbs up on top of the funeral pyre (4.38.3-4). He yearns to be put out of his misery, ready to die and be consumed by the fires of the funeral pyre; he calls on his friend Philoktetes to light his pyre (4.38.4).[2] At that precise moment of agonizing death, a flaming thunderbolt from his father Zeus strikes him. He goes up in flames, in a spectacular
explosion of fire (4.38.4-5). In the aftermath, those who attended the primal scene find no physical trace of Herakles, not even bones (4.38.5). They go home to Trachis, but Menoitios, the father of Patroklos, will later establish a hero cult for Herakles at Opous, and the Thebans have a similar hero cult for him (4.38.1). Others, however, especially the Athenians, worship Herakles not as a hero but as a god (4.39.1-2). The rationale for this alternative custom is given by the continuation of the myth as retold by Diodorus: at the moment of his death, Herakles regains consciousness and finds himself on the top of Mount Olympus, in the company of the gods (4.39.2-3). He has awakened to find himself immortalized. He is then adopted by the theoi ‘gods’ on Mount Olympus as one of their own (the technical Greek term is apotheosis). Hera now changes identities - from Herakles’ stepmother to Herakles’ mother (4.39.2). The procedure is specified by Diodorus, and I translate literally (4.39.3): ‘Hera got into her bed and drew Herakles close to her body. She let him fall through her garments to the ground, re-enacting [= making mim#sis of] the genuine birth.’[3]
By now we can see that the name H#rakl#s ‘he who has the glory [kleos] of Hera’ marks both the medium and the message of the hero. When we first consider the meaning of the name of Herakles, our first impression is that this name is illogical: it seems to us strange that Herakles should be named after Hera - that his poetic glory or kleos should depend on Hera. After all, Herakles is persecuted by Hera throughout his heroic lifespan. And yet, without this unseasonality, without the disequilibrium brought about by the persecution of Hera, Herakles would never have achieved the equilibrium of immortality and the kleos that makes his achievements live forever in song.
At the core of the narratives about H#rakl#s is the meaning of h#r"s ‘hero’ as a cognate of H#r$, the goddess of seasonality and equilibrium, and of h"r$, a noun that actually means ‘seasonality’ in the context of designating hero cult (as in Homeric Hymn to Demeter 265).[4] The unseasonality of the h#r"s in mortal life leads to the telos or ‘fulfillment’ of seasonality in immortal life, which is achieved in the setting of hero cult. The cult epithet of Hera as teleia expresses this concept of ‘fulfillment’.[5]
Overall, the narratives about Herakles fit neatly into a model of the hero as I outline it in
§§105-110 of Introduction 3, “The Epic Hero,” on the Heroes website, under the heading Commentaries. I offer here a shortened version of the outline that I develop there.
In terms of that outline, here are three characteristics of the hero: 1. The hero is unseasonal.
The hero is extreme - positively (for example, ‘best’ in whatever category) or negatively (the negative aspect can be a function of the hero’s unseasonality).
The hero is antagonistic toward the god who seems to be most like the hero; antagonism does not rule out an element of attraction (often a “fatal attraction”), which is played out in a variety of ways.!
!All three characteristics converge in the figure of the hero Herakles: 1. He is made unseasonal by Hera.
His unseasonality makes it possible for him to perform his extraordinary Labors. He also commits some deeds that are morally questionable: for example, he destroys the city of Iole and kills her brothers in order to capture her as his bride - even though he is already married to Deianeira (Diodorus of Sicily 4.37.5). It is essential to keep in mind that whenever heroes commit deeds that violate moral codes, such deeds are not condoned by the heroic narrative.
He is antagonistic with Hera throughout his lifespan, but he becomes reconciled with her through death: as we have seen, the hero becomes the virtual son of Hera by being reborn from her. As the hero’s name makes clear, he owes his heroic identity to his kleos and, ultimately, to
Hera. A parallel is the antagonism of Juno, the Roman equivalent of Hera, toward the hero Aeneas in Virgil’s Aeneid.
I add here paraphrases of two relevant details from Herakles narratives as attested in other sources:!
Hera finds an abandoned baby, who happens to be Herakles. She takes a fancy to the baby and breast-feeds it, but the baby bites her. This part of the narrative is reported by Diodorus of Sicily (4.9.6). Another part of the narrative is reported elsewhere: the bite of Herakles leads to a cosmic explosion of milk, a galaxy (Greek galakt- means ‘milk’) - that is, the Milky Way (Hyginus Astronomica 2.43; Eratosthenes Catasterismi 44; “Achilles” Introduction to Aratus 24.).
Herakles’ mortal mother, Alkmene, conceives another son by her mortal husband, Amphitryon, on the same night that when conceives her son Herakles by her immortal paramour, Zeus (Apollodorus 2.4.8). (This twin, Iphikles, is mortal. The other twin, Herakles, is mortal only on his mother’s side. I do not say half-mortal or half-divine in this case, and I will give my reasons later on.)
! We find in the figure of Achilles the same three heroic characteristics that we found in figure of Herakles:
He is unseasonal: in Iliad XXIV 540, Achilles is explicitly described as is pan-a-(h)"r-ios ‘the most unseasonal of them all’.[6] His unseasonality is a major cause of his grief, which makes him “a man of constant sorrow.” In using this phrase, I am thinking here of the title of a traditional American folk song, first recorded by Dick Burnett, a partially blind fiddler from Kentucky. The grief over the unseasonality of Achilles is best expressed by the hero’s mother Thetis in Iliad XVIII 54-60, a passage that will figure prominently in Chapter 03.
He is extreme, mostly in a positive sense, since he is ‘best’ in many categories, and ‘best of the Achaeans’ in the Homeric Iliad; occasionally, however, he is extreme in a negative sense, as in his moments of martial fury. I will have more on such martial fury, otherwise known as “warp spasm,” in Chapter 06.
He is antagonistic to the god Apollo, to whom he bears an uncanny resemblance. I will have more to say about the antagonism of Apollo with the hero Achilles in Chapter 05.
There is another important parallel between Herakles and Achilles: the use of the word kleos in identifying Herakles as a hero is relevant to the fact that the same word is used in identifying Achilles as an epic hero in the Homeric Iliad. In the Iliad, kleos designates not only ‘glory’ but also, more specifically, the glory of the hero as conferred by epic. In Iliad IX 413, as we have seen, Achilles chooses kleos over life itself, and he owes his heroic identity to this kleos.[7]
So we end up where we started, with the hero Achilles. He chooses kleos over life itself, and he owes his heroic identity to this kleos. He achieves the major goal of the hero: to have his identity put on record through kleos. For us, a common way to express this goal is to say: “you’ll go down in history.” For the earliest periods of ancient Greece, the equivalent of this kind of “history” is kleos. He puts his identity on permanent record through kleos.
In J.D. Salinger’s, Catcher in the Rye (1951), Holden Caulfield is given this lesson by the teacher: “The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.”
My guess is that Achilles would answer: in that case, I would rather be immature than mature. Still, as we will see, he will achieve a maturity, a seasonality, at the moment in the Iliad when he comes to terms with his own impending heroic death.
The teacher continues speaking in Salinger’s narrative: “Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their
troubles. You’ll learn from them...if you want to. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.” - the highlighting is mine.
[1] On the linguistic validity of the etymology of his name, see Nagy Homeric Questions 48n79. The problem of the short a in the middle of the form H#r%kl#s can best be addressed by comparing the short a in the middle of the form Alk%thoos, the name of a hero of Megara (cf. Theognis 774) who is closely related thematically to Herakles. I owe this solution to Alexander Nikolaev.
[2] Some may wish to compare the words of Jim Morrison: “try to set the night on fire.” [3] More in dialogues to come about the concept of mim#sis as ‘re-enactment’. [4] Nagy Pindar’s Homer (1990) 140, Greek Mythology and Poetics (1990) 136. [5] As we see for example in Aristophanes Women at the Thesmophoria 973.
[6] Nagy Homeric Questions (1996) 48. [7] Nagy Homeric Responses (2003) 39-48. Chapter 02. Total recall through song
Key word for this chapter: memn"mai, which means ‘I have total recall’ in special contexts and ‘I remember’ in ordinary contexts. The special contexts involve memory by way of song. I will get to the specifics later.
A. Iliad IX 527-528
!!!!!!!!!!! I totally recall [me-mn#-mai] this action that happened a long time ago - it is not something new -
!!!!!!!!!!! recalling exactly how it was. I will tell it in your company - since you are all near and dear ![philoi] to me.
[[In the Sourcebook, we read the more literary rendition of Samuel Butler:
!!!!!!!!!!! I have in my mind an old story - a very old one - and you are all friends, so I will tell it.]]
In the paragraphs that follow, I offer an exegesis of this passage (in the previous chapter, I defined this word exegesis as “an ancient Greek term referring to a close reading of a given text”). I start with the verb memn#mai, containing the root mn#-, which means ‘I remember’. When this verb takes an object in the genitive case, it means ‘I remember’ in the general sense of ‘I have memories of’. But when this verb takes an object in the accusative case, as here, it means ‘I remember’ in the special sense of ‘I remember totally’. !!
Phoenix, an old hero, is about to tell a story that he says he remembers totally.! This story is a micro-narrative embedded in the macro-Narrative that is the Iliad. Before Phoenix tells his story, he speaks to those who are listening to the story, telling them that they are philoi ‘near
and dear’ to him. Who are these ‘near and dear’ listeners? They are Achilles and his best friend, who is the hero Patroklos, as well as the heroes Ajax and Odysseus, and two heralds. The Greek word translated here as ‘near and dear’ is philoi. This word philos (that is the singular form; the plural is philoi) means ‘friend’ as a noun and ‘near and dear’ as an adjective. It is a term of endearment, an emotional term. As we will see later, this emotional term is most important for understanding the story of Phoenix.
What kind of memory does Phoenix have of the story that he is about to tell his ‘near and dear’ listeners? In the original Greek, the word here for the act of remembering is memn"mai, which can be translated as ‘I have total recall’. In order to understand the special kind of memory that is ‘total recall’, I offer two examples from modern popular culture.
The first example is the film Total Recall (1990), directed by Paul Verhoeven, featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sharon Stone, which was based on a science fiction “novelette” by Philip K. Dick, “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale,” first published in The Magazine of Fantasy &
Science Fiction (April 1966).
The second example comes from something that I quoted in the last chapter. It was a quotation from J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, where Holden Caulfield is being given a lesson by his teacher: “The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.” The teacher goes on to say: “Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them...if you want to. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.” - the highlighting is mine. The word “history” here refers simply to keeping a record. For the moment, I highlight the idea of keeping a record.
We have an interesting way of using the word “record” these days - in an era when CD-s have replaced the old vinyl “records.” We still say “record store” when we go shopping for CD-s. I suspect it is because of the idea of memory embedded in the word “record.”
Let us pursue further the concept of keeping a record, recording, putting on record. In the earliest phases of ancient Greek song culture, the process of keeping a record of things that must be remembered, of putting things on the record, was not ordinarily done by way of writing. Writing did not become a widespread technology in the ancient Greek world till around the fifth century BCE, and even then it was confined to the uppermost strata of society. In the archaic period of Greek history (that is, from around the 8th century through the 6th century: for a 5-minute historical sketch, see Introduction 2, on the Heroes website under the heading Texts, Commentaries, More), the idea of recording was mostly a matter of memory and of techniques of memory, mnemonics. It is in this connection that we confront the mentality of total recall.
The wording total recall is meant to convey a special mentality of remembering, of putting things on record, common in traditional societies. In terms of this mentality, to remember is to re-live an experience, including someone else’s experience, including even the experiences of
heroes in the remote past of the heroic age.
The process of remembering in ancient Greek song culture requires a special medium, song (which includes poetry). Such song, such singing, is an oral tradition. The Homeric Iliad derives from an oral tradition of singing, which is a process of composition-in-performance. That is, composition is an aspect of performance and vice versa. In this kind of oral tradition, there is no script, since the technology of writing is not required for composition-in- performance. In Homeric poetry, the basic medium of remembering is heroic song or kleos.
This word kleos ‘glory’, which we considered in Chapter 01, brings us back to the narrative of the old hero Phoenix, who uses this word in the same context of making his remark about his total recall:
02 B. Iliad IX 524-525
!!!!!!!!!!! This is the way [hout"s] that we [= I, Phoenix] learned it, the glories [klea] of men of an earlier time
!!!!!!!!!!! who were heroes [h#r"es] - whenever one of them was overcome by tempestuous anger.
(I have translated these two lines here even more literally than in the version you find in the Sourcebook.)
The word klea, the abbreviated plural form of kleos, is combined here with andr"n ‘of men’ and h#r""n ‘of heroes [h#r"es]’. This expression klea andr"n | h#r""n ‘the glories of men who were heroes’, or a shorter form of the expression, klea andr"n ‘the glories of men’, is used in Homeric poetry to refer to epic narrative. When Phoenix uses this expression here, he is referring to an epic
narrative that he is about to tell about the hero Meleager. As we will see, this same expression klea andr"n (h#r""n) ‘glories of men (who were heroes)’ applies not only to the epic narrative about Meleager. It applies also to the epic narrative about Achilles, which is the Iliad.
In general, the word kleos applies to Homeric poetry as performed by the master Narrator of that poetry. Etymologically, kleos is a noun derived from the verb kluein ‘hear’, and it means ‘that which is heard’. In the Iliad, the master Narrator declares that the epic he narrates is something he ‘hears’ from goddesses of poetic memory called the Muses, who know everything because they were present when everything was done and when everything was said. Here is the key wording. 02 C. Iliad II 484-487 !!!!!!!!!!! And now, tell me, O Muses, you who live in your Olympian abodes, !!!!!!!!!!! since you are goddesses and you were there and you know
everything, !!!!!!!!!!! but we [= the Narrator] only hear the kleos and we know nothing
!!!!!!!!!!! - who were the chiefs and princes of the Danaans [= the Greeks]?
[[I have translated the first three lines here even more literally than in the version you find in the Sourcebook.]] !!!!!!!!!!!
When we read this passage for the first time, our first impression may be that the Narrator is making a modest statement about the limitations of his own knowledge. In fact, however, what we are seeing here is just the opposite. The Narrator is making a most proud and boastful statement. He is boasting that his mind is directly connected to what the Muses as goddesses of memory actually saw and heard. The Muses ‘tell’ him what they saw and heard. What he narrates about heroes and even gods is exactly what the Muses saw. What he quotes from the spoken words of heroes and even of gods is exactly what the Muses heard. The Narrator’s mind is supposed to see and hear what the Muses saw and heard. His mind has the power of total recall. The Narrator here is calling on the Muses as goddesses of memory to tell him the part of the Troy narrative known as the Catalogue of Ships. The Muses are expected to tell the Narrator exactly, and the Narrator will tell his listeners exactly. This part of the Troy narrative catalogues all the important details about which warriors came to Troy in how many ships, and so on; many modern readers get distracted and even bored when they read through the Catalogue, but it was of the greatest cultural interest and importance to the listeners of the Iliad in ancient times. So important was the Catalogue that the Narrator needed special powers of memory to get it right. That is why the Narrator here prays to the Muses, as if he had just started his overall narration. (In fact, however, he has already prayed to ‘the Muse’ at the start of the Iliad).
And these Muses, as we have just seen, are supposed to know absolutely everything. They are all-knowing, that is, omniscient. So the omniscient Muses are goddesses of total recall, and their absolute power of recall is expressed by an active form of the verb mn#- in the sense of ‘remind’ (II 492). The master Narrator of the Iliad receives from these goddesses their absolute power of total recall when he prays to them to tell him everything about the Achaean forces that
sailed to Troy (II 484, 491-492). Inspired by the omniscient Muses, the master Narrator becomes an omniscient Narrator. Although he says he will not exercise the option of telling everything in full, deciding instead to tell only the salient details by concentrating on the names of the leaders of the warriors who sailed to Troy and on the precise number of each leader’s ships (II 493), the master Narrator insists on his power of total recall.[1] The very idea of such mental power is basic to Homeric poetry.!!
The Narrator is saying here that he does not have to know anything: all he has to do is to ‘hear the kleos’. Since the goddesses of memory were there when the heroic actions happened, and since they saw and heard everything, they know everything. The Narrator needs to know nothing, he needs to experience nothing. To repeat, all he has to do is to ‘hear the kleos’ from the goddesses
of memory and then to narrate what he is hearing to those who are listening to him.
What the omniscient Muses see and what they hear is a total recall: they recall everything that has ever happened, whereas the Narrator only hears ‘that which is heard’, which is the kleos
from the Muses.[2] The Narrator of epic depends on these goddesses to tell him exactly what they saw and to quote for him exactly what they heard.
But what about a story-within-a-story, that is, where a narrator narrates a micro-narrative within the macro-Narrative of the Iliad? In such a situation, the narrator of that micro-narrative has to reassure his listeners that he has total recall that matches the total recall of the Narrator of the macro-Narrative, which is the Iliad. This is what happens when the old hero Phoenix, in Iliad IX, begins to narrate to the hero Achilles and to the other listeners the story of the earlier hero Meleager. Phoenix is telling this story about Meleager because he wants to persuade Achilles to accept the offer of Agamemnon. That is the purpose of this narrator. As we will see, however, the purpose of the master Narrator of the Iliad is different: it goes far beyond the purpose of Phoenix. !!
When Phoenix says he has total recall, totally recalling the epic action he narrates, his power of memory depends on the power of the omniscient Narrator who tells the framing story of the Iliad, and that power in turn depends on the power of the omniscient Muses themselves, who are given credit for controlling the master Narrative. Phoenix has total recall because he uses the medium of poetry and because his mind is connected to the power source of poetry.
As we have seen, Phoenix refers to his story as klea andr"n | h#r""n ‘the glories [kleos plural] of men of an earlier time who were heroes’ (IX 524-525). It is a story about the hero Meleager and his anger against his people, parallel to the framing story about the hero Achilles and his anger against his own people, the Achaeans (as we saw in Chapter 01, these people are also known as the Argives or the Danaans). The telling of the story by Phoenix is an activation of epic within epic.
Phoenix is a hero in the epic of the Homeric Iliad, and this epic is a narrative about the distant heroic past - from the standpoint of listeners who live in a present tense devoid of contemporary heroes. But Phoenix here is narrating to listeners who live in that distant heroic past tense. And his narrative-within-a-narrative is about heroes who lived in an even more distant heroic past tense.
There are close parallels between the framing epic about the anger of Achilles and the framed epic about the anger of Meleager. Just as the framed epic about Meleager is a poetic recollection of the klea ‘glories’ of heroes of the past, so too is the framing epic about Achilles. That framing epic, which is the Iliad, is a poetic recollection by the Muse whom the master Narrator invokes to sing the story of the anger of Achilles (I 1). As the narrator of a framed epic, Phoenix does not have to invoke the goddesses of memory, the Muses, since the Narrator of the framing epic has already invoked them for him.
In performing the klea andr"n | h#r""n ‘the glories [kleos plural] of men of an earlier time who were heroes’ (IX 524-525), Phoenix expresses himself in the medium of poetry because he is speaking inside a medium that is poetry. He is speaking in poetry just like the master Narrator who is quoting him. When Phoenix says memn#mai, he is in effect saying: I have total recall by way of speaking in the medium of poetry.
The basic rhythmical unit of this medium of poetry, which calls itself kleos or klea andr"n, is called the dactylic hexameter. Here is the basic rhythm of this unit: - u u - u u - u u - u u - u u - -. (“-” = long syllable, “u” = short syllable) {LINK Nagy recites Iliad I 1-13.}
Over 15,000 of these dactylic hexameter lines make up the Iliad.
When the master Narrator speaks the kleos or klea andr"n, he is speaking in dactylic hexameters. When the master Narrator quotes characters speaking, whether these characters are heroes or gods, they too are speaking the kleos or klea andr"n, and so they too are imagined as speaking in dactylic hexameters. That is the way the Muses, who saw everything and heard everything, speak the kleos or klea andr"n. Notionally, the Muses heard the heroes and gods speaking in dactylic hexameters, and then the Muses spoke these dactylic hexameters for the master Narrator to hear, so that he may speak them to his listeners.
Now we come to another example of klea andr"n ‘glories of men (heroes)’. It occurs at a slightly earlier point in the master Narrative. In Iliad IX 189, Achilles himself is pictured as singing the klea andr"n in his tent. The master Narrator does not say what the subject of this song sung by Achilles may have been. All we are told is that Achilles was singing the klea andr"n. And, at this point in the narrative, the only listener of the klea andr"n sung by Achilles is Patroklos. If it weren’t for Patroklos, Achilles would be singing to himself. Here is the key wording.
D. Iliad IX 185-195
When they [= Phoenix along with his fellow delegates, Odysseus and Ajax] reached the ships and tents of the Myrmidons, they found Achilles playing on a lyre, a beautiful one, of exquisite workmanship, and its cross-bar was of silver. It was part of the spoils that he had taken when he destroyed the city of Eëtion, and he was now diverting himself with it and singing the glories of men [klea andr"n]. He was alone with Patroklos, who sat facing him and said nothing, waiting till he [= Achilles] would leave off singing. Odysseus and Ajax now came in - Odysseus leading the way - and stood before him. Achilles sprang from his seat with the lyre still in his hand, and Patroklos, when he saw the guests, rose also.
What we see here is a clue about Achilles himself as a virtuoso performer of song. He is not only the subject of songs that are the klea andr"n ‘glories of men (heroes)’. He is also the performer of such songs. And the same goes for Patroklos, the meaning of whose name is relevant, as we will see later.
In a lecture delivered by the late Albert B. Lord about this medium of heroic song, he singles out the Homeric expression klea andr"n ‘glories of men (heroes)’:
{LINK: “Albert Lord talks about heroic song.”} Lord is comparing here the ancient Homeric medium of heroic song with media of heroic song
that have survived into the twentieth century. Among these survivals is the tradition of heroic song in the South Slavic areas of the Balkans, specifically in the former Yugoslavia. Lord (who died in 1991) and his teacher Milman Parry (who died in 1935) pioneered the systematic study of oral traditions of such heroic song in the former Yugoslavia, especially in Bosnia and in parts of Serbia. Both these scholars were professors at Harvard University (Parry died a violent death at age 33, when he was still only an assistant professor at Harvard; Lord eventually succeeded Parry as professor there, and later became one of the most accomplished and respected senior professors in the history of the university). Both Parry and Lord were Classicists as well as ethnographers, and their knowledge of Homeric poetry turned out to be a valuable source of comparative insights in their study of the living oral traditions of the South Slavic peoples. For an introduction to the pathfinding research of Parry and Lord, I recommend the well-known book of Albert Lord, The Singer of Tales (Harvard University Press 1960; in 2000, there was a second edition published by Stephen Mitchell and Gregory Nagy, who together wrote a new introduction).
In the clip from Lord’s lecture mentioning the klea andr"n ‘glories of men (heroes)’, he refers to one of the greatest singers whose songs were studied by Parry and Lord, Avdo Me&edovi'. One
of Avdo’s songs, recorded by Milman Parry of Harvard, contained as many as 12,000 lines. What is a “line” in the case of South Slavic heroic songs? The basic rhythmical unit is the heroic decasyllable, and the basic rhythm of this unit is
u - u - u - u - u.
This was the rhythmical framework for the wording used by singers like Avdo in composing their heroic songs.
{LINK: “Avdo sings a song of heroes.”}
Let us return to the narrative told by Phoenix... As we saw in Passage A, the key word that introduces the narrative of Phoenix is memn#mai, which I translate as ‘I have total recall, I totally recall’.
Phoenix has total recall because he uses the medium of song and because his mind is connected to the power source of song; in fact, he has to use song, because he is inside the medium of song. To repeat, he is speaking in dactylic hexameters, just like the Narrator who quotes him. When Phoenix says memn#mai, he is in effect saying: ‘I have total recall by means of using the medium of song’.
Similarly, as we have already seen in Chapter 01, kleos means not just glory but glory achieved by way of using the medium of song. This medium is a way of speaking in a special way, of using special speech.
I mention, in passing, Richard P. Martin’s basic finding in The Language of Heroes (Cornell UP 1989): he shows that narratives within the master Narrative of the Iliad contain markers for
and about the listeners of the master Narrative. A special way of speaking, a special speech, marks what is being performed, not just said.
Earlier, at Iliad IX 524-525, Phoenix says (as we saw already): !!!!!!!!!!! This is the way [hout"s] that we [= I, Phoenix] learned it, the glories [klea] of men of
an earlier time
!!!!!!!!!!! who were heroes [h#r"es] - whenever one of them was overcome by tempestuous anger.
The poetry and song of kleos is a performance.
So, things that we do in everyday ways, like remembering, can be done by way of song in other cultures. A culture that uses song as a speech act is what I have been calling a song culture.
The narrative that Phoenix quotes is a beautiful example of compression (on the principle of compression, see Chapter 01). The climax of this compressed narrative will be the words of a woman who is crying. Her name is Kleopatra. I now turn to this climax, as narrated by Phoenix... 02 E. Iliad IX 550-602
So long as Meleager was in the field things went badly for the Kouretes, and for all their numbers they could not hold their ground under the city walls; but in the course of time anger [kholos] entered Meleager in his thinking [noos], as will happen sometimes even to a sensible man. He was incensed with his mother Althaea, and therefore stayed at home with his wife, whom he had courted as a youth, fair Kleopatra, who was daughter of Marpessa daughter of Euenos, and of Id#s a man then living. It was he who took his bow and faced King Apollo himself for fair Marpessa’s sake; her father and mother then named her Alcyone, because her mother had lamented with the plaintive strains of the halcyon, a bird of much lamentation [penthos], when Phoebus Apollo had carried her off. Meleager, then, stayed at home with wife, nursing the anger which he felt by reason of his mother’s curses. His mother, grieving for the death of her brother, prayed to the gods, and beat the earth with her hands, calling upon Hades and on terrifying Persephone as she went down on her knees, and her bosom was wet with tears as she prayed that
they should kill her son - and an Erinys that roams in darkness and knows no mercy heard her, from below in Erebos. Then was heard the din of battle about the gates of Calydon, and the dull thump of the battering against their walls. Now the elders [[verse 574]] of the Aetolians sought out Meleager; they sent the chief of their priests [[verse 575]], and begged him to come out and help them, promising him a great reward. They told him to choose fifty acres, the most fertile in the plain of Calydon, the one-half a vineyard and the other an open plough-land. The old warrior Oineus [[verse 581]] implored him, standing at the threshold of his room and beating the doors in supplication. His sisters [[verse 584]] and his mother [[verse 584]] herself implored him over and over again, but he kept on refusing them all the more; those of his comrades [[verse 584]] who were nearest and dearest [philtatoi] to him also implored him, but they could not move him till the enemy was battering at the very doors
of his chamber, and the Kouretes had scaled the walls and were setting fire to the city. Then at last his sorrowing wife [[verse 590]] detailed the horrors that befall those whose city is taken; she reminded him how the men are slain, and the city is given over to the flames, while the women and children are carried off into captivity; when he heard all this, his heart was touched, and he put on his armor to go forth. Thus yielding to his heart he saved the city of the Aetolians; but they now gave him nothing of those rich rewards that they had offered earlier, and though he saved the city he took nothing by it. Do not then, my near and dear one [philos], think this way; do not let an otherworldly being [daim!n] steer you in this direction. When the ships are burning it will be a harder matter to save them.
I note with great interest here the name of Kleopatra, the wife of Meleager. (This figure is not to be confused with the historical figure Kleopatra, also spelled in the Romanized form Cleopatra.) I also note with interest the second name of the wife of Meleager, which is Alcyone. In ancient Greek lore, the alcyon / halcyon is a bird that sings songs of lament over the destruction of cities. The emotions of Achilles, which shape the macro-Narrative of the Iliad, can be understood by thinking through the emotions of Meleager, which shape the micro-narrative told by Phoenix in Iliad IX. A key to these emotions is the principle of an ascending scale of affection. This principle is activated in the Meleager narrative, which calls itself klea andr!n (IX 524), told in the midst of philoi (IX 528).
The two emotions that we see foregrounded in this narrative are terror and pity. The philosopher Aristotle (4th century) thinks that the emotions of terror (phobos) and pity (eleos) are essential for understanding tragedy. The same can be said, as we will see, for understanding the epic of the Iliad.
In this connection, it is important to consider again the meaning of philoi ‘friends, near-and- dear ones’, and this word’s links with the emotion of love.
The lament of Kleopatra highlights the emotion of sadness or sorrow or grief. The Meleager narrative explores the combinations and permutations of emotions in a hero, especially sadness, anger, and love.
In the case of sadness and love, I can show some analogies in contemporary popular media:
{LINK: “Implants, just implants.”} {LINK: “You play beautifully.”}
Both these film clips illustrate the idea that the musical recalling of a memory is the “same thing” as the reliving of an experience, with all its emotions. If you “recall” someone else’s experience by way of song or music, then that experience and all its emotions become your own, even if they had not been originally yours.
The total recall of Phoenix in telling the story of Meleager focuses on the wife of Meleager, named Kleopatra, and on the meaning of her name Kleopatra. This name Kleopatra in the
micro-narrative will be relevant to the name of Patroklos, the best friend of Achilles, in the macro- Narrative.! In order to make this point, I now present a shortened version of an argument that I make in my essay “Homer and Greek Myth,” the full text of which is available on the website.
As Achilles contemplates the decisions he has to make in the making of an epic that centers on his own epic actions, he is invited by Phoenix to contemplate the decisions made by an earlier hero in the making of an earlier epic. As we saw earlier, that hero is Meleager, who figures in an earlier epic called the klea andr"n | h#r""n ‘the glories of men who were heroes’ (IX 524-525). The framed epic about Meleager, quoted as a direct speech by the framing epic, is introduced by way of a special word hout"s ‘thus’, signaling the activation of a special form of speech otherwise known as the ainos.[3] Technically, an ainos is a performance conveying a meaning that needs to be interpreted and then applied in moments of making moral decisions. [4]!!!!
The ainos that Phoenix tells in the Iliad, drawing on narratives concerning the hero Meleager, is intended to persuade Achilles to accept an offer made by Agamemnon. That is the short-range intention of Phoenix as a narrator narrating within the master Narration that is the Iliad. But the long-range intention of the master Narrator is quite different from the short-range intention of Phoenix. The master Narrative shows that the embedded narrative of Phoenix was misguided - that is, misguided by hindsight. If Achilles had accepted the offer of Agamemnon, as Phoenix had intended, this acceptance would have undermined the epic reputation of Achilles.[5]
So the reaction of Achilles to the ainos performed by Phoenix needs to be viewed within the framework of the master Narrative performed by the master Narrator. From the standpoint of Achilles as a character who takes shape within the plot of the overall epic that is the Iliad, the consequences of his decisions in reacting to the subplot of the epic about Meleager are still unclear at the moment when he makes these decisions. From the standpoint of the master Narrator who narrates the plot of the Iliad, on the other hand, the consequences are quite clear, since the master Narration takes shape by way of an interaction between the framed micro- narrative about the anger of Meleager and the framing macro-Narrative about the anger of Achilles. The short- range agenda of Phoenix and Achilles will be transformed into the long- range agenda of the master Narrative, which will ultimately correspond to what actually happens to Achilles in his own heroic life. In the world of epic, heroes live out their lives by living the narratives that are their lives.
The point of the story as told by Phoenix is that Achilles must identify with those who are philoi ‘near and dear’ - and must therefore rejoin his comrades in war. Phoenix himself, along with Odysseus and Ajax, is a representative of these comrades by virtue of being sent as a delegate to Achilles. More must be said about the word philos (singular) / philoi (plural), which as we have seen means ‘friend’ as a noun and ‘near and dear’ as an adjective. The translation ‘dear’ conveys the fact that this word has an important emotional component. As we will see, the meaning of the framed micro-narrative of Phoenix emerges from the framing macro- Narrative of the Iliad. As we will also see, the central theme has to do with the power of emotions, and the central character turns out to be someone who is not mentioned a single time in the framed micro-narrative: that someone is Achilles’ best friend, the hero Patroklos.
From the standpoint of Phoenix as narrator, the word philoi applies primarily to Achilles at the moment when he begins to tell his story (IX 528). But this word applies also to the whole group of epic characters who are listening to the telling of this story. This group, as we have seen, is composed of (1) Odysseus and Ajax, who are the other two delegates besides Phoenix; (2) the two heralds who accompany the three delegates; (3) Achilles himself; and (4) Patroklos. Inside the story told by Phoenix, the comrades who approach Meleager as delegates are the philtatoi, that
is, those persons who are ‘nearest and dearest’ to the hero (IX 585-587). So, from the short-range perspective of Phoenix as the narrator of the ainos about Meleager, the three comrades who approach Achilles as delegates must be the persons who are nearest and dearest to him. From the long-range perspective of the master Narrator, however, it is not Phoenix and the two other delegates but Patroklos who must be nearest and dearest to Achilles. Later on in the Iliad, after Patroklos is killed in battle, Achilles recognizes this hero as the one who was all along the philtatos, the ‘nearest and dearest’ of them all (XVII 411, 655).[6]
The story about Meleager as narrated by Phoenix is already anticipating such a long-range recognition. The micro-narrative indicates, by way of the sequence of delegates who are sent to Meleager, that hero’s ascending scale of affection: from elders [[verse 574]] to priests [[verse 575]] to father [[verse 581]] to sisters [[verse 584]] to mother [[verse 584]] to comrades [[verse 584]].[7] At first it seems as if the comrades are at the top of Meleager’s ascending scale of affection, and they are actually described by Phoenix as philtatoi, the ‘nearest and dearest’ (IX 585-587). But there is someone who is even nearer and dearer to Meleager than the comrades. In the logic of the story, that someone turns out to be the wife of Meleager (IX 588-596). In Meleager’s ascending scale of affection, the wife of the hero ultimately outranks even the comrades approaching him as delegates. Likewise in Achilles’ ascending scale of affection, there is someone who ultimately outranks the comrades approaching him as delegates. For Achilles that someone is Patroklos, who was all along the philtatos, the ‘nearest and dearest’ of them all (XVII 411, 655). The name of this hero in its full form, Patrokle#s, matches in meaning the name given to the wife of Meleager in the ainos narrated by Phoenix: she is Kleopatra (IX 556). These two names, Patrokle#s / Kleopatra, both mean ‘the one who has the glory [kleos] of the ancestors [pateres]’.[8] Both these names amount to a periphrasis of the expression klea andr"n | h#r""n ‘the glories [kleos plural] of men of an earlier time who were heroes’ (IX 524-525), which refers to the ainos narrated by Phoenix to a group of listeners including not only the delegates approaching Achilles but also Achilles and Patroklos themselves (IX 527-528). Phoenix is presuming that all his listeners are philoi ‘near and dear’ to him (IX 528).
Even before the arrival of the delegates, Achilles himself is pictured as singing the glories of heroes, the klea andr"n (IX 189). At this moment, he is alone except for one person. With him is Patroklos, who is intently listening to him and waiting for his own turn to sing, ready to start at whatever point Achilles leaves off singing (IX 190-191). As Patroklos gets ready to continue the song sung by Achilles, the song of Achilles get ready to become the song of Patroklos. So the hero whose name conveys the very idea of klea andr"n ‘glories of men (who are heroes)’ is figured here as the personal embodiment of the klea andr"n.[9]!
The ainos as told by Phoenix, to which he refers as klea andr"n (IX 524), connects with the song of Achilles, to which the master Narrator refers likewise as klea andr"n (IX 189). The
ainos also connects with Patroklos as the one person who is nearest and dearest to Achilles. Patroklos is at the very top of that hero’s ascending scale of affection.
What must mean more than anything else to Achilles is not only Patroklos himself but also the actual meaning of the name Patrokle#s, which conveys the idea of the klea andr"n. For Achilles, the words klea andr"n represent the master narrative in the actual process of being narrated in the epic of the Iliad. For Achilles, it is a narrative of his own making. And it is narrative in the making.
Just as the song of Achilles is identified with the master Narrative of the Iliad, so also the style of this hero’s language is identified with the overall style of the master Narrator. In other words, the language of Achilles mirrors the language of the master Narrator. Empirical studies of the
language of Homeric diction have shown that the language of Achilles is made distinct from the language of other heroes quoted in the Iliad, and this distinctness carries over into the language of the master Narrator, which is thus made distinct from the language of other narrators of epic.[10] It is as if the klea andr"n as sung by Achilles - and as heard by Patroklos - were the model for the overall klea andr"n as sung by Homer.
The ainos as told by Phoenix, to which he refers as klea andr"n (IX 524), connects with the overall klea andr"n as told by the master Narrator. The connection is made by way of poetic conventions distinguishing the ainos from epic. One of these conventions is a set of three features characterizing the rhetoric of the ainos. Unlike epic, the ainos requires three qualifications of its listeners in order to be understood:[11]
The listeners must be sophoi ‘skilled’ in understanding the message encoded in the poetry. That is, they must be mentally qualified.
They must be agathoi ‘noble’. That is, they must be morally qualified.
They must be philoi ‘near and dear’ to each other and to the one who is telling them the ainos. That is, they must be emotionally qualified. Communication is achieved through a special sense of community, that is, through recognizing “the ties that bind.”
Each of these three features of the ainos is made explicit in the lyric poetry of Pindar, which refers to itself as ainos.[12] One of these features is also made explicit in the ainos narrated by Phoenix, that is, in the klea andr"n | h#r""n, ‘the glories [kleos plural] of men of an earlier time who were heroes’ (IX 524-525). When it comes to the emotional qualifications required for understanding the ainos spoken by Phoenix, we have already seen that the speaker refers to his listeners as philoi ‘near and dear’ to him (IX 528). So the emotional requirements of the ainos are made quite explicit. By contrast, when it comes to the moral requirements for understanding the ainos, they are merely implicit in the word philoi. The moral message as encoded in his ainos becomes explicit only at a later point, once the outcome of the master Narrative is clarified. That point is reached when Patroklos is killed while fighting for his comrades. It is only then that Achilles, for whom the story about the anger of Meleager was intended, ultimately recognizes the moral message of that story.
This kind of recognition, to borrow from the wording used in the lyric poetry of Pindar, shows that the listener has become sophos ‘skilled’ in understanding the message encoded in the ainos. In the story told by Phoenix, that message is conveyed by the figure of Kleopatra, who is nearest and dearest to Meleager in that hero’s ascending scale of affection. In the logic of the embedded narrative, that figure promotes the moral principle of fighting for one’s comrades, just as the figure of Patroklos, who is nearest and dearest to Achilles, promotes the same principle in the logic of the master Narrative.
Patroklos not only promotes that principle: he exemplifies it through his own epic actions, thereby forfeiting his life. Then, responding to the lesson learned from the death of Patroklos, Achilles will express his willingness to forfeit his own life in order to avenge the death of Patroklos, thereby justifying the principle for which Patroklos had died (Iliad XVIII 90-126).
Plato shows his understanding of this moral principle as developed in the master Narrative of the Iliad: in the Apology (28c-d), we see a paraphrase of the relevant verses of the Iliad (XVIII
90-104), along with some quotations of the original wording. Likewise in Plato’s Symposium (179e-180a), we see another paraphrase of the same verses. In the case of this second paraphrase, however, the choice made by Achilles to forfeit his life in order to avenge the death of Patroklos appears to be conflated with another choice that faces the hero. At an earlier point in the Iliad, in the context of the so-called Embassy Scene where Achilles is speaking to Phoenix and the other
delegates (IX 410-416), he says that he must decide between two k#res ‘fates’ (IX 411): either he dies at a ripe old age after a safe nostos ‘homecoming’ to Phthia or he dies young on the battlefield in Troy - and thereby wins for himself a kleos ‘glory’ that is aphthiton ‘unwilting’ (IX 413).
Plato’s apparent conflation of two choices facing Achilles turns out to be justified: the two choices are in fact one choice. In the Embassy Scene of the Iliad, when Achilles says he must choose between two k#res ‘fates’ (IX 411), either a nostos ‘homecoming’ or a kleos ‘glory’ that is aphthiton ‘unwilting’ (IX 413), he is actually not yet ready to make his choice: the two alternative fates have simply been foretold for him by his mother, the goddess Thetis (IX
410-411). Later on, after Patroklos has been killed, Achilles is facing the same choice, but by now he has made his decision. He says that there cannot be a homecoming for him (nosteîn: XVIII 90) because he must kill Hector in order to avenge the death of Patroklos, and, once he kills Hector, his own death in battle will become a certainty (XVIII 90-93), just as his mother had foretold - and as she now foretells again (XVIII 96-97). By choosing to kill Hector, Achilles chooses to die young on the battlefield, and he refers to this death as his inevitable k#r ‘fate’ (XVIII 115). As his compensation, however, he will now win kleos ‘glory’ for himself (XVIII 121).
So, ultimately, Achilles decides to choose kleos over life itself. Earlier on, however, when the choice is first formulated in the Embassy Scene, it is not yet clear which of the two k#res ‘fates’ (IX 411) will be chosen by the hero - whether it will be a nostos ‘homecoming’ or the kleos ‘glory’ that is aphthiton ‘unwilting’ (IX 413). The hero is saying that he loves life more than any property he can win for himself by fighting in Troy, and such property is defined in
terms of raiding cattle in particular and acquiring wealth in general (IX 401-408). Still earlier on, in the so-called Quarrel Scene at the very start of the Iliad, in Rhapsody I, such property is
being defined in terms of the women as well as the cattle and the general wealth that the hero has already acquired in the course of raiding the Aeolic territories in the vicinity of Troy.
(The word Aeolic refers to the Greek dialect spoken on the island of Lesbos and the facing mainland of Asia Minor, as well as the dialect spoken in Thessaly, the homeland of Achilles.) At the start, the hero’s sense of tim# ‘honor’ is simply a function of all the property he has acquired. The prime example is Briseis, a woman whom Achilles captured in one of his raiding expeditions in the Aeolic territories of Lesbos and the facing mainland of Asia Minor: in the Quarrel Scene at the beginning of the Iliad, when Briseis is forcibly taken from Achilles by Agamemnon, she is treated merely as a war-prize, a trophy, and the hero’s loss is seen as a loss
of property. And yet, though the hero’s honor is being expressed exclusively in terms of property in the Quarrel Scene of Rhapsody I, things have changed by the time Achilles speaks to Phoenix in the Embassy Scene of Rhapsody IX. By then, Achilles has rethought the loss of Briseis. By now this loss has become the loss of a personal relationship, and Achilles even says he loves Briseis as he would love a wife (IX 340-343).
So the ainos of Phoenix about Meleager, a hero who seems at first to love his wife more than he loves his own comrades, will now take on a special meaning for the hero of the master Narrative that is the Iliad. But there are vital questions that remain: does Achilles love his would-be wife more than he loves his comrades - or even more than life itself? Here is where the name of Meleager’s own wife, Kleopatra, becomes essential. As we have seen, the meaning of this character’s name is parallel to the meaning of Patrokle#s, the name of the one character who means more to Achilles than anyone else in the whole world. After Patroklos is killed, this hero is recognized as the one single character who was nearest and dearest to Achilles. Achilles now says that he has all along valued Patroklos as much as he has valued his own life (XVIII 80-82).
So the hero Ajax misses the point when he accuses Achilles of loving Briseis more than he loves his comrades (IX 622-638). Achilles loves his would-be wife the same way that Meleager loves Kleopatra, but there is a deeper meaning to be found in that hero’s love for Kleopatra, and that deeper meaning has to do with the relevance of the name of Kleopatra to Achilles. What Achilles loves more than anything else in the whole world is what the name of Kleopatra means to Meleager - and what the name of his own nearest and dearest comrade Patroklos means to him. As we have seen, these two names Patrokle#s / Kleopatra both mean ‘the one who has the glory [kleos] of the ancestors [pateres]’, and both these names amount to a periphrasis of the expression klea andr"n | h#r""n ‘the glories [kleos plural] of men of an earlier time who were heroes’ (IX 524-525).
Just as Patroklos made the moral choice of loving his comrades more than life itself, actually giving up his life for them, so also Achilles will now make the moral choice of giving up his own life for his comrade Patroklos - and for the meaning of Patroklos. The meaning of the name of Patroklos, ‘the one who has the glory [kleos] of the ancestors [pateres]’, recapitulates the epic choice of Achilles, who ultimately opts for kleos over life itself. That is why the epic kleos chosen by Achilles must be aphthiton ‘unwilting’ forever (IX 413): the kleos of Achilles is like a flower so beautiful that it must not ever lose its divine vitality.
! ! !
[1] Nagy Homer’s Text and Language (2004) 175n78; cf. 80n75. [2] Nagy Best of the Achaeans (1979) 1§§2-4. [3] Nagy Pindar’s Homer (1990) 7§1n4. [4] Nagy Pindar’s Homer (1990)
7§§1-4.
[5] Nagy Homeric Questions (1996) 142-143. [6] Nagy Best of the Achaeans (1979) 6§15. [7] The term ascending scale of affections is explained in Nagy Best of the Achaeans (1979) 6§15.
[8] Nagy Best of the Achaeans (1979) 6§§15, 17-19. [9] Nagy Poetry as Performance (1996) 72-73, Plato’s Rhapsody and Homer’s Music (2002)
17.
[10] Martin The Language of Heroes (1989) 225, 227, 233, 237.
[11] Nagy Pindar’s Homer (1990) 6§5.
[12] Nagy Pindar’s Homer (1990) 6§§5-8. Chapter 03: The poetics of lament
There are two key words for this chapter: akhos and penthos, and the meaning of both words is ‘grief, sorrow; public expression of grief, sorrow, by way of lamentation or keening’
A. Iliad I 188-191
The son of Peleus [= Achilles] felt grief [akhos], and his heart within his shaggy breast was divided [190] whether to draw his sword, push the others aside, and kill the son of Atreus [= Agamemnon], or to restrain himself and check his anger [kholos].
The word akhos is connected with the name of Achilles in the Iliad. And the meaning of the word akhos, which conveys intense grief, sorrow, pain, is connected with a central theme that is linked with Achilles in the Homeric Iliad: Achilles is “a man of constant sorrow.” I have
already used this phrase once before, in Chapter 01, where I was thinking of the title of a traditional American folk song. I am thinking now also of an expression in Isaiah 53:3 as translated in the King James Bible: ‘a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief’. One of my major research projects over the years has been the study of this central theme of grief and sorrow as experienced by Achilles and his people, the Achaeans. Essential for such a study are the principal words that express all the grief and sorrow, namely, akhos and its synonym penthos.
We can see this theme of grief and sorrow already at the very beginning of the Iliad. As Passage A shows, Achilles experiences akhos right away, and the grief, sorrow, and pain of this akhos modulates right away into kholos, anger.!
Just as the word akhos is connected with the name of Achilles, its synonym penthos is connected with the name of an Amazon called Penthesileia. The story of Penthesileia the Amazon is preserved in an ancient plot summary attributed to Proclus:
03 B. From an ancient plot-summary (by Proclus) of the lost epic Aithiopis (‘Song of the Ethiopians’)
The Amazon Penthesileia, daughter of Ares and Thracian by birth, comes to Troy as an ally of the Trojans. In the middle of her aristeia [= greatest epic moments], Achilles kills her and the Trojans arrange for her funeral. Thersites, reviling and reproaching Achilles by saying that he loved Penthesileia, is killed by Achilles.
What we read here is all that we have left, unfortunately, about Penthesileia the Amazon in this ancient plot-summary.[1]
We must ponder a basic question about the plot of this lost epic, the Aithiopis, as retold by Proclus in his plot-summary. The question is this: when Thersites says that Achilles is in love with the Amazon Penthesileia, why is Achilles angry enough to kill him? My answer is this: it would seem that Achilles is in a state of denial about having fallen in love with the beautiful and powerful Amazon whom he has just killed.
As we know from the narrative about Thersites in Iliad II, we are dealing here with a character who tells the truth about heroes, even though he tells it in a distorted and offensive way that make the offended heroes want to kill him. A close reading of the Thersites narrative in Iliad II shows that there is a kernel of truth in what he says about Agamemnon and Achilles when he speaks in public about the big quarrel between those two heroes.[2] Thersites is lucky to escape with his life for what he says here in the Iliad, but his luck finally runs out in the Aithiopis.
We know that Thersites was on to something when he mocked Achilles for falling in love with Penthesileia. We know this from the evidence of ancient vase-paintings, dating from the sixth and fifth centuries, where we see depictions of the actual moment when Achilles kills the beautiful Amazon. Here are two examples:
LINK: two vase paintings, showing the killing of the Amazon Penthesileia by Achilles [[http:// www.theoi.com/image/img_penthesileia.jpg (late 6th c.) http://www.easypedia.gr/el/images/shared/0/02/ Akhilleus_Penthesileia_Staatliche_Antikensammlungen_2688.jpg (mid fifth c.)]]
These evocative paintings, which show the eye contact between Achilles and Penthesileia at the precise moment when he plunges his weapon into her beautiful body, convey a remarkable convergence of themes linked with death and sex - and we will observe many other examples of such convergence as we proceed in our readings from ancient Greek song culture. Coming up, in Chapter 04, is an example from the lyric poetry of Sappho.
A big question remains: why would Achilles fall in love with the Amazon Penthesileia in particular? A key to the answer is the name of this Amazon, Penthesileia, which means ‘she who has penthos for the people [l#os]’. This name is a perfect parallel to the name of Achilles, the full form of which can be reconstructed linguistically as *Akhi-l$os and which is understood in Homeric poetry to mean ‘he who has akhos for the people [laos]’.[3] Not only the names of these epic characters but even the characters themselves are beatifully matched. When Achilles and Penthesileia are engaged in mortal combat, as we see in the vase paintings, their eyes meet at the precise moment when he kills her. And what Achilles sees in Penthesileia is a female reflection of
his male self. All along, Penthesileia has been his other self in the feminine gender, as even her name shows, and now he has killed her. The death of Penthesileia is thus a source of grief, sorrow, and overwhelming sadness for Achilles, this man of constant sorrow. Both these epic names - and the epic characters that are tied to them - have to do with themes of lament, as signaled by the words akhos and penthos. Both these words point to the ‘grief’ or ‘sorrow’ or ‘sadness’ of lament.
What is lament? It is a traditional speech-act of crying and singing at the same time, expressing grief, sorrow, sadness. When people like you and me cry, we just cry. When people in a song culture cry, they lament. That is, they sing while they cry, they cry while they sing, and this kind of singing is crying; this kind of crying is singing. The physical aspects of crying are all integrated into the singing: the flow of tears, the choking of the voice, the convulsions of the body, and so on, are all part of the singing.
Anthropologists have collected many examples of laments that are sung and cried by persons in the depths of real grief. I could illustrate here by way of citing performances in Modern Greek contexts. There has been a great deal of ethnographic collecting of and research on laments in Modern Greek song culture. But I choose here instead to focus on a lament in the context of a historically unrelated song culture. So we are dealing here with a typological parallel.
It is Hungarian lament, sung and cried by an old widow who is mourning the deaths of his two sons in war. The lament was recorded many years ago by Béla Bartók, himself a Hungarian. Bartók was not only a celebrated composer and pianist but also a respected ethnographer and ethnomusicologist who studied the song cultures of Eastern Europe and elsewhere. He made live recordings of a wide variety of folk performances, including performances of lament. It was he who recorded the lament that I have chosen as illustration.! !
LINK: “A Hungarian lament.” [[first frame on the left]] It is a well-known fact, learned from ethnographic research on laments, that these sad songs
centering on the death of loved ones can switch to love songs. And not only can laments switch to love songs. The converse also happens: love songs can switch to laments, especially in the case of love songs that center not only on lovers who are lost or dead but also on the loss or death of love itself. Just as laments express sorrow and love together in the course of mourning the death of a loved one, so also love songs can readily express the same two emotions of sorrow and love together. And why should a traditional love song be sad? It is because most traditional love songs are preoccupied with the themes of unrequited love. And, in most song cultures, love songs about unrequited love are felt to be deeply erotic.
I show here an example. It is a Hungarian love song, from the region of Transylvania, and the name of the love song is Szerelem, which means ‘love’. This song was used by the director of the film The English Patient (1996), both at the beginning of the film and also in the course of the action in the film, as for example in an intensely erotic love scene where the Hungarian character in the story of the film plays on an old “phonograph” machine a vinyl record of this love song . You will find this song next to the link for “A Hungarian lament” on the Multimedia page.
LINK: “A Hungarian Love Song.” [[third from left]] I give here the words of the first two stanzas only:
Szerelem, szerelem, átkozott gyötrelem, mért nem virágoztál minden fatetejen? Minden fa tetején,
diófa levelén.
úgy szakisztott volna minden leány s legény. O, love love
accursed torture
why did you not blossom on every treetop?
On the top of every tree, on the leaf of a walnut tree,
so every maiden and unmarried young man would have plucked it.
We see here, when you hear it, an example of stylized crying. That is to say, the singer is not really crying, since the crying is stylized. !!
In most traditional song cultures, including Greek song culture, laments and love songs are performed primarily by women, and many of the formal gestures of lament are specific to women. The performance of songs by women is a most important matter in ancient Greek song culture. And it is a most important matter to consider right now, as we study the Homeric Iliad, since the traditions of such performances pervade the Iliad. In fact, as we will see here and in chapters to come, Homeric poetry needs to be rethought in the light of the women’s song traditions that pervade it.
A moment ago, I mentioned formal gestures of lament that are specific to women. Here is an example of such a gesture in the singing of ancient Greek laments: women conventionally let down the hair while lamenting. This spontaneous but traditional gesture is an expression of loss of control and order in one’s personal life. There are also other spontaneous but traditional ways of expressing loss of control and order, such as tearing your hair, scratching your cheeks, ripping your fine clothing. In the case of letting down the hair, this ritual gesture is normally
preceded by the equally spontaneous but traditional ritual gesture ripping off one’s headdress. A spectacular example is the scene in Iliad XXII when Andromache rips off her headdress, which is the most elaborate headdress to be found in Homeric poetry, before starting to sing a lament over the death of her husband Hector. By ripping off this headdress, Andromache is letting down her beautiful curly hair. In effect, what the master Narrator presents here to the mind’s eye is the complete undoing of a woman’s hair. Andromache will perform her lament, crying and singing, with her hair completely undone:
03 C. Iliad XXII 460-477
[460] Her heart beat fast, and as she spoke she rushed from the house like a Maenad, with her waiting-women following after. When she reached the battlements and the crowd of people, she stood looking out upon the wall, and saw Hector being taken away in front of the city –
[465] the horses dragging him without heed or care over the ground towards the ships of the Achaeans. Her eyes were then shrouded as with the darkness of night and she fell fainting backwards, losing her life-breath [psukh"]. She tore the headdress from her head and flung it away, also the frontlet and the snood with its plaited band,
[470] and the veil which golden Aphrodite had given her on the day when Hector of the shining helmet took her with him from the house of Eëtion, after having given countless gifts of wooing for her sake. Her husband’s sisters and the wives of his brothers crowded round her and supported her, for she was stunned to the point of dying;
[475] when she again presently breathed and came to, she sobbed and made lament among the
Trojans saying, “Woe is me, O Hector; woe, ...”
At this point, the beautiful song of lament sung by Andromache is quoted in full by the master Narrator (XXII 477-514). In order to appreciate this lament in context, we need to understand the scene of dishevelment that leads up to it, which I have studied at length in an article. Here is an abridged version of what I say about it there:[4]
When Andromache suddenly sees the corpse of Hector, dragged behind the chariot of Achilles, she falls into a swoon (XXII 466-467) while at the same time tearing off her elaborate kr#demnon ‘headdress’ (XXII 468-470). In this passionate moment, as her eyes are just about to behold the dreaded sight of her husband’s corpse, she is described as looking just like a Maenad (XXII 460: ()*+,-* ./0). Earlier in the Iliad, in an analogous context (VI 389), Andromache is pictured as ()*
+1(2+3 45678) ‘looking like a woman possessed’ as she rushes toward the walls of Troy to see for herself the fate of the Trojans on the battlefield.
In this dramatic context, I draw attention to the evocative word kr#demnon ‘headdress’ (XXII 470). It refers to the overall ornamental hair-binding that holds together three separate kinds of ornamental hair-binding that serve to keep Andromache’s hair in place, under control (XXII 469). [5] When Andromache violently tears off from her head this most elaborate headdress, causing her hair to come completely undone, she is ritually miming her complete loss of control
over her own fate as linked with the fate of her husband: we see here a ritually eroticized gesture that expresses her extreme sexual vulnerability as linked with the violent death and disfiguration of her husband. For Andromache to do violence to her own kr#demnon is to express the anticipated violence of her future sexual humiliation at the hands of the enemy. Pointedly, the goddess Aphrodite herself had given this kr#demnon to Andromache on her wedding day (XXII 470-471).
Such explicit association of the kr#demnon with Aphrodite reveals its erotic properties. The undoing of a woman’s hair, caused by the undoing of her kr#demnon, produces what I will call an Aphrodisiac effect. So long as a woman’s kr#demnon is in place, her sexuality is under control just as her hair is under control. When the kr#demnon is out of place, however, her sexuality threatens to get out of control.
The lament that is sung by Andromache when she sees the corpse of Hector dragged behind the chariot of Achilles is arguably the most artistic and elaborate of all the laments quoted in Homeric poetry (XXII 477-514). It is also the most lengthy of all Homeric laments. Later on, toward the end of the Iliad, Andromache sings a lament at the funeral of Hector in Troy, and this lament too is quoted in full by the master Narrator (XXIV 725-745). And, earlier on, when Andromache speaks to her husband for the last time in a tearful farewell scene, her words correspond formally to the words of a lament that could have been sung, with adjustments, at the funeral of Hector, and these words too are quoted in full by the master Narrator (VI 407-439).
We have already read, in Proseminar 01, this first of the three laments performed by Andromache. And I will analyze it further at a later point in this chapter. But at this point I need to emphasize only one thing about it: in her first lament, Andromache is singing and crying over the death of her husband Hector even before he dies. In that case, her lament is an act of premonition.
I offer here a typological parallel to Andromache’s first lament as an act of premonition. It comes from the Korean film Chunhyang (2000), which is based on a traditional Korean pansori narrative about a righteous young woman named Chunhyang, who is of low social status but high moral principles.
LINK Chunhyang. [[First of the three.]]
In this scene, the secret husband of Chunhyang announces that he will abandon her, though only
for a while, he claims. The reaction of Chunhyang is instantaneous grief. Her sorrow is mixed with feelings of love for her husband, and with feelings of fear and anger that she will lose him forever. She bursts into a lament, accompanied by ritual gestures, such as the violent tearing of her clothes, which is a ritual premonition of the violence she will endure because of her low social rank, now that her high-ranking secret husband is leaving her. This violent tearing of clothes dramatizes her sexual vulnerability in the uncertain future that now awaits her. In the plot of the Chunhyang narrative, that vulnerability will turn out to be a grim reality for this abandoned woman, whose low social status makes her become the tragic victim of predatory men of high social status. Her lament is a premonition that anticipates this reality, as she keeps on crying and singing. And the master Narrator quotes the lament of Chunhyang and
she cries and sings. This way, by quoting the lament of Chunhyang, the Narrator performs his own stylized crying and singing, which is more artistic than the lament of Chunhyang. When Chunhyang is lamenting, her crying and singing is more natural, not as musical as the stylized crying and singing of the master Narrator, and her lament echoes in a kind of delayed reaction the singing of her lament as performed by the master Narrator. In the middle of her lament, the macro-Narrative of the film shows flashbacks to happy moments in the past when Chunhyang is
seen making love to her secret husband. These erotic flashbacks have the effect of intensifying the sorrow of Chunhyang as she thinks back to those happy moments in the past that preceded her excruciating pain and suffering in the present. And, conversely, her sorrow intensifies the eroticism of these flashbacks.!
The macro-Narrative of the film Chunhyang actually shows the master Narrator in action. The camera shows him performing before a large audience representing a broad cross-section of ages and social status. The master Narrator is telling about the extruciating pain and suffering inflicted on Chunyhang by her high ranking tormentor, a magistrate who seeks to alienate her affections from her absent husband. The earlier lament of premonition sung by Chunhyang, accompanied by acts of ritual self-degradation like the ripping of her fine clothing, now becomes a lament of actuality, where she cries and sings over the excruciating pain that is being inflicted on her. And the lament that she sings while she is being tortured is quoted by the master Narrator himself, whose stylized crying and singing is foregrounded against the background of the natural crying and singing of Chunhyang as she endures the pain inflicted on her. Her crying and singing are echoing the stylized crying and singing of the master Narrator who is quoting her sad song: LINK Chunhyang [[second of the three]].
Keeping in mind the laments of Chunhyang as a typological parallell, I now turn back to the first lament of Andromache in the Iliad. Here in Chapter 03, I quote only a part of this lament, where we see Andromache singing and crying over the death of her husband Hector even before he dies. As I said before, her lament here is an act of premonition ...
03 D. Iliad VI 407-416, 421-432
“Dear husband,” said she, “your valor will bring you to destruction; think of your infant son, and on my hapless self who before long shall be your widow - for the Achaeans will set upon you in a body and kill you. It would be better for me, should I lose you, to lie dead and buried, for I shall have nothing left to comfort me when you are gone, except for grief [akhos]. I have neither father nor mother now. Achilles slew my father when he destroyed Thebe the beautiful city of the Cilicians. ... I had seven brothers in my father’s house, but on the same day they all went down into the house of Hades. Achilles killed them as they were with their sheep and cattle. My mother
her who had been queen of all the land under Mount Placus - he brought here with the spoil, and freed her for a great sum, but the archer - queen Artemis took her away from the house of your
father. O Hector - you who to me are father, mother, brother, and dear husband - have mercy on me; stay here at this wall; make not your child fatherless, and your wife a widow.”
As we see here in these words of lament, the word akhos ‘grief, sorrow’ is used to express the performance, the singing, of lament.
In the course of lamenting her sorrows here, Andromache makes special mention of the death of her father, whose name is Eëtion. From what she says, it is clear that her father would be at the top of her ascending scale of affection - if he were alive. But her father is dead, and so too are her seven brothers and her mother. For Andromache, all she has left is her husband Hector, who is now the entirety of her ascending scale of affections. Hector has become for Andromache her father, brothers, and mother as well as her husband. In effect, Andromache is telling Hector: you’re my everything.
The death of Eëtion, Andromache’s father, who would have been at the top of her ascending scale of affection, deepens the irony in a passage we saw earlier, Passage D of Chapter 02, Iliad IX 185-195. Here I repeat only the relevant lines of that passage:
03 E. Iliad IX 185-191
When they [= Phoenix along with his fellow delegates, Odysseus and Ajax] reached the ships and tents of the Myrmidons, they found Achilles playing on a lyre, a beautiful one, of exquisite workmanship, and its cross-bar was of silver. It was part of the spoils that he had taken when he destroyed the city of Eëtion, and he was now diverting himself with it and singing the glories of men [klea andr"n]. He was alone with Patroklos, who sat facing him and said nothing, waiting till he [= Achilles] would leave off singing.!
We see Achilles here singing the klea andr"n, the ‘glories of heroes of the past’ (Iliad IX 189) - while accompanying himself on a lyre. And the lyre that he is strumming had once belonged to Eëtion, the father of Andromache. You could say that Achilles is strumming the pain of Andromache.[6] I think of the wording in the song original sung by Roberta Flack, Killing me softly (1973): “Strumming my pain with his fingers, singing my life with his words, ...”
You have to ask yourself: what is Achilles singing about when he is singing the klea andr"n, the ‘glories of heroes of the past’ (Iliad IX 189)? The master Narrator of the macro-Narrative does not say. There is no quoting or even paraphrasing of the subject of the song sung by Achilles here. But there is a hint about that subject, and that hint is embedded in another vitally important nearby mention of klea andr"n in the Iliad. We have already seen it. It happens when Phoenix is telling the story of the hero Meleager and his wife Kleopatra, and the old man refers to his micro- narrative as klea andr"n, the ‘glories of heroes of the past’ (Iliad IX 524). And what is the subject of that micro-narrative? From the standpoint of Phoenix as the narrator, the subject is the love a hero owes to his comrades. From the standpoint of the master Narrator of the macro-Narrative that is the Iliad, however, the subject is nothing less than the meaning of Kleopatra herself, of her name, which has to do with the ‘glories of the ancestors’, the ‘glories of heroes of the past’.
The meaning of Kleopatra, as well as the meaning of the song about Kleopatra as told by
Phoenix, is relevant to the very idea of lamentation. Inside the song about Kleopatra, that is, inside the klea andr"n as performed by Phoenix, Kleopatra is actually shown performing a lament, singing it to her husband Meleager, and her song of lament is actually paraphrased in this song of and about Kleopatra (IX 590-594). In this song, that is, in the klea andr"n as
performed by Phoenix (Iliad IX 524), we see that Kleopatra has a second name besides Kleopatra, and that second name is a clear signal of lamentation. That second name is Alcyone, and the meaning of that name is transparent. In ancient Greek traditions, the alcyon / halcyon is a bird that is linked with singing songs of lament, and the Iliad makes this link explicit in referring
to the name Alcyone, given to the lamenting Kleopatra by her lamenting mother and father: 03 F. Iliad IX 561-564
Her father and mother then named her Alcyone, because her mother had lamented with the plaintive strains of the halcyon, a bird of much lamentation [penthos], when Phoebus Apollo had carried her off.
Can we say, then, that the klea andr"n sung by Achilles himself is the song of Kleopatra? Yes and no. It is the song of Kleopatra, but it is not only her song. It is also the song of Patroklos. As we have seen in the previous chapter, the meaning of the name of Kleopatra is also the meaning of the name of Patroklos, ‘the one who has the glory [kleos] of the ancestors [pateres]’, and this meaning recapitulates the epic choice of Achilles, who ultimately opts for kleos over life itself. That is why the epic kleos chosen by Achilles must be aphthiton ‘unwilting’ forever (IX 413): the kleos of Achilles is like a flower so beautiful that it must never lose its divine vitality. But that is also why Achilles himself needs to be lamented, mourned, since he will wilt just as a beautiful flower wilts, since he will die the death that he chose for himself. That is why Thetis, the mother of Achilles, laments him, even before he dies, as if he were a beautiful seedling. As in the case of Andromache’s first lament, the lament of Thetis here is an act of premonition
03 G. Iliad XVIII 54-62 (this is my literal translation, in Best of the Achaeans [1979] 182-183
{LINK}): !!!!!!!!!!! Ah me, the wretch! Ah me, the mother, so sad it is, of the very
best. !!!!!!!!!!! I gave birth to a faultless and strong son, !!!!!!!!!!! the very best of heroes. And he shot up like a seedling. !!!!!!!!!!! I nurtured him like a shoot in the choicest spot of the
orchard, !!!!!!!!!!! only to send him off on curved ships to fight at Troy. !!!!!!!!!!! And I will never be welcoming him !!!!!!!!!!! back home as returning warrior, back to the House of Peleus. !!!!!!!!!!! And as long as he lives and sees the light of the sun, !!!!!!!!!!! he will have sorrow [akh-nutai].
!Here is the way the wilting of Achilles is expressed in a lyric song composed by the fifth- century poet Pindar:
H. Pindar Isthmian 8.56a-60
Even when he [= Achilles] died, the songs did not leave him, but the Heliconian Maidens [= the Muses] stood by his pyre and his funeral mound, pouring forth a song of lamentation [thr"nos] that is famed far and wide. And so it was that the gods decided to hand over the worthy man, wilted [phthi-menos] in death as he was, to the songs of the goddesses [Muses]. [7] And this, even now, wins as a prize the words, as the chariot-team of the Muses starts moving on its way to glorify the memory of Nikokles the boxer.
So the epic kleos chosen by Achilles is also a lyric kleos. And epic recognizes that this kleos is lyric as well as epic. As we have seen, Achilles is pictured as singing the klea andr"n ‘glories of heroes’ (IX 189) while accompanying himself on a lyre, by which I mean a seven-stringed instrument that typifies ‘lyric’ poetry in ancient Greek song culture. As we have also seen, this precious musical instrument had been plundered by Achilles when he captured the native city of Andromache (IX 186-189). The link here with Andromache is essential, in view of the fact that this character is featured as singing three of the greatest laments in the Iliad.
As I argue in my essay “Lyric and Greek Myth” (available on the Heroes website under the heading Commentaries under the heading Texts, Commentaries, More) the song of klea andr"n ‘glories of heroes’ sung by Achilles inside the epic of the Homeric Iliad! (IX 189) is like an echo of songs about love and bittersweet sorrow as heard in lyric song and poetry. In lyric, such feelings about loves and bittersweet sorrows are typically linked not only with Achilles but also with that most celebrated pair of doomed lovers in ancient Greek song culture, namely,
Andromache and the man who earns the ultimate hatred and fury of Achilles in the Iliad, Hector. [8] The kleos of Achilles is a form of song that dwells on the hatred and the fury, the love and the sorrow - and on the power of song in expressing all these intensely lyrical feelings. !
[1] If you want to read right now the rest of the plot-summary of this lost epic Aithiopis, concerning what happens after the death of the Amazon Penthesileia, see my translation of the whole plot-summary of the Aithiopis in the Sourcebook.
[2] Nagy Best of the Achaeans (1979) 259-264. [3] This reconstruction is explained in Nagy Best of the Achaeans (1979) 94-117 and Homer’s
Text and Language (2004) 131-137. [4] Nagy “Did Sappho and Alcaeus ever meet?” (2007) 249-250.
[5] The three separate terms for ornamental hair-bindings here are ampux ‘frontlet’, kekruphalos ‘snood’, and anadesm# ‘headband’ (Iliad XXII 469); the overall hair-binding or ‘headdress’ that keeps it all in place is the kr#demnon (XXII 470). Similarly, Varro (On the
Latin language 5.130) speaks of three separate terms for ornamental hair-bindings traditionally used by Roman matrons: lanea ‘woolen ribbon’, reticulum ‘net-cap’ or ‘snood’, and capital ‘headband’. To these three words Varro (7.44) adds a fourth, tutulus (derived from the adjective tutus ‘providing safety’), which seems to be an overall term for the generic headdress worn by brides and Vestal Virgins as well as matrons.
[6] In a forthcoming study, Masterpieces of Metonymy (2011), I argue that we see here a perfect example of metonymy.
[7] As I argue in Best of the Achaeans (1979) 176-177, the phraseology here shows that Achilles was destined to have a kleos that is a-phthi-ton ‘unwilting’, as explicitly formulated at Iliad IX 413.
[8] Nagy Homer the Preclassic (2010) II§297. Chapter 04. Equal to a god. Introduction
As I noted in Chapter 03, the performance of songs by women is a most important matter in ancient Greek song culture. And it is a most important matter to consider as we study the Homeric Iliad, since the traditions of such performances pervade the Iliad.!
It makes sense, therefore, for you to take the time to read in the Sourcebook, already at this early stage of the course, all the fragments of surviving poetry and song attributed to Sappho and Alcman. Reading these fragments will take less than half an hour altogether. Especially important are the fragments of Sappho. The earlier you acquaint yourselves with the look and feel of the traditions represented by Sappho, the better.
Sappho was a Lesbian, which means simply that she was from an island called Lesbos, which is situated off the northern coast of Asia Minor. In the song culture of this island, she was considered the primary representative of women’s songs, while a man called Alcaeus was considered the primary representative of men’s songs. According to the traditions of Lesbos, both Sappho and Alcaeus lived in the late seventh and early sixth centuries BCE. That rough date matches a reference in a song of Alcaeus (F 49.12) to a contemporary event that can be dated independently, namely, the destruction of Ascalon by Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, in 604 BCE (Alcaeus T 1).
The poetry of Sappho and Alcaeus, taken together, represents the repertoire of the myths and the rituals of the people of Lesbos as expressed in lyric song.
(Here is a quick working definition of myth and ritual together. Ritual is doing things and saying things in a special way. Myth is saying things in a special way. So ritual frames myth. I have more to say about ritual and myth in my article “The Epic Hero,” which is “Introduction 3” on the Heroes website.)
I have written about the poetry of Sappho and Alcaeus in the article “Lyric and Greek Myth,” and I offer here a short excerpt.
The poetry of Sappho and Alceaus dates back to a period when the city-states of the island of Lesbos were confederated into a single state. This federal state, the political term for which was sunoikisis (Thucydides 3.3.1), was dominated by the city of Mytilene, know as the home of Sappho and Alcaeus. There was a single communal place reserved for the festivals of this island federation, and that place was named Messon, the ‘middle space’.!
In the words of Alcaeus, this federal space was called the temenos the"n ‘sacred precinct of the gods’ (F 130B.13). It was the designated place for celebrating a seasonally recurring festival, described in the words of Alcaeus as the occasion for the seasonally recurring assemblies or ‘comings together’ of the people of Lesbos (F 130B). This festival featured as its main spectacle the singing and dancing of choruses Lesbiades ‘women of Lesbos’, described as ‘exceptional in their beauty’ (130B.17 krinnomenai phuan). When I say choruses, I mean singing and dancing ensembles. The Greek word khoros refers to dancing as well as singing.
The reality of such a festival in Lesbos featuring the choral performances of women is independently verified by a scholion (which refers to a learned note found in a manuscript) attached to a passage in the Homeric Iliad (IX 130): from this scholion we learn that the name of the festival was the Kallisteia, which can be translated as ‘pageant of beauty’. In the relevant Iliadic passage as well as elsewhere in the Iliad, there are references to women from Lesbos, described as exceptional in their beauty, who were captured by Achilles in the years that preceded the final destruction of Troy (IX 128-131, 270-273). These direct references in the Iliad can be analyzed as indirect references to the festival of the Kallisteia in Lesbos.[1] Another reference to the Kallisteia is attested in a poem from the Greek Anthology (9.189), which says that this festival takes place within the temenos ‘sacred precinct’ of Hera: this festival, it also says, was the occasion for choral singing and dancing by the women of Lesbos, with Sappho herself pictured as the leader of their khoros ‘chorus’. As I already said, an ancient Greek chorus was an ensemble of singing and dancing performers.
Sappho in her songs is conventionally pictured as the lead singer of a chorus composed of the women of Lesbos, and she speaks as their main choral personality.[2] As we see in the Greek Anthology, she is figured as the lead singer of this chorus of women who sing and dance in the federal space of the people of Lesbos. Sappho’s songs are pictured as taking place within this sacred place, marked by the deictic word tuide ‘here’ (as in Sappho Song 17 line 7).
Elsewhere too, this same federal space of the people of Lesbos is marked by the deictic word tuide ‘here’ (Sappho Song 96 line 2) as the sacred place of choral performance, and the noun molpa (line 5) makes it explicit that the performance takes the form of choral singing and dancing. In archaic poetry, the verb for ‘sing and dance in a chorus’ is melpesthai.[3]
Key word for this chapter: phainetai ‘he / she appears’ OR ‘he / she appears in an epiphany’ A derivative of this word is phantasia, which in later Greek literature means ‘fantasy’, that is,
‘imagined vision’ or ‘imagination’. The English word fantasy, derived from phantasia, implies a vision that is unreal. In earlier Greek literature, as we are about to see, there is no ‘fantasy’ about an epiphany. It is a vision that is felt as real, not unreal. An epiphany is the appearance of something divine, something that is understood to be absolutely real. 04 A. Song 31 of Sappho (translation by Nagy; for a more poetic rendition, see the version of Julia Dubnoff in the Sourcebook)
!
phainetai moi k#nos 9sos theoisin
emmen’ "n#r ottis enantios toi isdanei kai pl$sion $du ph"nei- s$s upakouei
! kai gelais$s 9meroen to m’ # m$n
kardian en st#thesin eptoaisen "s gar es s’ id" brokhe’ "s me ph"nai- s’ oud’ en et’ eikei
! alla kam men gl"ssa e$ge lepton
d’ autika khr"i p:r upadedrom$ken oppatessi d’ oud’ en or#mm’ epirrom- beisi d’ akouai
! kad de m’ idr"s kakkheetai tromos de pa9san agrei khl"rotera de poias emmi tethnak#n d’ olig" ‘pideu#s phainom’ em’ aut[$i
He appears to me, that one, equal to the gods, the man who, facing you, is seated and, up close, that sweet voice of yours
he listens to
and how you laugh your charming laugh. Why, it makes my heart flutter within my breast,
since, the moment I look at you, right then, for me to make any sound at all won’t work any more. My tongue has broken down and a delicate - all of a sudden - fire rushes under my skin. With my eyes I see not a thing, and there is a roar that my ears make.
Sweat pours down me and a trembling seizes all of me; paler than grass am I, and a little short of death do I appear to me.
We see here in Song 31 of Sappho the ritual world of a wedding. The ‘he’ refers to the bridegroom, who is figured as a god at the moment of the singing of this song. It is as if a god has appeared at a wedding. In ritual terms, we see here an epiphany. The word k#nos ‘that one’, as we will see more clearly at a later point when we read Philostratus, actually signals the epiphany. The ‘you’ who is being addressed by the speaker is female: she is the bride, who is figured as a goddess in her own right at the moment of the singing of this song. The ‘I’ who is speaking, also female, is the lead singer who sings the song, and she is ‘Sappho’.
Such a female lead singer is a prima donna, to borrow a term used in the world of opera. The lead singer here speaks for the whole group that is attending the wedding. And this lead singer, this female speaker, experiences an attraction to both the bridegroom and the bride. Or, we might say that she experiences an attraction to the attraction between the two. The attraction is both esthetic and erotic. It is a totalizing attraction, creating feelings of total connectedness. And this totalizing connectedness activates all the senses of the speaker, who experiences an “erotic meltdown.” The feelings come to a climax described as just one moment away from death. That is the way the speaker ‘seems’ to herself. What is ‘seeming’ on one level is an epiphany on another level. The female speaker has an epiphany to herself. She experiences fusion with divinity, and this fusion is not only esthetic but also erotic. I think it is too simple to say that this is an auto-erotic moment: it is an auto-epiphany.
Such a moment, when the bridegroom is the god and the bride is the goddess, is signaled by an epithet, that is, by an ornamental adjective. That epithet is isos theoisin ‘equal to the gods’ in line 1 of the song.
We see a similar epithet in Song 44 of Sappho, featuring Andromache and Hector as bride and bridegroom; they are described by the epithet theoeikeloi ‘just like the gods’, and we must note that they look like gods at their wedding.
This song is an example of epic as refracted in women’s songmaking traditions.[4] 04 B. Song 44 of Sappho (“The Wedding of Hector and Andromache”)
...The herald Idaios came...a swift messenger | ...and the rest of Asia...unwilting glory (kleos
aphthiton). | Hector and his companions led the dark-eyed | luxuriant Andromache from holy Thebes and...Plakia | in ships upon the salty sea. | Many golden bracelets and purple | robes..., intricately-worked ornaments, | countless silver cups and ivory. | Thus he spoke. And his dear father quickly leapt up. | And the story went to his friends through the broad city. | And the Trojans joined mules to smooth-running carriages. | And the whole band of women and...maidens got on. | Separately, the daughters of Priam... | And the unmarried men led horses beneath the chariots | and greatly...charioteers... |<...> | just like the gods [i]keloi theoi [s]| ... | ...holy | set forth into Troy... | And the sweet song of the reed mixed... | And the sound of the cymbals, and then the maidens | sang in clear tones a sacred song | and a divinely-sweet echo reached the sky... | And everywhere through the streets... | Mixing bowls and cups... | And myrrh and cassia and frankincense were mingled. | And the older women cried out elelu. | And all the men gave forth a high-pitched song, | calling on Apollo, the far-shooter, skilled in the lyre. | And they sang of Hector and Andromache, just like the gods [theoeikeloi].
There is an all-important comparison to be made here: the kleos aphthiton ‘unwilting glory’ of the bride Andromache and the bridegroom Hector in this song of Sappho is identical with the kleos aphthiton ‘unwilting glory’ of Achilles in Iliad IX 413.
C = 01 A. Iliad IX 410-416
My mother Thetis, goddess of the silver feet, tells me that there are two ways in which I may meet my end [telos]. If I stay here and fight, I will not have a return [nostos] alive but my glory [kleos] will be unwilting [aphthiton]: whereas if I go home my glory [kleos] will perish, but it will be a long time before the end [telos] shall take me.
Here the main hero of the Iliad leaves as his signature the kleos of his own epic, which turns out to be the Iliad. The kleos aphthiton ‘unwilting glory’ of Achilles in Iliad IX is matched by the kleos aphthiton ‘unwilting glory’ of Hector and Andromache in Song 44 of Sappho. In one case, the context is a wedding. In the other case, the context is war. At the climax of the wedding, the bride and groom are transformed into gods - at the actual moment of that climax. As we will see later, something comparable happens at the climactic moment of war. At the actual moment of that climax, the warrior is transformed into a god.
By now we are starting to see that the kleos or story of Achilles is interchangeable with the kleos
or story of Hector and his wife Andromache.
There are other matches between Achilles on one side and Hector and Andromache on the other. Here I return to the epithet theoeikeloi ‘just like the gods’, applied to Hector and Andromache in Song 44 of Sappho. This epithet is reserved for Achilles in the Iliad. So the doomed couple and the doomed Achilles are all part of one song, one kleos. This is the kleos that Sappho’s song is recreating.
Here I return to a topic that came up in the previous chapter. It has to do with Passage D, Iliad VI 407-416, 421-432, in Chapter 03. When Andromache laments the death of her father, whose name is Eëtion, we begin to understand the deep irony of the reference to the lyre of Achilles in Passage E of Lecture 03, Iliad IX 185-191. There we see Achilles playing on the lyre that once belonged to Eëtion, the father of Andromache. He is singing and accompanying himself on the lyre, and such singing to the accompaniment of the lyre is the basic principle of what we call lyric poetry. And, as I said before, Achilles is in a way strumming the pain of Andromache. And what is the lyric poem - or, better, lyric song - that Achilles is performing? He is performing klea andr"n, the ‘glories of heroes of men of the past’ (Iliad IX 189).
There is, as we have already observed, a vitally important parallel to this performance by Achilles. When Phoenix tells Achilles the micro-narrative about the hero Meleager and his wife Kleopatra,
which seems to be an epic within the epic that is the Homeric Iliad, the old man is likewise performing klea andr"n, the ‘glories of heroes of the past’ (Iliad IX 524).!
Since Song 44 of Sappho is about a wedding, it is important to consider the traditional wording that was used about brides at weddings. That word is numph", which means both ‘bride’ (as in Iliad XVIII 492) and ‘goddess’, that is, ‘nymph’ (as in Iliad XXIV 616). By implication, the ritual occasion of a wedding, as formalized in a bridal song, collapses the distinction between ‘bride’ and ‘goddess’. The same can be said about the distinction between ‘bridegroom’ and ‘god’ .
The ideal bridegroom of Sappho’s songs is parallel to the ideal warrior of the Homeric Iliad. As I argue in my essay “Lyric and Greek Myth,” under the heading Commentaries, Achilles
can be imagined as the ideal bridegroom and the ideal warrior in both traditions. 04 D. Further relevant extracts from Sappho
F 105a. Like a sweet-apple | turning red | high | on the tip | of the topmost branch. | Forgotten by pickers. | Not forgotten - | they couldn’t reach it.
F 105b. “Sappho compared the girl to an apple....she compared the bridegroom to Achilles, and likened the young man’s deeds to the hero’s.” - Himerius Orations 1.16.
F 115. To what shall I compare you, dear bridegroom? | To a slender shoot, I most liken you. ! Thinking of the last of these three examples, F 115, I recall the lament of Thetis, Iliad XVIII
54-60, which we considered in the last chapter. In that lament, sung by the goddess even before the death of her son, Achilles is compared to a vibrant young seedling in an orchard.
Let us return to the subject of the idealized bridegroom - or let us say male lover - and the idealized warrior. As we will see in the next passage, Song 1 of Sappho, love and war can be estheticized - and eroticized - together. The female speaker of Song 1 of Sappho becomes identified with Aphrodite and becomes her ‘ally in war’.
04 E. Song 1 of Sappho = Prayer to Aphrodite
You with pattern-woven flowers, immortal Aphrodite, |2 child of Zeus, weaver of wiles, I implore you,|3 do not devastate with aches and sorrows,|4 Mistress, my heart! |5 But come here, if ever at any other time |6 hearing my voice from afar, |7 you heeded me, and leaving the palace of your father, |8 golden, you came, |9 having harnessed the chariot; and you were carried along by beautiful |10 swift sparrows over the dark earth |11 swirling with their dense plumage from the sky through the |12 midst of the aether, |13 and straightaway they arrived. But you, O holy one, |14 smiling with your immortal looks, |15 kept asking what is it once again this time [d"ute] that has happened to me and for what reason |16 once again this time [d"ute] do I invoke you, | 17 and what is it that I want more than anything to happen |18 to my frenzied heart? “Whom am I once again this time [d"ute] to persuade, |19 setting out to bring her to your love? Who is doing you, |20 Sappho, wrong? |21 For if she is fleeing now, soon she will give chase. |22 If she is not taking gifts, soon she will be giving them. |23 If she does not love, soon she will love |24 even against her will.” |25 Come to me even now, and free me from harsh |26 anxieties, and however many things |27 my heart yearns to get done, you do for me. You |28 become my ally in war.
As I argue at greater length in my article “Lyric and Greek Myth,” Sappho is being pictured here as the lead singer of a choral performance. She leads off by praying to Aphrodite to be present, that is, to manifest herself in an epiphany. The goddess is invoked from far away in the sky, which is separated from the earth by the immeasurably vast space of ‘aether’. Aphrodite is needed to fill the aching need left by the sorrows of love. And, now that she is invoked, despite the overwhelming sense of separation between the divine and the human, Aphrodite makes her presence felt in a sudden flash, in one single divine moment. The goddess appears, that is, she is
now present in the sacred space of performance, and her presence becomes an epiphany for all those who are present. Then, once Aphrodite is present, she exchanges roles with the prima donna who figures as the leader of choral performance. In the part of Song 1 that we see enclosed within quotation marks in the visual formatting of modern editions (lines 18-24), the first-person ‘I’ of Sappho is now replaced by Aphrodite herself, who has been a second- person ‘you’ up to this point. We see here an exchange of roles between the first-person ‘I’ and the second-person ‘you’. The first-person ‘I’ now becomes Aphrodite, who proceeds to speak in the performing voice of Sappho to Sappho herself, who has now become the second-person ‘you’. During Aphrodite’s epiphany inside the sacred space of the people of Lesbos, a fusion of identities takes place between the goddess and the prima donna who leads the choral performance ‘here’, that is, in this sacred space.[5]
Sappho prays to Aphrodite to give her the power that the goddess has, the power to make love happen. She prays that she may ‘get done’ whatever it is that Aphrodite ‘gets done’ in the active voice of the verb meaning ‘to get something done’, telessai (Sappho F 1 line 26), which is to be contrasted with the passive voice telesth"n applying to a passive lover who simply lets love happen (as in Sappho F 5 line 4). To be granted that power is to be the lead singer of the song that has the power to make love happen. Such is the power of song in the songs of Sappho. Such is the power of the prayer that is powered by Song 1 of Sappho.
Within the archaic context of the myths and rituals of the people of Lesbos, as framed by the sacred space of their federal precinct ‘here’ in the middle ground of their political space, Song 1 of Sappho can be seen as a prayer in the sense of a totalizing formula for authorizing choral performances of women at the festival of the Kallisteia. The seasonal recurrences of the festival are signaled by the triple deployment of the adverb d#’ute ‘once again this time’ in Sappho’s prayer. Every time in the past when Sappho has invoked Aphrodite by offering to her this prayer that we now hear, the goddess has heeded the prayer and has manifested herself in an ever-new epiphany. And now, once again this time, the goddess appears to Sappho, who will once again this time speak for the whole chorus as she speaks first for herself and then for Aphrodite and then once again this time for herself.
!In the postclassical era of literary critics like Menander the Rhetorician, the description of compositions like Song 1 of Sappho as ‘prayers’ (Sappho T 47) fails to capture the meaning of an act of prayer in the context of a choral performance. The modern mind, seizing on such descriptions, is quick to infer that such ‘prayers’ must be mere literary conceits. This is to ignore the dimension of performance, which complements the dimension of composition in the lyric poetry of the archaic period. It is also to ignore the ritual background of such performance, which complements the mythological background of the composition.[6]
What appears to be a private ‘prayer’ uttered by Sappho is at the same time a public act of worship that is notionally sung and danced by the people of Lesbos as represented by a chorus of their women, legendary as they are for their beauty, and as led by the figure of Sappho as their prima donna. What appears to be the most deeply personal experience of Sappho is at the same time the most widely shared communal experience of the people of Lesbos.!
For those who are interested in coincidental parallels in American popular culture, here is an example:
Life is a mystery | Everyone must stand alone! | I hear you call my name and it feels like | [home] | Oh my God 4x |! | When you call my name | Like a little prayer | Down on my knees | Going to take you there | In the midnight hour | I can feel your power | Just like a prayer | You know I’ll take you there. | I feel your voice | It’s like an angel sighing | I have no choice | I hear your voice |
Feels like flying | I close my eyes | Oh God I think I’m falling | out of the sky | I close my eyes | Heaven help me. | Like a child | You whisper softly to me | You’re in control | Just like a child | [Now I’m dancing] | It’s like a dream | No end and no beginning | You’re here with me | It’s like a dream | Let the choir sing.
But let us return to Sappho, and to the identification of the speaker with the goddess Aphrodite in Song 1 of Sappho. It happens, as we saw, within what we moderns indicate by way of quotation marks, starting with ‘Whom am I once again this time...’ and ending with ‘... soon she will love | even against her will’. At this point, the ‘I’ of Sappho becomes the ‘I’ of Aphrodite, while the ‘you’ of Aphrodite becomes the ‘you’ of Sappho. So the lead singer of Song 1, who is the prima donna of the song, becomes a goddess at this moment. So the lead singer here is not only a prima donna. She is a diva, to borrow a another term used in the world of opera. To say it in English, the lead singer is now a goddess.
And what exactly is this moment when the lead singer becomes a goddess? This moment recurs every time the song is sung once again, as at a ritual that marks either a girl’s coming of age or her wedding. Essential for understanding this concept of recurrence in Song 1 of Sappho is the concept of repetition in ritual, as expressed by the adverb d"ute ‘once again’. !Relevant are the words of Kierkegaard (Repetition, 1843): “The dialectic of repetition is easy, for that which is repeated has been - otherwise it could not be repeated - but the very fact that it has been makes the repetition into something new.” Similarly for us modern readers, every time we look back at this passage, there will be something new for us to see.
In this connection, we may also look at the epithet theoeikeloi ‘just like the gods’, which is applied to the bride and the bridegroom in Sappho’s Song 44 about the wedding of Hector and Andromache. And we may look back now at the epithet isos theoisin ‘equal to the gods’ as applied to the bridegroom in Sappho’s Song 31. In the ritual of a wedding, the bride and groom morph into goddess and god, and they stay that way until the wedding is finished, by which time they morph unto wife and husband. To quote from T. S. Eliot (The Dry Salvages, 1941), “you are the music | While the music lasts.”[7] !
So, when a first-person female speaker projects her identity into this divine music by identifying with the bride, which is what happens in Song 31 of Sappho, then the first person singer becomes the bride herself.
It is relevant that the word numph", as I noted before, means both ‘bride’ (as in Iliad XVIII 492) and ‘goddess’, that is, ‘nymph’ (as in Iliad XXIV 616). In a bridal song, as I also noted before, the distinction between ‘bride’ and ‘goddess’ is collapsed. And the same can be said about the distinction between ‘bridegroom’ and ‘god’. !
Here is another example of the ritual practice of equating the prima donna - or we can also say prima ballerina - with a goddess. This time, the equation happens not at a wedding but at a ritual that marks a coming of age from girlhood to womanhood.
04 F. From the Partheneion ‘Maidens’ Song’ of Alcman
And I sing the radiance of Agido, as I look upon her like the sun, which Agido summons to shine as witness. But for me to praise her or blame her is not possible, as the illustrious khor"gos [Hagesikhora] does not allow me. For that one [Hagesikhora] appears radiantly outstanding, as when someone sets among grazing beasts a horse, well-built, a prize-winner, with thundering hooves, from out of those dreams underneath the rock.
In other words, the song ‘summons’ the sun to shine. The song equates the girl Agido with the sun. This equation of the prima donna or prima ballerina with the sun is strikingly similar to what we see in Song 16 of Sappho:
G. Song 16 of Sappho, stanza 1 oi men ipp#"n stroton oi de pesd"n
oi de n$"n phais’ epi g$n melainan emmenai kalliston eg" de k#n’ ot- t" tis er$tai
Some say an army of horsemen, some of footsoldiers, some of ships, is the fairest thing on earth, but I say it is what one loves.
! This song is a good example of a priamel, which is a rhetorical device where “A” is highlighted by saying that “B” and “C” and “D” and so on cannot match it. The sequence has to be ... D C B and finally A. To cite an example in American popular music...
! !!!!!!!!!!! Some say love, it is a river, that drowns the tender weed, !!!!!!!!!!! Some say love, it is a razor, that leaves the soul to bleed, !!!!!!!!!!! Some say love, it is a hunger - an endless aching need, !!!!!!!!!!! I say love, it is a flower - and you, its only seed. LINK to Bette Midler’s song, “The Rose.”
In an article about a newly-discovered version of another song of Sappho (I refer to this new version as ;2), I offer this translation of the last line of that other song:
Sappho ;2 26: !!!!!!!!!!! Love [er"s] of the Sun has won for me its radiance and beauty.[8] In terms of an alternative interpretation, the translation could be ... !!!!!!!!!!! Love [er"s] has won for me the radiance and beauty of the Sun.
I prefer the first of these two interpretations, which makes the Sun the objective genitive of er"s ‘love’. Such a genitive construction would be parallel to the phrase ot|t" tis er$tai ‘whatever one loves’ in the song of Sappho we are now considering (F 16), where this ‘whatever’ (F 16 lines 3-4) is described as kalliston ‘the most beautiful thing’ in the whole wide world (F 16 line 3). There are three things to compare with ‘the most beautiful thing’ in this song of Sappho (F 16), but each one of them pales in comparison to ‘whatever’ that thing is that ‘one’ loves. These three
things to be compared are three radiant visions of beauty. The first of these visions is the dazzling sight of magnificent chariot-fighters in their luminous war-chariots massing for frontal assault against their terrified enemy; the second vision is of footsoldiers on the battlefield; and the third vision is of battleships at sea (F 16.1-2). But none of these three radiant visions of beauty can match that ultimate brightness radiating from the speaker’s love-object, a beautiful diva called Anaktoria, who is mentioned later on in the same song (F 16.15-16). When Anaktoria sings and dances in the chorus, the loveliness of her steps and the brilliant light you see radiating from her looks (F 16.17-8: eraton te b$ma | k’amarukhma lampron id#n pros"p") cannot be surpassed by anything in the whole wide world. That radiance of Anaktoria is now directly compared with the radiance of the luminous chariots and the other two luminous foils (F 16.19-20).
According to the logic of Sappho’s poetic cosmos, nothing can surpass the radiance of the sun. So the all-surpassing radiance of ‘whatever’ it is that the speaker says she loves more than anything else in the whole wide world must be the same thing as the sun.
It remains to ask what gods are models for wedded couples. Before we can consider any answer, we need to turn to the death scene of Patroklos in Iliad XVI, which is the main topic of the next chapter.
[1] Nagy Homer the Preclassic (2010) II§§289-290, 302. [2] Nagy Pindar’s Homer (1990) 12§60. [3] Nagy Pindar’s Homer (1990) 12§29n62 and n64.
[4] Further discussion by Nagy Homeric Questions (1996) 57. [5] Nagy Poetry as Performance 97-103. [6] See Yatromanolakis 2003. [7] Eliot 1941 [1963]:199.
[8] See also Nagy Greek Mythology and Poetics (1990) GM 261-262; Pindar’s Homer (1990) 285 [10§18], and Poetry as Performance (1996) 90, 102-103.
Chapter 05. Equal to a daimôn Introduction
What happens at a climactic moment in a wedding is the equating of the mortal with the immortal. That is what we saw in Chapter 04. Now, as we will see in Chapter 05, what happens at a climactic moment in war is again the equating of the mortal with the immortal. The ritual occasion of war collapses the distinction between human and divine - but only at the precise moment when the warrior comes face-to-face with his own martial death. As we will also see, epic records that moment with the expression daimoni isos ‘equal to a daim"n [otherworldly force]’.
Key word for this chapter: daim"n (plural daimones) ‘superhuman force (= an unspecified god or hero) intervening in human life’. The word daim!n is to be contrasted with theos ‘god’ (= a specified god).
A note on terms... Consider polytheism vs. monotheism. Also henotheism. [[The term henotheism refers to the worshipping of one divinity at a time. I think of the one-at-a-time mentality of henotheism as serial monotheism.]]!
In this dialogue, we will concentrate on the epithet daimoni isos, which means ‘equal to a daim"n’ and on other epithets meaning ‘equal to the gods’. All these epithets focus on the climax of god- hero antagonism in the Iliad. At the moment of such a climax, the hero can be equated with a daim!n. This word daim!n partially conceals the identity of the god.
In the first passage we will examine, the god whose identity is partially concealed is Apollo. He is the god who is the primary divine antagonist of Achilles. In fact, Apollo will kill Achilles. We will not see it happen in the Iliad, but it does happen in other epics. One such epic is the Aithiopis, only the plot-outline of which has survived. So the death of Achilles happens not in the Iliad but beyond the Iliad. In the Iliad, however, the best friend of Achilles, Patroklos, will stand in for Achilles as the victim of Apollo. In the first focus passage, Apollo is about to kill Patroklos. Why Patroklos? As we will see, it is because Patroklos becomes the ritual substitute for Achilles. For now, however, let us concentrate on the actual antagonism between god and hero on the battlefield: !
A. Iliad XVI 698-711
The sons of the Achaeans would now have taken Troy by the hands of Patroklos, for his spear flew in all directions, had not Phoebus Apollo taken his stand upon the wall to defeat his purpose and to aid the Trojans. Thrice did Patroklos charge at an angle of the high wall, and thrice did Apollo beat him back, striking his shield with his own immortal hands. When Patroklos was coming on like a daim!n for yet a fourth time, Apollo shouted to him with a terrifying voice and said, “Draw back, noble Patroklos, it is not your lot to destroy the city of the Trojan chieftains, nor yet will it be that of Achilles who is a far better man than you are.” On hearing this, Patroklos withdrew to some distance and avoided the anger [m"nis] of Apollo.
In the passage we have just read, the context gives it away: the daim!n with whom Patroklos is equated turns out to be the god Apollo himself. At the climax of god-hero antagonism here, when the hero becomes the god, that partially concealed god is Apollo. But so far we have seen only a “dress rehearsal.” The real moment of identification between hero and god comes the next time, when Patroklos does not back away from Apollo but faces him at the fourth try. In the next passage, we finally see that climactic moment of god-hero antagonism, “the real thing.”
05 B. Iliad XVI 783-806
Then Patroklos sprang like Ares with fierce intent and a terrific shout upon the Trojans, and thrice did he kill nine men; but as he was coming on like a daim!n, for a fourth time, then, O Patroklos, was the hour of your end approaching, for Phoebus [Apollo] fought you in fell earnest. Patroklos did not see him as he moved about in the crush, for he was enshrouded in thick darkness, and the god struck him from behind on his back and his broad shoulders with the flat of his hand, so that
his eyes turned dizzy. Phoebus Apollo beat the helmet from off his head, and it rolled rattling off under the horses’ feet, where its horse-hair plumes were all begrimed with dust and blood. Never indeed had that helmet fared so before, for it had served to protect the head and comely forehead of the godlike hero Achilles. ... [805] At this his mind went into derangement [at"]; his limbs failed him, and he stood as one dazed.
Here we see the ultimate moment of “fatal attraction,” signaled by the epithet ‘equal to a daim"n’; this epithet, like others meaning ‘equal to the gods’, applies to men and women at climactic ritual moments.
(We see an earlier “dress-rehearsal” in Iliad V: Diomedes as daimoni $sos ‘equal to a daim!n’ at V 438 and 459. Compare also the context of pros daimona ‘face-to-face with the daim!n’ at XVII 98.)
In all these situations, the use of the word daim!n is mystical in not naming the god - but it is ostentatiously mystical. By that I mean that the identify of the daim!n is obvious. It is Apollo. But we also see a complication here. We notice that Patroklos is being compared not only to an unnamed god, a daim!n who turns out to be Apollo, but also to a named god, who is Ares the god of war. As a warrior, Patroklos is equal not only to Apollo at this moment. He is also equal to the war god Ares, who is god of martial fury.
We will soon see how and why Patroklos becomes the ritual substitute for Achilles in this complicated god-hero antagonism involving not one god but two, Ares and Apollo. But for now I will focus on the complication itself: why is Achilles an antagonist of both Ares and Apollo? The answer, as we will see, is that the dual antagonism of Achilles has to do with his dual status as both ideal warrior and ideal bridegroom. !
Let us start with the status of Achilles as an ideal bridegroom - a topic that I explore at length in my essay “Lyric and Greek Myth,” as well as in my supplementary essay, “Homer and Greek Myth.” I offer here an abridged version of what I say there.
I start with a question that arises from what we saw in the last chapter: when a bridegroom is equated to a god, who is the god? A key to my answer has to do with the convention of imagining the bridegroom also as a hero, such as Achilles. And there are two divine models for Achilles as an ideal bridegroom: Ares and Apollo.
First we consider the god Ares as a model for the hero Achilles.
In the poetics of Sappho, two figures who fill the role of divine models for bridegrooms and brides respectively are the gods Ares and Aphrodite. In the case of Ares, he is a model for the gambros ‘bridegroom’, who is explicitly described as isos Areui ‘equal to Ares’ (Sappho F 111.5). In the case of Aphrodite, there are many instances of implicit equations of the bride with this goddess: in one song, for example, the bridegroom is said to be infused with the divine charisma of Aphrodite, evidently by way of his direct contact with the bride (Sappho F 112). Typical of such contact with divinity is a celebrated wedding song of Sappho that we have already examined, Song 31. Let us look at it one more time:
05 C (= 04 A). Song 31 of Sappho
(translation by Nagy; for a more poetic rendition, see the version of Julia Dubnoff in the Sourcebook)
phainetai moi k#nos 9sos theoisin
emmen’ "n#r ottis enantios toi isdanei kai pl$sion $du ph"nei- s$s upakouei
! kai gelais$s 9meroen to m’ # m$n
kardian en st#thesin eptoaisen "s gar es s’ id" brokhe’ "s me ph"nai-
He appears to me, that one, equal to the gods, the man who, facing you, is seated and, up close, that sweet voice of yours
he listens to
and how you laugh your charming laugh. Why, it makes my heart flutter within my breast, since, the moment I look at you, right then, for me
s’ oud’ en et’ eikei
! alla kam men gl"ssa e$ge lepton
d’ autika khr"i p:r upadedrom$ken oppatessi d’ oud’ en or#mm’ epirrom- to make any sound at all won’t work any more.
My tongue has broken down and a delicate - all of a sudden - fire rushes under my skin. With my eyes I see not a thing, and
kai gelais$s 9meroen to m’ # m$n and how you laugh your charming
laugh. Why, it kardian en st#thesin eptoaisen makes my heart flutter within my breast, "s gar es s’ id" brokhe’ "s me ph"nai- since, the moment I look at you, right then, for me
!
s’ oud’ en et’ eikei
! alla kam men gl"ssa e$ge lepton
d’ autika khr"i p:r upadedrom$ken oppatessi d’ oud’ en or#mm’ epirrom- beisi d’ akouai
! kad de m’ idr"s kakkheetai tromos de pa9san agrei khl"rotera de poias emmi tethnak#n d’ olig" ‘pideu#s phainom’ em’ aut[$i
to make any sound at all won’t work any more.
My tongue has broken down and a delicate - all of a sudden - fire rushes under my skin. With my eyes I see not a thing, and there is a roar that my ears make.
Sweat pours down me and a trembling seizes all of me; paler than grass am I, and a little short of death do I appear to me.
!It is said here that the bridegroom phainetai ‘appears’ Appearances become realities, however. I say that because, as we have already seen, phainetai means not only ‘appears’ but also ‘is manifested in an epiphany’, and this epiphany is felt as real.[1] In the internal logic of this song, seeing the bridegroom as a god for a moment is just as real as seeing Sappho as a goddess for a moment in the logic of Song 1 of Sappho.
The sense of reality is evident in the wording phainetai moi k#nos isos theoisin | emmen’ "n#r ‘he appears [phainetai] to me, that one, equal to the gods, | the man who ...’. The first-person moi here in Song 31 of Sappho refers to the speaker, who is ‘Sappho’. In another song of Sappho, we find the wording phainetai woi k#nos isos theoisin ‘he appears [phainetai] to her, that one, equal to the gods’ (F 165). In that song, the third-person woi! ‘to her’ may perhaps refer to the bride. Or perhaps the speaker of this wording is imagined as Aphrodite herself.
In the first of these two songs of Sappho (F 31), the subjectivity is linked to the first-person speaker, who is the vicarious participant; in the second song (F 165), on the other hand, the subjectivity is linked to the third person, who is the immediate participant. There is a shifting of referents that accompanies the shifting of pronouns from ‘I’ to ‘she’. We saw another shifting of referents in Song 1 of Sappho, from ‘you’ to ‘I’. In that case, the shift in the ownership of pronouns involves the second-person ‘you’ of Aphrodite and the first-person ‘I’ of Sappho. During the epiphany of Aphrodite, Sappho exchanges identities with the goddess herself. It is a moment of personal fusion with Aphrodite. Similarly in the wedding song (F 31), the
vicariousness of Sappho links the ‘I’ with the ‘you’ of the bride.
The exchange between the ‘I’ and the ‘you’ of Sappho and Aphrodite in Song 1 is reflected also in the wording of another song of Sappho (F 159), where Aphrodite is imagined once again as speaking to Sappho and addressing her by name. In yet another song of Sappho (F 134), the speaker says she is dreaming she has a dialogue (dialegesthai) with Aphrodite.
to be isos theoisin ‘equal to the gods’.
The erotic experience shared by the ‘he’ who is the bridegroom and by the ‘you’ who is the bride in Song 31 of Sappho is communalized in the reaction of the ‘I’ who figures as the vicarious participant in the experience. And this reaction, as we have already seen, is an epiphany in itself. In this song, the subjectivity is linked to the first-person speaker who is Sappho. When we hear phainetai moi k#nos isos theoisin ‘he appears [phainetai] to me, that one, equal to the gods’, it is the first-person speaker who is feeling the erotic sensations experienced by the bride in the
second-person and by the bridegroom in the third person. At the climax of the erotic experience as spoken by the first-person speaker, she says about her feelings: tethnak#n d’olig" ‘pideu#s phainom’ emaut$i ‘and a little short of death | do I appear [phainomai] to myself’. The verb phainomai ‘I appear’ here signals again an epiphany - an epiphany that manifests itself to the self, to the speaking ‘I’.
This appearance of the self to the self, as an epiphany, signals the divine presence of Aphrodite. In one sense, then, what is seen is the epiphany of Aphrodite, since she is the goddess of the occasion. In another sense, however, what is seen is the epiphany of the bride, whose identity fuses with that of Aphrodite at the moment of her wedding. And, in still another sense, what is seen is the epiphany of the speaking ‘I’ who identifies with Aphrodite by virtue of identifying with the ‘you’ of the bride who is Aphrodite at this very moment. For Sappho, then, as I have been arguing, what is seen is an auto-epiphany.!!
The epiphany of Song 31 induces a near-death experience, and such a stylized personal death is modeled on a realized mythical death. As I will now argue, death in myth is a prototype for whatever it is that the first-person speaker experiences vicariously in her interaction with the second-person bride and with the third-person bridegroom, who are respectively the vision of Aphrodite and the corresponding vision of Ares.
To start with the third person, it is essential to recall that the bridegroom is visualized as isos Areui ‘equal to Ares’ in another song of Sappho (F 111.5). Comparable to the bridegroom who gets married in lyric is the warrior who gets killed in epic. As we have just seen, he too is visualized as isos Ar#i ‘equal to Ares’. And, as we will now see, the bridegroom can be visualized as Achilles himself in the songs of Sappho.!
In the Homeric Iliad, warriors are conventionally called the therapontes of Ares as the god of war (II 110, VI 67, XV 733, XIX 78). This word therap"n (plural therapontes) means both ‘attendant’ and ‘ritual substitute’ in epic. When a warrior is killed in war, he becomes a ‘ritual substitute’ who dies for Ares by becoming identical to the war god at the moment of death; then, after death, the warrior is eligible to become a cult hero who serves as a sacralized ‘attendant’ of the war god. [2] As an epic warrior, Achilles is a therap"n ‘ritual substitute’ of Ares by virtue of becoming identical to the war god at the moment of death. In the Iliad, however, this relationship between Achilles and Ares is expressed only by way of an intermediary, who is Patroklos. This warrior is described not as the therap"n of Ares but rather as the therap"n of Achilles, and, as such, he is not only that hero’s ‘attendant’ but also his ‘ritual substitute’, since he actually dies for Achilles. So Achilles dies only indirectly as the therap"n of Ares through the intermediacy of Patroklos, who dies as the therap"n of Achilles.
As an epic warrior, Achilles also qualifies as isos Ar#i ‘equal to Ares’. This description suits Achilles in the Iliad - though it applies to him only vicariously by way of Patroklos, who takes upon himself the role of a ritual substitute for Achilles. Patroklos is actually called isos Ar#i (XI 604) at the exact moment when the story of his fatal impersonation of Achilles begins.[3]
So a missing link for understanding Song 31 of Sappho is the vision of the hero Achilles as a model warrior at the moment of his death in epic, when he, too, like the model bridegroom in lyric, is ‘equal to Ares’. This link is verified by ancient sources. As we have seen in Chapter 04, it is made explicit that Sappho conventionally imagined the model bridegroom as Achilles himself (F 105b):
05 D = 04 D. Extracts from Sappho
fr. 105a. Like a sweet-apple | turning red | high | on the tip | of the topmost branch. | Forgotten by pickers. | Not forgotten - | they couldn’t reach it.
fr. 105b. “Sappho compared the girl to an apple....she compared the bridegroom to Achilles, and likened the young man’s deeds to the hero’s.” - Himerius Orations 1.16.
fr. 115. To what shall I compare you, dear bridegroom? | To a slender shoot, I most liken you. Such a lyric convention in the songs of Sappho can be explained as an organic correlation of myth and ritual. In the logic of myth, Achilles never becomes a model husband because War personified cuts him down like a flower in the bloom of his youth. In the logic of ritual, on the other hand, Achilles is the perfect model for a bridegroom precisely because he is cut down in war and thus cannot ever became a husband. For love to find its self-expression in the ritual of a wedding, it needs someone to die for love.
Such a ritual need is expressed in the relationship of Eros, personified as the god of erotic love, with Aphrodite, the goddess of erotic love. As we see from an imagined dialogue between Sappho and Aphrodite in a song of Sappho mentioned earlier, the goddess says in her own words that Eros is her therap"n (F 159). As in epic, this word in lyric means not only ‘attendant’ but also ‘ritual substitute’, that is, someone who ritually dies for the sake of the one he attends. Pictured as a pubescent (not prepubescent) boy, Eros is doomed to die for the sake of Aphrodite. In the poetics of Sappho, as later ancient sources tell us (F 172), the death of erotic Love personified is a most persistent theme.
The death of Eros could be pictured as a martial death resulting from the warfare of love. We see clearly the language of love as war in Song 1 of Sappho, where Aphrodite is invoked in prayer to become a summakhos ‘ally in battle’ for Sappho in speaking the words of lyric love poetry (1.28). Conversely, Sappho as the speaker of lyric love poetry is offering herself as an ‘ally in battle’ for Aphrodite, thus crossing over into the themes of epic.
Let us review the text of Song 1 of Sappho 05 E = 04 E. Song 1 of Sappho = Prayer to Aphrodite: You with pattern-woven flowers, immortal Aphrodite, | child of Zeus, weaver of wiles, I
implore you,| do not devastate with aches and sorrows,| Mistress, my heart! | But come here, if ever at any other time | hearing my voice from afar, | you heeded me, and leaving the palace of your father, | golden, you came, | having harnessed the chariot; and you were carried along by beautiful | swift sparrows over the dark earth | swirling with their dense plumage from the sky through the | midst of the aether, | and straightaway they arrived. But you, O holy one, | smiling with your immortal looks, | kept asking what is it once again this time [d"ute] that has happened to me and for what reason | once again this time [d"ute] do I invoke you, | and what is it that I want more than anything to happen | to my frenzied heart? “Whom am I once again this time [d"ute] to persuade, | setting out to bring her to your love? Who is doing you, | Sappho, wrong? | For if she
is fleeing now, soon she will give chase. | If she is not taking gifts, soon she will be giving them. | If she does not love, soon she will love | even against her will.” | Come to me even now, and free me from harsh | anxieties, and however many things | my heart yearns to get done, you do for me. You | become my ally in war.
!
Similarly in the Iliad, Aphrodite crosses over into the themes of epic by intervening in the epic action - and she gets wounded in doing so, as if she were a mortal (V 327-354).!
Parallel to the wounding of the goddess Aphrodite are the two woundings of the god Ares in the Iliad: he too gets wounded as if he were a mortal (V 855-863, XXI 401-408). More than that, the woundings of Ares are in both cases described as mortal woundings, and the Iliad actually shows Ares in the act of going through the motions of a stylized martial death. Such an epic experience is for Ares a mock death (Nagy “Epic Hero” §76). Similarly, the lyric experience of Eros in dying for love can be viewed as a mock death, and such ritualized mockery is typical of “divine burlesque,” which represents one of the oldest features of Greek myth. There are striking parallels to be found in Near Eastern sources dating back to the second millennium BCE.!!
The stylized death of the god Ares in the Iliad is an extreme case of divine mirroring: the immortal god of war gets involved not only in the martial actions of heroes but even in their martial deaths. And he gets so involved because god and hero mirror each other at the moment of a hero’s death, which is the climax of the inherent antagonism between them (Nagy “Epic Hero” §§105, 108, 110, 115).
At the moment when he dies a warrior’s death in place of Achilles, Patroklos is vicariously experiencing such a moment of mirroring between Achilles as warrior and Ares as god of warriors: that is why Patroklos looks just like Ares at that moment, as we have seen in Passages A and B.
As mutual antagonists, hero and the god match each other in life as well as in death. In the case of Achilles, as we see from surviving traces in the epic Cycle, this hero was imagined as an irresistible lover by lovelorn girls hoping to make him their husband (Nagy “Epic Hero” §56). In the case of Ares, as we see from the second song of Demodokos in the Homeric Odyssey, this god is imagined as an irresistible lover by the goddess of sexuality herself, Aphrodite (viii
266-366).
Among other related characteristics shared by the hero Achilles and the god Ares is their superhuman speed. In the case of Achilles, his success in war is closely connected with the use of such epithets as pod"k#s ‘swift-footed’ in the Iliad. In the case of Ares, his own swiftness of foot is pictured as ideal for success in courtship as well as in warfare. In the song of Demodokos about the love affair of Ares and Aphrodite in the Odyssey, we find that one of the war god’s most irresistible attributes is his nimbleness of foot in choral lyric dancing.[4] And yet, despite his irresistible attractiveness in courting Aphrodite, the dashing young Ares will never marry. Like the dashing young Achilles, Ares is eternally the bridegroom and never the husband.!
Having started with the third-person bridegroom in Song 31 of Sappho, I now continue with the second-person bride. Just as the bridegroom looks like a local cult hero, so also the bride looks like a local cult heroine. In Aeolic traditions, such heroines figured in myths about the conquests of Achilles - not only martial but also amorous conquests - in the years that preceded the destruction of Troy. These myths told of beautiful Aeolic girls of Asia Minor and the outlying island of Lesbos who had once been immune to love and thus unreachable to their frustrated suitors. But then they fall helplessly in love with Achilles - that dashing young hero who had sailed across the sea from his home in Hellas to attack the Aeolic people of Asia Minor and
Lesbos.[5]
Comparable to these once-unreachable Aeolic girls is a prize apple, unreachable to the apple- pickers, which ‘blushes’ enticingly from the heights of a “shooter-branch” in a song of Sappho (F 105a). It is no coincidence that the brides of Sappho’s songs are conventionally compared to apples, as we saw earlier (F 105b, in Passage D). Like Sappho’s prize apple, these contemporary brides are imagined as unreachable. But they are unreachable only up to the moment when they take the place of Aeolic heroines who had once upon a time fallen in love with Achilles, that eternal bridegroom. These Aeolic girls of the heroic past are imagined as throwing themselves at Achilles. That is, they throw a metonymic extension of themselves at Achilles by throwing an apple at him: such a theme is attested in the bittersweet story of a lovelorn girl from the Aeolic city of Pedasos (Hesiod F 214).[6] (I will have more to say about the concept of “metonymy” at a later point.) In the logic of myth, the love felt by such heroines is doomed from the start, and, in the end, they die for their love. In the logic of ritual, however, that same love promises to be requited. Such is the love expressed by girls pictured in the act of throwing apples at their prospective lovers in the songs of Sappho (F 214A).
Just as the hero Achilles stands in for a god at moments that center on the ritual of a wedding, so also various Aeolic heroines can stand in for a goddess. A case in point is the captive woman Briseis in the Iliad, who is overtly associated with the women of Lesbos whom Achilles captured as beauty-prizes in the years that preceded the destruction of Troy (IX 128-131, 270-273; XIX 245-246). The Iliad quotes, as it were, Briseis in the act of singing a choral lyric song of lament for the death of Patroklos (XIX 287-300); this quotation of Briseis, along with the framing narrative concerning the antiphonal response of the women attending Briseis (XIX 301-302), reenacts most accurately the morphology of a genuine choral lyric lament.[7] As she begins to sing her choral lyric song of lament for Patroklos, Briseis is likened to Aphrodite (XIX 282). In her lament, Briseis sings her bittersweet sorrow not only over the death of Patroklos but also over the death of her own fondest hope: when he was
alive, Patroklos had promised to arrange for her a marriage to Achilles, but, now that he is dead, the hope of that promise is gone forever (XIX 295-300). So the Iliad pictures Patroklos as a ritual substitute for Achilles in courtship as well as in war.
In the logic of myth, from what we have seen so far, a hero’s identity at the moment of death can merge with a god’s identity. In the logic of ritual, on the other hand, such a merger of identity leads only to a stylized death.[8] Death in ritual is not physical but psychic. For example, from cross-cultural surveys of rituals of initiation as practiced in traditional societies around the world, it becomes evident that initiands who are identified with divinities at the moment of initiation are imagined as dying to their old selves as members of a given age-class and being reborn to their new selves as members of the next age-class.[9]
In the ritual of a wedding as celebrated by the songs of Sappho, there is the prospect of a happy ending as the identity of the Aeolic numpha ‘bride’ shifts from girl to goddess to woman. In the process of becoming a goddess for a moment, the bride dies to her old self as a girl and is reborn to her new self as a woman. In the corresponding myth, by contrast, there is the prospect of a sad but compellingly erotic ending to the story. The bride-to-be will never get married to the eternal bridegroom, imagined as Achilles.
The death of Achilles himself in war is the climax of his erotic charisma. In general, the martial death of heroes is eroticized as the beautiful death, la belle mort; even the body of the dead hero is eroticized - as the beautiful corpse, le beau mort (Tyrtaeus F 10).[10] Achilles is pictured as a beau mort in the Iliad, as when the goddess Thetis and her fellow Nereids lament the future death
of her beloved son in war; in this context, the hero is compared to a beautiful plant that dies in full bloom (XVIII 54-60).[11] In a song of Sappho (F 105c), we see a comparable image of a beautiful plant at the moment of death (also comparable is the image of a bridegroom as a beautiful plant in F 115).!
Such themes of eroticized death are relevant to the near-death experience of the ‘I’ in Song 31 of Sappho. Having started with the third-person bridegroom in this song and having continued with the second-person bride, I conclude with this first-person speaker. The woman who speaks in the first person here is vicariously speaking for the whole group that attends the wedding. The whole group is notionally participating in the stylized deaths of the male and the female initiands - in this case, of the bridegroom and the bride.
The stylized death of the bridegroom in a wedding as described by Sappho matches the realized death of Achilles in war. Premarital death in ritual marks the transition from bridegroom to husband, while martial death in myth marks an eternal deferral of such a transition. By dying in war, Achilles becomes the very picture of the ultimate bridegroom in eternally suspended animation, forever on the verge of marrying. In the logic of ritual, what is needed for female initiands, especially for brides, is such an eternal bridegroom.[12] A comparable model of unfulfilled desire and unrequited love is the hero Hippolytus in the Hippolytus of Euripides: at the end of this drama (1423-1430), we find an anthropologically accurate description of a ritual of female initiation featuring a chorus of girls performing a lament for the death of Hippolytus as their local cult hero.[13] As this drama illustrates, the identity of the female initiand depends on the program, as it were, of the ritual of initiation. The nuptial Aphrodite and the prenuptial / postnuptial Artemis reveal different phases of erotic engagement in the life cycle of a woman, determining when she is attainable - and when she is unattainable.
In compensation for his being cut down in the bloom of his youth, Achilles is destined to have a kleos ‘glory’ that is aphthiton ‘unwilting’: that is what the hero’s mother foretells for him, as Achilles himself is quoted as saying (Iliad IX 413). As we have seen, the word kleos expresses not only the idea of prestige as conveyed by the translation ‘glory’ but also the idea of a medium that confers this prestige.[14]
And this medium of kleos is not only epic, as represented by the Homeric Iliad, but also lyric, as best represented in the historical period by the poet Pindar. In the praise poetry of Pindar, the poet proudly proclaims his mastery of the prestige conferred by kleos (as in Nemean 7.61-63). [15] As for the word aphthiton ‘unwilting’, it is used as an epithet of kleos not only in epic but also in lyric, as we see from the songs of Sappho (F 44.4) and Ibycus (F 282.47). This epithet expresses the idea that the medium of kleos is a metaphorical flower that will never stop blossoming. As the words of a song by Pindar predict, the hero who is glorified by the kleos will die and will thus stop blossoming, that is, he will ‘wilt’, phthinein, but the medium that conveys the message of death will never wilt: that medium is pictured as a choral lyric song eternally sung by the Muses as they lament the beautiful wilted flower that is Achilles, the quintessential beau mort (Isthmian 8.56a-62).[16]
05 F = 03 H. Pindar Isthmian 8.56a-60
Even when he [= Achilles] died, the songs did not leave him, but the Heliconian Maidens [= the Muses] stood by his pyre and his funeral mound, pouring forth a song of lamentation [thr"nos] that is famed far and wide. And so it was that the gods decided to hand over the worthy man, wilted [phthi-menos] in death as he was, to the songs of the goddesses [Muses]. [17] And this, even now, wins as a prize the words, as the chariot-team of the Muses starts moving on its way to glorify the memory of Nikokles the boxer.
This song of the Muses is parallel to the choral lyric song that is sung by Thetis accompanied by her fellow Nereids as they lament in the Iliad the future death of her beloved son: here again, as we saw earlier, Achilles is figured as a beautiful flower cut down in full bloom (XVIII 54-60). [18]
05 G = 03 G. Iliad XVIII 54-62 (this is my literal translation, in Best of the Achaeans [1979] 182-183 {LINK}): !!!!!!!!!!! Ah me, the wretch! Ah me, the mother, so sad it is, of the very
best. !!!!!!!!!!! I gave birth to a faultless and strong son, !!!!!!!!!!! the very best of heroes. And he shot up like a seedling. !!!!!!!!!!! I nurtured him like a shoot in the choicest spot of the
orchard, !!!!!!!!!!! only to send him off on curved ships to fight at Troy.
!!!!!!!!!!! And I will never be welcoming him !!!!!!!!!!! back home as returning warrior, back to the House of Peleus. !!!!!!!!!!! And as long as he lives and sees the light of the sun, !!!!!!!!!!! he will have sorrow [akh-nutai]. !
In the Odyssey, we find a retrospective description of the lament sung by Thetis and her fellow Nereids at the actual funeral of Achilles, followed by the lament of the Muses themselves (xxiv 58-59, 60-62).
The idea of kleos aphthiton ‘unwilting glory’ as conferred by poetry applies not only to the epic theme of a hero’s death in war, as in the case of Achilles in the Iliad (IX 413), but also to the lyric theme of a wedding, as in the case of Hector as bridegroom and Andromache as bride in Song 44 of Sappho (line 4). The expression kleos aphthiton links the doomed warrior in epic with the wedded couple in lyric. Parallel to the linking effected by this expression is the linking effected by the god Apollo himself: he too links Achilles in epic with Hector and Andromache in lyric. The celebrants at the wedding in Song 44 of Sappho sing Apollo by invoking his epithet Paean (P$"n in the local dialect) when they celebrate Hector and Andromache as bridegroom and bride (line 33). To sing a paean is to sing a song from Lesbos, as we see from the wording of Archilochus (F 121). To sing a paean in the Iliad is to sing Apollo as Paean, though Paean is a god in his own right in more archaizing contexts of the Iliad (as at V 401 and V 899-901). Elsewhere in the Iliad, Achilles calls on the Achaeans to sing a paean, that is, to sing Apollo as Paean when they celebrate the death of Hector in war (XXII 391).
As we have already seen, there are also other linkings of the doomed warrior in epic with the wedded couple in lyric. Achilles is theoeikelos ‘just like the gods’ as a warrior in the Iliad (I 131, XXIII 155), and so too Hector and Andromache as bridegroom and bride are theoeikeloi ‘just like the gods’ at the moment of their wedding in Song 44 of Sappho (at line 34; also i] keloi theoi[s ‘just like the gods’ at line 21). In fact, Achilles is in fact the only recipient of the epithet theoeikelos in the Homeric Iliad. So the warrior who kills Hector attracts the same epithet in epic that Hector attracts in lyric.
It remains to ask about the god with whom Achilles is identified in epic and with whom Hector and Andromache are identified in lyric. For this god, epic and lyric are undifferentiated, just as the kleos aphthiton of Achilles as warrior in epic is undifferentiated from the kleos aphthiton of Hector and Andromache as bridegroom and bride in lyric. This god is Apollo.!
So here we turn from Ares to Apollo as the other divine antagonist of Achilles - and as his other divine model.
At the moment of his death, the hero Achilles is destined to confront not only the god Ares as
***
the generic divine antagonist of warriors but also the god Apollo as his own personal divine antagonist. This personalized destiny of Achilles is explicit in the epic Cycle, that is, in the Aithiopis, but only implicit in the Iliad, where Patroklos substitutes for Achilles in his antagonism
with Apollo just as he substitutes for him in his antagonism with Ares.
What makes this destiny of Achilles so personalized is his special connection with poetry, a medium signaled as kleos aphthiton ‘unwilting glory’. The god of this medium is Apollo, who is the god of poetry. And this poetry is conceived as lyric. To put it another way, this poetry is a form of epic that is not yet differentiated from lyric.[19] Apollo is the god of an older form of epic that is still sung to the accompaniment of the lyre.
Correspondingly, Achilles is the hero of such an older form of epic. In this role, he is imagined as looking exactly like Apollo - beardless and wearing long hair. Like Apollo, Achilles is the essence of a beautiful promise in the making, of a telos or ‘fulfillment’ realized only in performance, only when the song is fully performed.[20] There is a visual signature of this shared role of god and hero in the Iliad. Achilles, like Apollo, is pictured in this epic as singing to the tune of a lyre that he himself is playing (IX 186-189). As we have seen, Achilles had plundered this lyre from the Aeolic city of Thebe, ruled by the king Eëtion (IX 186-189), whom he killed when he captured that city - and who was the father of that greatest singer of lamentations in the Iliad, Andromache (VI 414-416). As I have argued, what Achilles sings to the tune of this Aeolic lyre is an echo of the loves and bittersweet sorrows heard in lyric song. [21] An example of such lyric in historical times is the song of Sappho about the wedding of Hector and Andromache (F 44): the lyric kleos aphthiton ‘unwilting glory’ of this Aeolic song (F 44.4) is cognate with the epic kleos aphthiton ‘unwilting glory’ that Achilles is promised in the Iliad (IX 413), which is linked with the epic klea andr"n ‘glories of heroes’ that Achilles is singing on the Aeolic lyre (IX 189).
I close with an Aeolic stanza, which captures what could could be described as Sappho’s own ascending scale of affection:
05 H = 04 G. Song 16 of Sappho, stanza 1 oi men ipp#"n stroton oi de pesd"n oi de n$"n phais’ epi g$n melainan emmenai kalliston eg" de k#n’ ot- t" tis er$tai
Some say an army of horsemen, some of footsoldiers, some of ships, is the fairest thing on earth, but I say it is what one loves.
! This song is a good example of a priamel, which is a rhetorical device where “A” is highlighted by saying that “B” and “C” and “D” and so on cannot match it. The sequence has to be ... D C B and finally A. To cite an example in American popular music...
!
!!!!!!!!!!! Some say love, it is a river, that drowns the tender weed, !!!!!!!!!!! Some say love, it is a razor, that leaves the soul to bleed, !!!!!!!!!!! Some say love, it is a hunger - an endless aching need, !!!!!!!!!!! I say love, it is a flower - and you, its only seed.
LINK to Bette Midler’s song, “The Rose.” A preview...
Passage (I)
Thesis: daim!n is the mystical way to refer to a given god or to a given human at the moment of his/her identification with the god
!
Hymn to Demeter 235-236, 237-241
She nurtured him in the palace, and he grew up like a daim!n, not eating food, not sucking from the breast ... She used to anoint him with ambrosia, as if he had been born of the goddess, and she would breathe down her sweet breath on him as she held him at her bosom. At nights she would conceal him in the menos of fire, as if he were a smoldering log, and her parents were kept unaware. But they marveled at how full in
bloom he came to be, and to look at him was like looking at the god.
!
[1] Nagy Pindar’s Homer (1990) 7§2n10. [2] Nagy Best of the Achaeans (1979) 17§§5-6. [3] Nagy Best of the Achaeans (1979) 2§8, 17§5. [4] Nagy Homer the Preclassic (2009) I§214. [5] Nagy Homer the Preclassic (2009) II§§49, 321. [6] Nagy Best of the Achaeans (1979) 7§29n6. [7] Dué 2002:70-71; Nagy Homer the Preclassic (2009) II§§303-317.
[8] Nagy Poetry as Performance (1996) 87-97. [9] Nagy Poetry as Performance (1996) 101-103.
[10] Nagy Homer the Classic (2008) 4 section 18; Nagy Homer the Preclassic (2009) II§425 [11] Nagy Best of the Achaeans (1979) 10§11. [12] Dué 2006:82-83. [13] Nagy Poetry as Performance (1996) 94-96. [14] Cf. Nagy Best of the Achaeans (1979) 1§§2-4. [15] Nagy Pindar’s Homer (1990) 6§3. [16] Nagy Pindar’s Homer (1990) 7§6.
[17] As I argue in Best of the Achaeans (1979) 176-177, the phraseology here shows that Achilles was destined to have a kleos that is a-phthi-ton ‘unwilting’, as explicitly formulated at Iliad IX 413.
[18] Nagy Best of the Achaeans (1979) 10§11. [19] Nagy Pindar’s Homer (1990) 12§§44-45. [20] Nagy Homer’s Text and Language (2004) 138-143. [21] Nagy Homer the Preclassic (2009) II§297. Chapter 06: Patroklos as alter ego of Achilles
Key word for this chapter:! therap!n ‘attendant, minister; ritual substitute’ (this is the definition in the Glossary). A word related to therap!n is therapeuein ‘heal, cure’ (compare the English borrowings “therapy,” “therapeutic,” etc.).
Passage A. Iliad XVI 233-248
{Achilles is praying to Zeus}: “King Zeus,” he cried, “lord of Dodona, god of the Pelasgoi, who dwells afar, you who hold wintry Dodona in your sway, where your prophets the Selloi dwell around you with their feet unwashed and their couches made upon the ground - if you heard me when I prayed to you aforetime, and did me honor while you sent disaster on the Achaeans, grant me now the fulfillment of yet this further prayer. I shall stay here at my assembly [ag!n] of ships, but I shall send my comrade into battle at the head of many Myrmidons. Grant, O all-seeing Zeus, that victory may go with him; put your courage into his heart that Hektor may learn whether my attendant [therap!n] is man enough to fight alone, or whether his might is only then so indomitable when I myself enter the turmoil of war. Afterwards when he has chased the fight and the cry of battle from the ships, grant that he may
return unharmed, with his armor and his comrades, fighters in close combat.” Thus did he pray, and all-counseling Zeus heard his prayer. Part of it he did indeed grant him - but not the whole. He granted that Patroklos should thrust back war and battle from the ships, but refused to let him come safely out of the fight.
Patroklos is the generic therap!n of Achilles, as we see from the context of Iliad XVI 165 here. Should we interpret therap!n in this context as (a) ‘attendant’ or (b) ‘ritual substitute’? (Both these definitions of therap!n are given in the Glossary.) My suggested answer is that both meanings apply. Patroklos is the ‘attendant’ of Achilles on the surface, but he is his ‘ritual’ substitute in the deeper meaning of the Master Narrative.
As we are about to see, Patroklos is $sos Ar"i ‘equal to Ares’ at XI 604. Also, as we saw the last tine, he is equated with Ares at XVI 784. And, as we also saw last time, Patroklos is daimoni
$sos ‘equal to a daim!n’ at XVI 705 and 786. As one who is ‘equal to Ares’, he is the generic warrior, the generic war hero. But there he is being ‘equal’ not only to Ares but also to Apollo, though his identification with Apollo is not fully spelled out, since the word daim!n masks the identity of the god.
As one who is also equal to Apollo at the moment of his death, Patroklos participates in a specialized god-hero relationship. By being equal to Ares at the moment of his death, Patroklos participates in a generic god-hero relationship that is typical of war heroes. In identifying with Ares / Apollo, Patroklos is experiencing something that will later be experienced by Achilles himself, who will also be identifying with Ares / Apollo at the moment of his own heroic death (not seen in the Iliad). So Patroklos is a stand-in for the main hero of the narrative, Achilles, whose specialized ritual antagonist is Apollo (Achilles, as a warrior, also has a generalized ritual antagonist, who is Ares).
Passage B. Iliad XI 599-606
Achilles saw and took note, for he was standing on the stern of his ship watching the hard stress [ponos] and struggle of the fight. He called from the ship to his comrade Patroklos, who heard him in the tent and came out looking like Ares himself [literally, $sos Ar"i ‘equal to Ares’]; here indeed was the beginning of the ill that presently befell him. “Why,” said he, “Achilles do you call me? what do you want with me?”
Here Homeric poetry declares that the application of the epithet (ornamental adjective) ‘equal to Ares’ will doom Patroklos to death.
A generic warrior is called a therap!n of Ares. Note the expression therapontes Ar"os, for example at Iliad II 110, referring to all the warriors fighting on the Greek side: Butler translates this expression as ‘squires’ of Ares. Generically, heroes as warriors die for Ares. More specifically, however, any given hero can die for his divine antagonist.
Generically, Achilles would be a therap!n of Ares; specifically, however, we can say that he is a therap!n of Apollo, because it is Apollo who will directly kill him (see the plot summary of the epic called the Aithiopis, or ‘Song of the Aethiopians’, which is in the Sourcebook).
While the therap!n of Apollo must be Achilles, the therap!n of Achilles is, to repeat, Patroklos. For a passage where Patroklos is therap!n ‘companion-in-arms’ or ‘comrade’ of Achilles, see again XVI 165.
Patroklos must die for Achilles, who must die for Apollo. The death of Patroklos is via Ares generically but also via Apollo personally.
At the moment when Patroklos dies, he is called daimoni $sos ‘equal to a daim!n’ at XVI 705 and 786. At this precise moment he is in sacred space. Since war is ritual, the battleground is for the warrior a sacred space. Patroklos is doomed for death, and that is why he is ‘equal to a daim! n’. In the case of warriors, being godlike is to have martial fury, to experience a “warp spasm.” To experience a “warp spasm” is be beside oneself, “berserk” (this is an Old Norse concept). To be possessed. Note that Ares is not the god of war per se, but the god of martial fury.
Martial fury is relevant to the second of the three characteristics of the hero that we considered earlier, namely, that the hero is “extreme” both positively and, on special occasions, negatively. Achilles is extreme mostly in a positive sense, since he is ‘best’ in many categories, and ‘best of the Achaeans’ in the Homeric Iliad. Occasionally, however, he is extreme in a negative sense, as in his moments of martial fury.[1] In war, the warrior who is possessed by the god of war experiences this kind of fury, which is typically bestial. For example, martial fury in Greek is lussa, meaning ‘wolfish rage’.[2] Comparable is the Old Norse concept berserkr and the Old Irish concept of ríastrad ‘warp spasm’ or ‘distortion’.[3]
Here is the ritual background of the word therap!n: it was borrowed from Anatolian languages (Hittite, Luvian) sometime in the 2nd millennium BCE. The corresponding word in those Anatolian languages means ‘ritual substitute’. Someone who is very close to the king must die in place of the king, on a seasonally recurring basis.
See Nagy’s encyclopedia article “The Epic Hero,” on-line at the Heroes site. ! The concept of
transfert du mal: !evil must be passed on, to a sacrificial victim. !
In Greek visual art, Patroklos is represented as a sacrificial ram, with his throat slit open. !
The Greek word pharmakon means ‘drug-cure, drug-medicine’ (compare the English borrowings “pharmacy,” “pharmacology,” etc.); there is also a related word, pharmakos, which designates a special kind of person. I ask: can you guess what kind of a person a pharmakos would be?! Answer: ‘scapegoat’.
!
Simone Weil was a philosopher who reflected about! le transfert du mal. In “Void and Compensation,” she writes about “the wish to see others suffer exactly what we are suffering.”
! More from Weil:
From “Void and Compensation”: “The tendency to spread evil beyond oneself: I still have it! Beings and things are not sacred enough to me. May I never sully anything, even though I be utterly transformed into mud. To sully nothing, even in thought. Even in my worst moments I would not destroy a Greek statue or a fresco by Giotto. Why anything else then? Why, for example, a moment in the life of a human being who could have been happy for that moment.”
From the same work: “The wish to see others suffer exactly what we are suffering. It is because of this that, except in periods of social instability, the spite of those in misfortune is directed against their fellows. That is a factor making for social stability.”
From the same work: “The tendency to spread the suffering beyond ourselves. If through excessive weakness we can neither call forth pity nor do harm to others, we attack what the universe itself represents for us. Then every good or beautiful thing is like an insult.”
From “Human Personality”: “When harm is done to a man, real evil enters into him; not merely pain and suffering, but the actual horror of evil. Just as men have the power of transmitting good to one another, so they have the power to transmit evil.”
{Here is the essence of le transfert du mal. - according to Nagy} e) From “Evil”: “The innocent victim who suffers knows the truth about his executioner, the
executioner does not know it.”
f) From the same work: “A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves. That is why we are inclined to commit such acts as a way of deliverance.”
! Achilles considers Patroklos to be the most philos of them all. !
Review: ascending scale of affection in the Meleager narrative (the compressed narrative about Meleager is equivalent to the expanded narrative about Achilles; micronarrative vs. macronarrative). Notice that the compressed narrative (micronarrative) is called klea andr!n h"r!!n ‘glories [= kleos plural] of men, heroes [h"r!es]’ at IX 524-525, and that this narrative is told in the midst of philoi (IX 528) {that is, the narrative is told to an audience who are presumed to be philoi}
!
Review: philos and the ascending scale of affection: elders, priests, father, sisters, mother, companions [hetairoi], {wife}
! Passage C. Iliad IX 524-528 ! {repeated from Dialogue 1; but now different elements are being emphasized} !
{Phoenix is speaking to Achilles and the other assembled heroes}: [Thus] we have heard in song the glories [klea] of heroes of old time, how they quarreled when they were roused to fury, but still they could be won over by gifts, and fair words could soothe them. I have in my mind an old story! - a very old one - and you are all friends [philoi], so I will tell it.
!
Compare klea andrôn here in Iliad IX 524, the ‘glories of heroes of the past’, with klea andrôn in Iliad IX 189, the ‘glories of heroes of the past’. There it is Achilles himself who is singing, while accompanying himself on the lyre that once belonged to Eëtion.
! The Greek word that introduces the Meleager story, hout!s ‘thus’, is a marker of a form of speech called ainos (so Eduard Fraenkel). ! From here on, this word ainos will prove to be essential. ! Three qualifications for understanding an ainos: sophoi/agathoi/philoi. !! 1) sophos ‘skilled’ or ‘wise’ indicates MENTAL qualification !! 2) agathos ‘good’ or ‘noble’ indicates MORAL qualification !! 3) philos ‘near-and-dear’ indicates EMOTIONAL or AFFECTIVE qualification ! The “moral” of the Meleager story is that Meleager’s wife is Cleopatra = Kleopatra ! The “moral” of the Meleager story for Achilles is that Achilles’ most philos companion is
Patrokl"s or Patrokle"s ! What is at stake for Achilles? kleos aphthiton (IX 413) ! Here are three alternative views of what is at stake for Achilles: ! 1) Love of a woman... ! Passage D: Iliad IX 340-343 {Achilles is speaking}:
Are the sons of Atreus the only men in the world who love their wives? Any man of common right feeling will love and cherish her who is his own, as I this woman, with my whole heart, though she was but the prize of my spear.
!
[[We have come a long way from Iliad I, where Briseis was simply the property of Achilles and thus an extension of his honor.]]
! 2) Love of one’s own life... ! Passage E: Iliad IX 401-408 {Achilles is speaking}:
My life [psukh"] is more to me than all the wealth of Ilion while it was yet at peace before the Achaeans went there, or than all the treasure that lies on the stone floor of Apollo’s temple beneath the cliffs of Pytho [= Delphi]. Cattle and sheep are to be had by raiding, and a man can buy both tripods and horses if he wants them, but when his life [psukh"] has once left him it can neither be bought nor raided back again.
! 3) Love of one’s comrades... ! Passage F: Iliad IX 622-638
Ajax son of Telamon then said, “Odysseus, noble son of Laertes, let us be gone, for I see that our journey is vain. We must now take our answer, unwelcome though it be, to the Danaans who are waiting to receive it. Achilles is savage and remorseless; he is cruel, and cares nothing for the love his comrades lavished upon him more than on all the others. He is implacable—and yet if a man’s brother or son has been slain he will accept a fine [poin"] by way of amends from him that killed him, and the wrong-doer having paid in full remains in peace in his own locale [d"mos]; but as for you, Achilles, the gods have put a wicked unforgiving spirit in your heart, and this, all over one single girl.”
!
The moral problem is summed up in the micronarrative of the Shield of Achilles, where the narrative zooms in on a lawsuit involving an anomymous plaintiff and an anonymous defendant. The fundamental question here is this: what is the price of a human life?
!
Passage G) Iliad XVIII
Meanwhile the people were gathered in assembly, for there was a quarrel [neikos], and two men were wrangling about the blood-price [poin"] for a man who had died, the one saying to the d"mos that he had paid damages in full,
[500] and the other refusing to accept anything. ! Coda...
For the mentality encoded in the names of Kleopatra and Patroklos, compare Dio Chrysostomos 12.60: “Through their longing for the divine all people have a powerful urge to worship and serve the deity from nearby. Like children that have been taken away from their father and mother, they are filled with a strange longing and often in their dreams reach out their hands to their parents who are not there, so too do people in their love for the gods seek - and properly so because of their benefits and affinity - in all possible ways to be with them and in their company.”
[1] Nagy Best of the Achaeans (1979) 321.
[2] Lincoln 1975.
[3] For a comparison of the Old Norse and Old Irish concepts, see Sjoestedt 1940:86. See also Henry 1982. For the translation of Old Irish ríastrad as ‘warp spasm’, see Kinsella 1969. For a lively description of ‘warp spasm’, see Rees and Rees 1961:248-249.
Chapter 07. The sign of the hero. Key word for this dialogue: s"ma, pl. s"mata ‘sign, signal, symbol; tomb, tomb of a hero’;
s"mainein (verb) ‘indicate, use a s"ma’. This word s"ma is the “video” equivalent of the “audio” word ainos.
In order to understand more clearly the meaning of s"ma, we need to consider again the meaning of the word ainos. It is an authoritative utterance for and by a social group. In some contexts (not in the contexts we have considered so far), it can be translated as ‘praise; fable’. A deriveative of ainos is ainigma, which means ‘enigma, riddle’. We have already seen one of the clearest examples of ainos: it is the klea andr!n ‘glories of heroes’ In Iliad IX 524, referring to a narrative that is ‘totally recalled’ by Phoenix for Achilles and for the other assembled philoi who are listening. The ainos of Phoenix is signaled by what anthropologists call an “index” expression (hout! ‘thus’ at IX 524). Here is a comparable example of an “index” expression in English: “once upon a time...”
One who sees or hears a s"ma (“video”) or an ainos (“audio”) must have the following qualifications:
!! 1) to be sophos ‘skilled’ or ‘wise’ - indicating a MENTAL qualification
!! 2) to be agathos ‘good’ or ‘noble’ - indicating a MORAL qualification
! !3) to be philos ‘near-and-dear’ - indicating an EMOTIONAL or AFFECTIVE qualification
!I review here some concepts that we will need to apply all over again:
The ascending scale of affection in the micro-narrative about Meleager (which is a compressed parallel to the expanded macro-Narrative about Achilles).
This micro-narrative is called klea andr!n h"r!!n ‘glories [= kleos plural] of men, heroes [h"r! es]’ (IX 524-5), which is told in the midst of philoi (IX 528). That is, the narrative is being told to listeners who are presumed to be philoi.
The meaning of philos: as an adjective it means ‘near and dear’; as a noun it means ‘friend’. - The ascending scale of affection for Meleager in Iliad IX, as measured by the term philos:
elders / priests / father / sisters / mother / companions [hetairoi] / wife - The name of Meleager’s wife: Cleopatra = Kleopatra; her name parallels in meaning the name
of Patroklos (/ Patrokl"s / Patrokle"s).
The narrative of the klea andr!n of IX 524-525 is a narrative that can be compressed into one word, one name, and that one word is the name of Patroklos (/ Patrokl"s / Patrokle"s). The name of Patroklos is the story of Patroklos. That is the story that is being told in the ‘glories of heroes’, the klea andr!n. To put it another way, the deep meaning of the story is the name of
Patroklos. The story means Patroklos.
Even the fact that the names Kleopatra / Patroklos are interchangeable is itself an ainos.
In ancient Greek song culture, the act of “reading,” which may be simply the act of listening to song, can be considered an “initiation” or “ordeal,” which is a testing of the three requirements that we have been considering: that the “reader” must be sophos, agathos, and philos. Patroklos is not just the dearest hetairos ‘companion’ of Achilles: he is his “alter ego.” The
relationship between these hetairoi is represented by the Iliad as even more intimate than sexual: it operates on the mentality of being willing to die for someone else. It is as if one person were to declare to another person: “I will die for you” - and really mean it.
The “message” of the “code” of the narrative of Patroklos is this: Patroklos is for Achilles the most philos of them all (as in XVIII 80-82).
The kind of love implied by the word philos in situating Patroklos at the very top of Achilles’ ascending scale of affection is not necessarily sexual. The Iliad does not explore the relationship of Achilles and Patroklos on a sexual level, any more than it explores the relationship of Meleager and Kleopatra on a sexual level.
Having considered a case where Patroklos is the ultimate meaning of an ainos, let us now consider a case where Patroklos is the ultimate meaning of a s"ma.
I note here a relevant saying, attributed to the poet Simonides (6th/5th c. BCE): whereas a picture is silent poetry, poetry is talking pictures. In the history of filmmaking, when audio was first successfully combined with the video of the film, the word for the audio/video combination was in fact “talking pictures.” So Simonides anticipated the concept, even though the technology for the concept was invented only two and a half millennia later.
07 A. Iliad XXIII 303-348
“Antilokhos,” said Nestor, “you are young, but Zeus and Poseidon have loved you well, and have made you an excellent charioteer. I need not therefore say much by way of instruction. You are skillful at wheeling your horses round the post, [310] but the horses themselves are very slow, and it is this that will, I fear, mar your chances. The other drivers know less than you do, but their horses are fleeter; therefore, my dear son, see if you cannot hit upon some artifice [m"tis] whereby you may insure that the prize shall not slip through your fingers. [315] The woodsman does more by skill [m"tis] than by brute force [bi"]; by skill [m"tis] the helmsman guides his storm-tossed ship over the sea [pontos], and so by skill [m"tis] one driver can beat another. [320] If a man go wide in rounding this way and that, whereas a man of craft [kerdos] may have worse horses, but he will keep them well in hand when he sees the turning- post [terma]; he knows the precise moment [325] at which to pull the rein, and keeps his eye well on the man in front of him. I will give you this certain sign [s"ma] which cannot escape your notice. There is a stump of a dead tree-oak or pine as it may be - some six feet above the ground, and not yet rotted away by rain; [330] it stands at the fork of the road; it has two white stones set one on each side, and there is a clear course all round it. It may have been a tomb
[s"ma] of someone who died long ago, or it may have been used as a turning-post in days gone by; now, however, it has been fixed on by swift-footed radiant Achilles as the mark [terma] round which the chariots shall turn; hug it as close as you can, [335] but as you stand in your chariot lean over a little to the left; urge on your right-hand horse with voice and lash, and give him a loose rein, but let the left-hand horse keep so close in, [340] that the nave of your wheel shall almost graze the post; but mind the stone, or you will wound your horses and break your chariot in pieces, which would be sport for others but confusion for yourself. Therefore, my dear son, mind well what you are about, for if you can be first to round the post [345] there is no chance of any one giving you the go-by later, not even though you had Arion the horse of Adrastos, a horse which is of divine race, or the horses of Laomedon, which are the noblest in
this land.” !
When Nestor says to his son here, ‘I will give you this certain sign [s"ma] which cannot escape your notice’, the idea of ‘escape one’s notice’ is expressed by way of the verb-root l"th-, which means ‘mentally disconnect’. This root is found in the mythological name Lethe, which is the river of forgetfulness. More precisely, Lethe is the name of a river in the underworld that separates the living from the dead, those awake from those asleep, those conscious from those unconscious.
The idea that you must not be mentally disconnected from the s"ma ‘sign’, as we see here in Iliad XXIII 326, shows that the word s"ma has to do with a state of mind, a mentality. Just a few lines later, however, at Iliad XXIII 331, the same word refers to a ‘tomb’ or ‘grave-mark’. And this ‘tomb’ or ‘grave-mark’, as we see in this context, is used as a terma or ‘turning point’ for a chariot race. The word terma ‘turning point’, which we see in Iliad XXIII 331, can be used metaphorically to refer to turning points in one’s own life. Such a metaphorical use is preserved in the English borrowing of the word, term.
The symbolism of the left turn in a chariot race works like this... You need to be more impulsive on your right side and more restrained on your left side by whipping the horses with your right hand and reining in the horses with your left hand. This way, you are not only making the most successful left turn possible. You are also achieving a balance or equilibrium of impulsiveness and restraint at this particular moment in your life. In terms of this balance, the impulsiveness is dominant and the restraint is recessive.
I note that Antilochos does not interpret literally the s"ma or ‘sign’ given to him by his father. Instead, he inteprets the sign metaphorically. In driving his chariot past the chariot of Menelaos, nearly “fishtailing” his competitor, Antolokhos is more impulsive than he is restrained. His action is a blend of impulsiveness and restraint that favors the impulsive side, which is the right, more than the restraining side, which is the left.
And what about ‘the grave-mark of someone who died long ago’? If there were a name to be given to ‘someone who died long ago’, what would that name be? The answer is surely: ‘an ancestor’. So the grave-mark is a fitting mark or sign for the man who carries the glory of the ancestors, Patroklos. But it will also be a fitting mark or sign for Antilokhos himself, who will give up his life by being killed in battle in place of his father Nestor at a later epic moment, beyond the Iliad (see the plot summary of the epic called the Aithiopis, or ‘Song of the Aethiopians’, which is in the Sourcebook). Once again we see the mentality of expressing a desire to die for someone else: “I will die for you.”
We should note the mysterious take-it-or-leave-it attitude of Homeric narrative here: in terms of the words said by Nestor the father to Antilokhos the son, the s"ma at Iliad XXIII 331 is either grave-mark or a turning point for a chariot race.
In the historical period, starting with the adoption of chariot-racing in the athletic “program” of the Olympics (this adoption as been dated at around 680 BCE), the turning-point of chariot- races could be conceptualized as the tomb of a hero, whose restless spirit was capable of “spooking” the horses at the most dangerous moment of the chariot-race, the left-turn around the s"ma. Race- car drivers who race in the “Indianapolis 500” have a saying about how to succeed in that race: “keep to the left and drive like hell” (Indianapolis 500). In general, we may compare the metaphor of “sudden death” in modern athletic events.
The idea of using the tomb of a hero as the turning point in a chariot race stems from the fact that the activity of athletics, like the activity of warfare, was considered to be a ritual. Moreover, the ritual activities of athletics and warfare were conceived as parallel to the mythical deeds of heroes.
The same wording was used to refer to the ordeals of athletes and warriors in the rituals of athletics and war as was used to refer to the ordeals of heroes in myth. In the ritual ordeals of athletics and warfare, real people re-enacted the mythical ordeals of heroes.
There is a fusion of myth and ritual in the story about the chariot race in Iliad XXIII and about all the other athletic events that are narrated there. The athletic events in which the heroes participate here are a matter or ritual, but they are also a matter of myth, because it is the heroes of the heroic age who participate in the athletic events of Iliad XXIII, not real people in the post-heroic age who re-enact the mythical ordeals of heroes.
What makes the athletic events of Iliad XXIII different from the “real” athletic events of the historical period is that the events of Iliad XXIII appear to happen only once, whereas “real” athletic events happen on a seasonally recurring basis. We will see this concept of seasonally- recurring re-enactments when we look at the relevant passages in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. But appearances are deceiving. Even the athletic events narrated in the Iliad are not really “one- shot” events, since they are narrated again and again on a seasonally recurring basis at such festivals as the Panathenaia in Athens. The athletic events of Iliad XXIII are actually performed again and again in the recycled performances of Homeric poetry at festivals.
One of the Greek words for the ritual ordeal of the athlete in the post-heroic age who re-enacts the mythical ordeal of the hero in the heroic age is aethlos or athlos. Someone who participates in such an ordeal is an athl"t"s. As we have seen earlier, this is the word that is borrowed into English as athlete.
The rituals of athletic ordeals, as we will see later, were understood to be a compensation for the myths of heroic ordeals. I recall here the formulation of Simone Weil! (Dialogue 06) about the feeling that suffering needs compensation: I want you to suffer exactly the way I suffered.
The hero, whose sufferings were imagined to be larger-than-life, would have such a need for compensation. But how can you suffer exactly the way a hero suffered?
To endure such suffering, as an athlete, is to re-enact a prototypical ordeal of a hero. The Greek word for such ‘reenactment’, as we have noted already, is mim"sis.
When it comes to re-enacting the primal ordeals of heroes, there is a seemingly limitless variety of individual experiences to be matched with the individual experiences of heroes. Every individual has his or her own way of going through an ordeal, as we see in the staggering varieties of violent death in the Iliad.
A sign of this ordeal is the word psukh", the plural of which is psukhai. It refers to the ghost of Patroklos, appearing in an epiphany to Achilles:
07 B. Iliad XXIII 57-92
As soon as they had had enough to eat and drink, the others went to their rest each in his own tent, [60] but the son of Peleus lay grieving among his Myrmidons by the shore of the sounding sea, in an open place where the waves came surging in one after another. Here a very deep slumber took hold upon him and eased the burden of his sorrows, for his limbs were weary with chasing Hector round windy Ilion. [65] Presently the sad spirit [psukh"] of unhappy Patroklos drew near him, like what he had been in stature, voice, and the light of his beaming eyes, clad, too, as he had been clad in life. The spirit hovered over his head and said-”You sleep, Achilles, and have forgotten me; [70] you loved me living, but now that I am dead you think for me no further. Bury me with all speed that I may pass the gates of Had#s; the spirits [psukhai], vain shadows of men that can labor no more, drive me away from them; they will not yet permit me to join those that are beyond the river, [75] and I wander all desolate by the wide gates of the house of Had#s. Give me now your hand I pray you, for when you have once given me my dues of fire,
never shall I again come forth out of the house of Had#s. Nevermore shall we sit apart and take sweet counsel among the living; the cruel fate which was my birth-right has yawned its wide jaws around me – [80] I tell you, Achilles, you too, peer of gods, are doomed to die beneath the wall of the noble Trojans. One plea more will I make to you, if you will grant it; let not my bones be laid apart from yours, Achilles, but with them; even as we were brought up together in your own home, [85] what time Menoitios brought me to you as a child from Opoeis because by a sad spite I had killed the son of Amphidamas - not of set purpose, but in childish quarrel over the dice. The charioteer Peleus took me into his house, [90] entreated me kindly, and named me to be your attendant [therap!n]; therefore let our bones lie in but a single urn, the two-handled golden vase given to you by your mother.”
We see this word psukh" also in the painting on the Münster Hydria. I give a preview here, and will return to the picture of this painting in the next chapter. For now I emphasize simply the fact that, in this picture as well, psukh" is a sign of the hero’s ordeal.
The use of the word s"ma as the sign of Patroklos in particular and as a sign of the ‘fathers’ or ‘ancestors’ in general is relevant to the scene where Priam appeals to Achilles to take pity and allow a funeral for the dead Hector:!
07 C. Iliad XXIV 486-512
“Think of your father, O Achilles like unto the gods, who is such even as I am, on the sad threshold of old age. It may be that those who dwell near him harass him, and there is none to keep war and ruin from him. [490] Yet when he hears of you being still alive, he is glad, and his days are full of hope that he shall see his dear son come home to him from Troy; but I, wretched man that I am, had the bravest in all Troy for my sons, and there is not one of them left. [495] I had fifty sons when the Achaeans came here; nineteen of them were from a single womb, and the others were borne to me by the women of my household. The greater part of them has fierce Ares laid low, and Hector, [500] him who was alone left, him who was the guardian of the city and ourselves, him have you lately slain; therefore I am now come to the ships of the Achaeans to ransom his body from you with a great ransom. Have respect, O Achilles, for the gods; think on your own father and have compassion upon me, who am the more pitiable, [505] for I have steeled myself as no man yet has ever steeled himself before me, and have raised to my lips the hand of him who slew my son.” Thus spoke Priam, and the heart of Achilles yearned as he turned his thoughts to his father. He took the old man’s hand and moved him gently away. The two wept bitterly [510] - Priam, as he lay at Achilles’ feet, weeping for manslaughtering Hector, and Achilles now for his father and now for Patroklos, till the house was filled with their lamentation. We see here Achilles weeping alternately for his father Peleus and for Patroklos, whose name refers to the glory of the ‘fathers’ or ‘ancestors’. The prompt that activates the hero’s emotion of sorrow here is the very act of thinking about fathers or ancestors. Achilles thinks of his own father when he sees the sorrow of another father, Priam, over the death of his son Hector.!
To conclude, I return to the subject of ritual ordeals that re-enact the mythical ordeals of heroes. There is a clear example in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, where we see a myth about the establishment of an athletic ritual in compensation for the ordeal of a hero who experienced death when he was still a baby. The marker for the status of this baby as a hero is the use of the use of the expression ‘equal to a daim"n’ at the moment when the baby is ready to become a hero. That moment happens when the goddess Demeter nurtures the baby Demophon by galvanizing him in fire in order to make him exempt from death:!
07 D. Hymn to Demeter 235-236, 237-241
She [= Demeter] nurtured him in the palace, and he [= Demophon] grew up like a daim!n, not
eating food, not sucking from the breast ... She used to anoint him with ambrosia, as if he had been born of the goddess, and she would breathe down her sweet breath on him as she held him at her bosom. At nights she would conceal him in the menos of fire, as if he were a smoldering log, and her parents were kept unaware. But they marveled at how full in bloom he came to be, and to look at him was like looking at the god.
The mortal mother of the baby Demophon inadvertently ruins the plan of the goddess Demeter to make Demophon exempt from death, and the goddess angrily announces that the baby will not be subject to death, like all other mortals. But there will be a compensation for the ordeal of this death, says the goddess to the mortal mother of the baby Demophon:
07 E. Homeric Hymn to Demeter 259-267!
I [= Demeter] swear by the Styx, the witness of oaths that gods make, as I say this: immortal and ageless for all days would I have made your philos little boy, and I would have given him tim" that is unwilting [a-phthi-tos]. But now there is no way for him to avoid death and doom. Still, he will have an honor [tim"] that is unwilting [a-phthi-tos], for all time, because he had once sat on my knees and slept in my arms. At the right h!ra, every year, the sons of the Eleusinians will have a war, a terrible battle among each other. They will do so for all days to come.
The death of the ‘baby hero’ will be compensated by seasonally recurring athletic re-enactment, as expressed by the word tim" ‘honor’, which refers here to the honor conferred upon cult heroes in the rituals of hero-cult. In this case, the rituals take the form of athletic competitions that simulate warfare.
We see in this passage a reference to a ritual mock-battle at Eleusis, a quasi-athletic event known as the Ball"tus, which was officially held on a seasonally-recurring basis to compensate for the death of the baby cult-hero Demophon. This mock-battle seems to have been the ritual kernel of a whole complex of events known as the Eleusinian Games. Other historical parallels include the Nemean and the Isthmian Games, which were pan-Hellenic athletic events held on a seasonally- recurring basis to compensate for the deaths of two other baby cult-heroes, Arkhemoros and Melikertes respectively.
The tim" aphthitos ‘unwilting honor’ of a seasonally-recurring athletic event that the hero Demophon receives as a compensation for his death in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter can be compared with the kleos aphthiton ‘unwilting glory’ that the hero Achilles receives as a compensation for his own death in the Iliad:
07 F = 01 A. Iliad IX 410-416
My mother Thetis tells me that there are two ways in which I may meet my end [telos]. If I stay here and fight, I shall not have a return [nostos] alive but my glory [kleos] will be unwilting [aphthiton]: whereas if I go home my name [kleos] will perish, but it will be long before the end [telos] shall take me.
The kleos of the Iliad, as we will see in the next chapter, is in its own right a seasonally- recurring ritual event, since both the Iliad and the Odyssey were performed at the seasonally- recurring festival of the Panathenaia in Athens. As we will also see, there was also a seasonally-recurring athletic event at that same festival, and this athletic event was closely linked to the poetic event of the Iliad.
! Chapter 08: A psychology of signs in ancient Greek visual arts
Key word: psukh", as used in the context of the key word for the last time, s"ma. This word psukh" refers to the life of someone who is alive and to the disembodied conveyor of someone’s identity after that someone dies.
This key word is actually the only piece of text for this time. As we saw from the previous time,
psukh" is written out as ph-s-kh-e on an art object that I have been calling the Münster Hydria. The meaning of the word “hydria” is relevant to the meaning of the word psukh". (Note the spelling: hydria, not “hydra,” which comes from a Greek word for a venomous dragon.) The word “hydria” comes from a Greek word for a vessel used for libations (= ritual pourings), on occasions that include the worship of ancestors and the worship of heroes. Libations poured from hydrias, as we will see, are relevant to the meaning of psukh". I will concentrate on two hydrias. One of these two hydrias was previewed the last time. It was the Münster Hydria (dated around 520 BCE). It showed a picture of Patroklos hovering over the s"ma or ‘tomb’ that was destined to be shared by the bodies of Patroklos and Achilles. And the picture is identified by the lettering that spells out psukh". We will now concentrate on the meaning of psukh" in the context of the picture of Patroklos. Such a picture would be called in Greek a s"ma, just as the tomb of a hero is called in Greek a s"ma. And the same word s"ma can refer not only to the tomb of a hero or to a picture of the hero but also to any sign of the hero, such as the lettering that identifies the picture in the painting on the Münster Hydria. That is what I mean when I say “a psychology of signs.” The word psukh" is a marker of such psychology. And, as I said at the start, this word psukh" will be the only word that figures in this presentation of signs about the psukh" of the hero.
The other one of the two hydrias on which I will concentrate is housed in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. It is the Boston Hydria (also dated around 520 BCE).
Both the Münster Hydria and the Boston Hydria depict the athletic event that I described the last time, which is the contest of the apobatai (plural of apobat#s).!
Both depictions mix the ritual of an athlete’s ordeal with the myth of a hero’s ordeal. Here, to repeat, are working definitions of “ritual” and “myth”:
Ritual is doing things in a special (sacred) way. Myth is saying things in a special (sacred) way. Actually, ritual is not only doing things but also saying things, like myth. So, ritual frames myth. And, as we saw earlier, the process of mim"sis as the re-enacting of an ordeal leads to a process of purification or katharsis. Here we return to the formulation of Aristotle, who links mim"sis and katharsis in his definition of tragedy:
Tragedy is the mim"sis of a serious and complete action that has magnitude, with seasoned speech, ... by performers instead of through narrative, bringing about through pity and fear the purification [katharsis] of such emotions [pathos].
Pity is attraction, fear is repulsion. The hero as dynamic, not static.
The turn around the turning post is reenacted by Achilles, with his excessive force and restraint Achilles’ brutality is as shocking to the Greek audience as it is to us. Fear and pity.
Aristotle thought that the Iliad is a tragedy.
Note that Achilles finally gets out of the depths of brutality precisely by way of identifying with his deadliest enemy.
A father’s tears are what finally moves him. He thinks of his own father. !
Here I review also the concept of mimesis, which is the process of re-enactment in sacred space. What you re-enact is myth, how you re-enact it is ritual.
Myth (including epic, which is myth in the anthropological sense of the word “myth”) is framed by ritual - the ritual of performance. You can re-enact not just by acting but even by telling or retelling.
So what do we see in the picture painted on the Münster Hydria? We see an athlete / warrior engaging in a chariot contest and we see Achilles honoring Patroklos by way of participating in that chariot contest. Achilles himself is participating in a ritual by way of driving round and round
the s#ma of Patroklos.
The picture shows ritual and myth together, just as poetry shows ritual and myth together in the chariot race described at Iliad XXIII.
Emily Vermeule speaks of a “window effect” created by the picture frame of the Boston Hydria, but her comment can apply to the picture frame of the Münster Hydria as well: “The technique gives the impression that the myth is circling around in another world, outside the window frame through which the spectator views it, in endless motion which is somehow always arrested at the same place whenever we return to the window.”
I have a question about this window: as you are looking through the window, are you looking in from the outside or are you looking out from the inside?
The figure runs around a turning point (terma), a point of concentration. (Note what Nestor tells Antilokhos in Iliad XXIII: concentrate on the s"ma. The medium of the tomb (s"ma) of the hero (or ancestor) is the message of the hero (or ancestor).
Things to look for as you compare the picture of the Münster Hydria (=M) with that of the Boston Hydria (=B):
The axis of vision centers on the s"ma in M, while the s"ma is off-center in B.
!
The chariot is also off-center in B. Study question: what is centered in B, and why?
!
The homunculus (= smaller-than-life-size body-double) has no wings in M; it does have wings in B.
!
The homunculus is labeled as psukh" in M and as Patroklos in B. Question: whose psukh" is the homunculus in M? Of Achilles? Of Patroklos? Of both?
!
Note the picture on the shield of the homunculus in both M and B.
!
The Greek word for ‘picture on a shield’ is s"ma.
!
The s"ma on the shield of a hero is supposed to symbolize his identity.
!
A running leg (or foot: the Greek language does not make the same distinctions between ‘leg’ and ‘foot’ that the English language does) is symbolic of which hero in the Iliad?
! i. When there are three running legs spinning around a center (the technical Greek word for this visual device is triskeles = ‘three-legs’), the idea of superhuman running speed is implied. !
The “winged lady” is still in the process of landing in B; on the other hand, she has already landed in M.
!
In B, The “winged lady” makes a gesture toward the portico situated on your far left. The old couple in the portico repeat the gesture. Achilles is making eye-contact with the gesture. Notice that he is not making eye-contact with the s"ma, nor with the psukh" of Patroklos. Is he getting on the chariot or getting off? !
Consider the painting of the council of the gods on the upper part or “shoulder” of the Münster Hydria. We see here Zeus and Hermes (with his caduceus = his magic wand) at center left and center right, while Athena is at the right. Dionysus is at the extreme left. Note the goddess, making a gesture, between Dionysus and Zeus. Study question: how does this council of the gods
compare with the council of the gods at the beginning of Iliad XXIV?
! m. How does the action of “the winged lady” in B (and, probably, in M) compare with the action of a certain character in Iliad XXIV?
!
Things to look for as you compare the pictures of M and B with other pictures.
!
Note each image (s"ma) on each hero’s shield. Compare with the pictures of animals guarding the tomb (s"ma) of the hero.
!
Note the details that convey an epic event (by “epic” we mean the kind of macro-narrative represented by the Iliad) and details that convey an athletic event. Where are epic / athletic details distinct and where are they not? Compare the epic / athletic events of the Funeral Games of Patroklos in Iliad XXIII. Compare Pindar’s Pythian 8, available on the website. Where are epic / athletic details distinct and where are they not?
!
The rage of the hero translates into the killer instinct of the athlete. Compare the dragging of Hector’s corpse, presented as an athletic event. This detail about the “dragging” is an aetiology (myth) for the athletic event (ritual) of the chariot race featuring apobatai at the Panathenaia in Athens.
Chapter 09. Introduction to the Odyssey 09 A. Odyssey i 1-12
That man, tell me about him, O Muse, about that many-sided man who wandered far and wide after he had sacked the famous citadel of Troy. Many cities did he visit, and many were the people with whose customs and thinking [noos] he was acquainted; many pains [algea] he suffered at sea while seeking to save his own life [psukh"] and to achieve the safe homecoming [nostos] of his companions; but do what he might he could not save his men, for they perished
through their own sheer recklessness in eating the cattle of the Sun-god Helios; so the god prevented them from ever reaching home. Tell me, as you have told those who came before me, about all these things, O daughter of Zeus, starting from whatsoever point you choose. [11] So now all who escaped death in battle or by shipwreck had got safely home except Odysseus, and he, though he was longing for his return [nostos] to his wife and country, was detained by the goddess Calypso, ...
The key word for this dialogue is nostos 'return, homecoming; song about homecoming; return to light and life'
The last of these meanings is mystical, having to do with ideas about immortalization after death. Our first impression is that such ideas are foreign to Homeric poetry. When we take a second look, however, we see that immortalization is a subtext, as it were, even in Homeric poetry. Immortalization is a matter of eschatology.
Eschatology has to do with thinking about afterlife - where you “end up.” In Christian eschatology, for example, the alternatives are heaven and hell. In Homeric eschatology, it must be noted, Hades is not “hell.”!
As we will see more clearly later, Hades is transitional rather than eschatological. Only paradisiacal places like Elysium, the Islands of the Blessed, the White Island, and so on are eschatological.
The process of nostos can be a mode of immortalization. This theme will play out in the plot of the Odyssey, but not directly. Only on the level of metaphor.
Here is an important set of working definitions... Metaphor is literally a "borrowing" from one
world into another. Metaphor is meaning by way of substitution. By contrast, metonomy is meaning by way of connection.
Metaphor works on the vertical axis of selection. Metonym works on the horizontal axis of combination.
An example of metaphor from the last session was the Black Figure painting that shows an interchangeability of three images lined up on a vertical axis: Hector’s body, a snake, and the psukhe of Patroklos/Achilles.
An example of metonym from the last session was the Black Figure painting that shows a connection between the lamenting gesture of Iris and the lamenting gesture of Hecuba, Hector’s mother.
09 B. Odyssey i 88-95
In the meantime I will go to Ithaca, to put heart into Odysseus’ son Telemachus; I will embolden him to call the Achaeans in assembly, and speak out to the suitors of his mother Penelope, who persist in eating up any number of his sheep and oxen; I will also conduct him to Sparta and to Pylos, to see if he can hear anything about the return [nostos] of his dear father
for this will give him genuine fame [kleos] throughout humankind. In this passage, we see that Athena is preparing Telemachus to connect with the epic of his
father, which is an epic in the making. This epic of Odysseus, this Odyssey, is a matter of both
kleos and nostos. 09 C. Odyssey i 325-344
Phemios was still singing, and his hearers sat rapt in silence as he told the baneful tale of the homecoming [nostos] from Troy, and the ills Athena had laid upon the Achaeans. Penelope, daughter of Ikarios, heard his song from her room upstairs, and came down by the great staircase, not alone, but attended by two of her handmaids. When she reached the suitors she stood by one of the bearing posts that supported the roof of the halls with a staid maiden on either side of her. She held a veil, moreover, before her face, and was weeping bitterly. [337] “Phemios,” she cried, “you know many another feat of gods and heroes, such as poets love to celebrate. Sing the suitors some one of these, and let them drink their wine in silence, but cease this sad tale, for it breaks my sorrowful heart, and reminds me of my lost husband for whom I have grief [penthos] ever without ceasing, and whose name [kleos] was great over all Hellas and middle Argos.
We see from this passage that kleos without penthos is a superficial kind of epic. The Odyssey
explores the complexities of epic.
From the retrospective standpoint of the Odyssey, the moral foundations of the Iliad are questioned:
09 D. Odyssey iii 130-135
When, however, we had sacked the city of Priam, and were setting sail in our ships as the gods had dispersed us, then Zeus saw fit to vex the Argives on their homeward voyage [nostos]; for they had not all been either wise or just [dikaioi], and hence many came to a bad end through the anger [m"nis] of Zeus’ daughter Athena.
In this passage, we see that the nostoi of the Achaeans involved not only happy endings but many unhappy ones. Of all the nostoi, only the nostos of Odysseus is not yet complete. It is a story still in the making. The question is, will it have a happy ending or a sad ending?
It repays the effort to review carefully the contexts of these words: i 326!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! nostos of the Achaeans i 342!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! penthos alaston 'grief that is unforgettable [l"th-]' i 344!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! kleos of Odysseus i 351!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! kleos of the "latest" happenings In contemplating thse words, I am reminded of the title of the work by Marcel Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu.
The Odyssey “returns” to the songs of the Trojan War: 09 E. Odyssey viii 73-82
The Muse inspired Demodokos to sing the glories [kleos] of heroes. In particular it was something that had a kleos that reached all the way to the sky in its full breadth. It was [75] the quarrel [neikos] between Odysseus and Achilles, and the fierce words that they heaped on one another as they sat together at a banquet. But Agamemnon was glad in his mind [noos] that the best of the Achaeans were quarrelling with one another, for Apollo had foretold him this [80] at Pytho [= Delphi] when he crossed the stone floor to consult the oracle. Here was the beginning of the evil that by the will of Zeus started rolling down toward both Danaans and Trojans.
This passage shows us a micro-Iliad as viewed in the Odyssey.
We have independent evidence about the plots of epics about the Trojan War. A case in point is the plot summary of Proclus, Iliou Persis ("Destruction of Troy"); part of the "Epic Cycle" as summarized by Proclus; observe what Odysseus does and when.
09 F. Plot summary of Proclus, Iliou Persis: 1!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The Trojans, suspicious about the horse, stand about wondering what they should
do.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Some think it should be pushed off a cliff,
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! while others think it should be burned down,
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! while still others say that it should be dedicated as sacred [hieros] to Athena.. 5!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! In the end, the opinion of the third group wins out.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They turn to merriment, feasting as if they had been freed from the war.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! At this point two serpents appear and destroy Laocoön and one of his sons.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! At the sight of this marvel, Aeneas and his followers get upset and withdraw to Mount Ida.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Sinon lights signal fires for the Achaeans. He had previously entered the city, using a pretext.
10!!!!!!!!!!!! And they [= the Achaeans], some of them sailing from Tenedos
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! [toward Troy] and others of them emerging from the Wooden Horse, fall upon their enemies.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They kill many, and the city is taken by force.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Neoptolemos kills Priam, who has taken refuge at the altar of Zeus Herkeios.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Menelaos finds Helen and takes her back down to the ships, after 15!!!!!!!!!!!! slaughtering Deiphobos.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ajax son of Oileus takes Kassandra by force, dragging her away from the wooden statue [xoanon] of Athena.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! At the sight of this, the Achaeans get angry and decide to stone Ajax to
death, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! but he takes refuge at the altar of Athena, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and so is preserved from his impending destruction. 20!!!!!!!!!!!! The Achaeans put the city to the torch.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They slaughter Polyxena on the tomb of Achilles.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Odysseus kills Astyanax,
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and Neoptolemos takes Andromache as his prize.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The rest of the spoils are distributed.
25!!!!!!!!!!!! Demophon and Akamas find Aithra [the mother of Theseus], and take her with them.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Then the Achaeans sail off [from Troy],
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and Athena begins to plan destruction for them at sea.
Compare this version of the epic traditions about the Trojan War with the version told by
Demodokos to an audience including the yet-unidentified Odysseus: 09 G. Odyssey viii 499-534
The singer, starting with a prayer to the god, took up the story at the point where some of the Argives set fire to their tents and sailed away while others, hidden within the horse, were waiting with Odysseus in the Trojan place of assembly. For the Trojans themselves had drawn the horse into their fortress, and it stood there while they sat in council round it, and were in three minds as to what they should do. Some were for breaking it up then and there; others would have it dragged to the top of the rock on which the fortress stood, and then thrown it down the precipice; while yet others were for letting it remain as an offering and propitiation for the gods. And this was how they settled it in the end, for the city was doomed when it took in that horse, within which were all the bravest of the Argives waiting to bring death and destruction on the Trojans. Then he sang how the sons of the Achaeans issued from the horse, and sacked the town, breaking out from their ambuscade. He sang how they overran the city here and there and ravaged it, and how Odysseus went raging like Ares along with Menelaos to the house of Deiphobos. It was there that the fight raged most furiously, nevertheless by Athena’s help he was victorious. [521] All this he told, but Odysseus was overcome as he heard him, and his cheeks were wet with tears. He wept as a woman weeps when she throws herself on the body of her husband who has fallen before his own city and people, fighting bravely in defense of his home and children. She wails aloud and flings her arms about him as he lies gasping for breath and dying, but her enemies beat her from behind about the back and shoulders, and carry her off into slavery, to a life of labor [ponos] and sorrow, and the beauty fades from her cheeks—even so piteously did Odysseus weep, but none of those present perceived his tears except Alkinoos, who was sitting near him, and could hear the sobs and sighs that he was heaving.
The tears of the captive woman are comparable to what we read in Virgil Aeneid 1.462: sunt lacrimae rerum ‘there are tears that connect with the universe’ (note too the title of the composition by Franz Liszt).
See the Heroes website, Introduction 3, "The Epic Hero," §§47-53, which explores in depth some of the topics I list below:
We need to explore in more detail later the key words in Odyssey iii 132-135: Zeus plots lugros [baneful] nostos (132), because the Argives had no noos nor justice [dik"] (133) and they were slated for doom because of the anger [m"nis] of Athena (135).
Whereas Achilles has to choose between kleos and nostos in the Iliad, Odysseus gets both in the Odyssey.
Odyssey vs. Iliad: compare the Will of Zeus in Iliad I 5 vs. the “free will” of humans in
Odyssey i 32ff.
How have scholars explained such differences? A. Two authors.
B. One author in different phases of life.
Questions of authorship tie into three basic theories about Homeric poetry: A) Homer wrote it down
Homer dictated it
Homer is the culmination of an evolving oral epic tradition
In terms of explanation “C,” the differences between the Iliad and the Odyssey are a matter of distinct but complementary traditions, that have evolved alongside each other.
On thematic complementarity between the two epics: anger/baneful/caused suffering for Achaeans and implicitly Trojans (Iliad) vs. man/polytropic/veered many times (Odyssey)
Odysseus as off-course = off-balance. Yet another way of saying "out of synchrony." 9)
Primary heroic identity of Odysseus has to do with nostos (rewritten in Introduction 3):
returning king who reclaims his kingdom
!!!!!!!!!!! Excursus: king = body politic
!!!!!!!!!!! starts from zero; from zero to hero
sailor/pilot who came home from the sea
!!!!!!!!!!! link between #1 and #2: kubern"t"s/gubernator/governor-government ! (the ship of state metaphor)
returning warrior who reclaims his wife: wanderer/adventurer; a most appropriate description is soldier of fortune
seer returning from vision quest = shaman E) trickster who retraces steps (cf. Paul Radin)
F) The son goes off on a quest to find his father in order to find his own heroic identity.
10) god/hero antagonism for Odysseus: Poseidon (#A), Athena (##AB), Hermes (##DE) 11) Poseidon as antagonist is the easiest to comprehend. 12) Athena... best to start with "Our Lady of Pilots" theme; key is v (end) and xiii (beginning)
13) A related theme: Athena installs kings, e.g. Erekhtheus in Iliad [II 547] 14) As for Hermes... best to start with polytropism (Odyssey x 330); Odysseus polu-tropos
(Odyssey i 1) There is a built-in reference to Hermes in the name of Poly-phemos, son of Poseidon. 15) "Dress-rehearsal" for Athena's help: Telemachos narrative, genre of Mirror of Princes. 16) Telemachos formulates his quest in two ways:
Odyssey ii 360 I am going after the nostos of my father
Odyssey iii 83 ! I am going after the kleos of my father 17) Athena in the role of Mentes says:
Odyssey i 89!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I will put menos in him [= Telemachos]
Odyssey i 320ff She put menos in him, and reminded [mn"-] him
Ment"s in Odyssey i, Ment!r in Odyssey ii.
Remember the concept of Lethe!!!
Achilles preempts Odysseus for the narrative of Troy, Ilias=Iliad.
Achilles is Best of the Achaeans because of Troy
Odysseus is Best of the Achaeans because he remarried Penelope.
Odyssey i 4: he suffered many algea; same word as in Iliad I 2. Is there a difference between the pains of the Iliad and Odyssey?
Odysseus has his cake and eats it too, nostos and kleos 25) He was the one who destroyed Troy, not Achilles. 26) But he also gets to suffer on account of both:
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! Chapter 10. The Homeric concepts of noos 'mind' and nostos 'return' in the Odyssey The key word for this dialogue: noos: designates the realm of consciousness, of rational
functions; 'intuition, perception'; principle that reintegrates thumos (or menos) and psukh" after death 10 A. Odyssey i 1-12
That man, tell me about him, O Muse, about that many-sided man who wandered far and wide after he had sacked the famous citadel of Troy. Many cities did he visit, and many were the people with whose customs and thinking [noos] he was acquainted; many pains [algea] he suffered at sea while seeking to save his own life [psukh"] and to achieve the safe homecoming [nostos] of his companions; but do what he might he could not save his men, for they perished through their own sheer recklessness in eating the cattle of the Sun-god Helios; so the god prevented them from ever reaching home. Tell me, as you have told those who came before me, about all these things, O daughter of Zeus, starting from whatsoever point you choose. [11] So now all who escaped death in battle or by shipwreck had got safely home except Odysseus, and he, though he was
longing for his return [nostos] to his wife and country, was detained by the goddess Calypso, ... I focus on these two lines: In i 3 Odysseus saw the cities of many and came to know their/his noos In i 5 Odysseus is seeking to win as a prize his psukh" and the nostos of his companions ! The key word for this chapter, noos, is related to the key word in the previous chapter: nostos
'return, homecoming; song about homecoming; return to light and life'. Now I add another level of meaning: 'coming to' in the sense of 'return to consciousness' after either fainting or death.
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In i 4, which is the verse that is sandwiched in between the verse mentioning noos and the verse mentioning nostos, we read that Odysseus suffered many algea 'pains'; same word as in Iliad i 2; cf. the modernizing word "analgesic" (e.g. aspirin).
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Note the modern word that is built from a combination of algea 'pains' (as in Odyssey i 4) and nostos (as in Odyssey i 5): it is nostalgia. In Modern Greek, nostimos means what? [GN will be expecting an answer from native speakers of Modern Greek. Hint for non-Greeks: think of the word madeleine in the world of Marcel Proust, "A la recherche du temps perdu."].
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With regard to the inherent sadness of the word nostalgia, compare the ethos of love songs in traditional societies: most of them are "sad."
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An example: this aria from Gianni Schicchi, by Giacomo Puccini: !
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O mio babbino, caro, mi piace, è bello bello, vo'andare in Porta Rossa a comperar l'anello! Si, si, ci voglio andare! E se l'amassi indarno, andrei sul Ponte Vecchio ma per buttarmi in Arno! Mi struggo e mi tormento, O Dio! vorrei morir!
Oh, my Daddy, dear, I like him, he's beautiful, beautiful. I'm on my way, going to Porta Rossa to buy the wedding ring! Yes, yes, I want to go there, And if I loved him in vain, I will go to the Old Bridge but only to throw myself into the Arno. I struggle and I am tormented Oh, God! I want to die!
Back to the subject of noos... Consider the positive and the negative values built into the names Antinoos and Alkinoos: their names mean, respectively: 'he who is opposed to bringing back to light and life' and 'he who has the power to bring back to light and life'
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Both words, noos and nostos, are derived from the Indo-European root *nes- 'return to light and life' (Greek is one of many Indo-European languages; other IE languages are Latin, Sanskrit, Hittite, etc.); from Indo-European languages other than Greek, we see that this root *nes- occurs in myths having to do with Morning Star / Evening Star.
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The meanings of noos and nostos are relevant to the overall plot of the Homeric Odyssey.
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The surface meaning of Odyssey:! safe return from war, safe return from the sea.
The underlying meaning of Odyssey: safe return from death; this implicit theme is made explicit in Theognis 1123-1124:
Do not remind me of my misfortunes! The kinds of things that happened to
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Odysseus have happened to me too. Odysseus, who returned, emerging from the great palace of Hades, !!!!!!!!!!! and who then killed the suitors with a pitiless thûmos.
The most easily perceived connection of the two words noos and nostos: Odyssey ix 82-104, about the Land of the Lotus-Eaters: if you lose the "implant" of homecoming in your mind, you cannot go home because you no longer know what home is.
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Here is another negative threat to noos and nostos...! Odyssey x 190-202, to which Fitzgerald refers as an “island nightmare.” In the book Best of the Achaeans, I speak of Iliadic nightmares in the Odyssey...! It is about the disorientation of Odysseus and his companions. The metaphor of orientation recapitulates noos / nostos. And disorientation recapitulates the negation of noos / nostos. The disorientation is described in this passage:
! 10 B. Odyssey x 190-202
'My friends, we are in very great difficulties; listen therefore to me. We have no idea where the sun either sets or rises, so that we do not even know East from West. I see no way out of it; nevertheless, we must try and find one. We are certainly on an island, for I went as high as I could this morning, and saw the sea reaching all round it to the horizon; it lies low, but towards the middle I saw smoke rising from out of a thick forest of trees.' [198] Their hearts sank as they heard me, for they remembered how they had been treated by the Laestrygonian Antiphates, and by the savage ogre Polyphemus. They wept bitterly in their dismay, but there was nothing to be got by crying.
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Is there a difference between the pains of the Iliad and Odyssey? For an answer, consider this passage...
! 10C. Odyssey iv 219-226
Then Zeus’ daughter Helen bethought her of another matter. She drugged the wine with an herb that banishes all care, sorrow, and ill humor. Whoever drinks wine thus drugged cannot shed a single tear all the rest of the day, not even though his father and mother both of them drop down dead, or he sees a brother or a son hewn in pieces before his very eyes.
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In the original Greek Helen's drug is called n"penthes ('non-penthos') and is described as a- kholon (literally, 'without kholos'; kholos = 'anger'). Note that the son of Menelaos, at the beginning of Odyssey iv, is named Megapenth"s.
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The drug n"penthes is meant to cancel the penthos of the Iliad... Here I repeat from the previous dialogue the passage about the "return" to the song of Troy:
! 10D. Odyssey viii 514-534
Then he [= the singer] sang how the sons of the Achaeans issued from the horse, and sacked the town, breaking out from their ambuscade. He sang how they overran the city here and there and ravaged it, and how Odysseus went raging like Ares along with Menelaos to the house of Deiphobos. It was there that the fight raged most furiously, nevertheless by Athena’s help he was victorious. [521] All this he told, but Odysseus was overcome as he heard him, and his cheeks were wet with tears. He wept as a woman weeps when she throws herself on the body of her husband who has fallen before his own city and people, fighting bravely in defense of his home and children. She wails aloud and flings her arms about him as he lies gasping for breath and dying, but her enemies beat her from behind about the back and shoulders, and carry her off into slavery, to a life of labor [ponos] and sorrow, and the beauty fades from her cheeks —even so piteously did Odysseus weep, but none of those present perceived his tears except Alkinoos, who was sitting near him, and could hear the sobs and sighs that he was heaving.
It is significant that Alki-noos, whose name means ‘he whose noos has power’, is the one who notices the grief of Odysseus. Alkinoos asks Odysseus a pointed question that keeps the focus on the themes of the Trojan War, the themes of the Iliad:
! 10E. Odyssey viii 567-586
Tell us also why you are made unhappy on hearing about the return of the Argive Danaans from Troy. The gods arranged all this, and sent them their misfortunes in order that future generations might have something to sing about. Did you lose some brave kinsman of your wife’s when you were before Troy? A son-in-law or father-in-law—which are the nearest relations a man has outside his own flesh and blood? Or was it some brave and kindly-natured comrade - for a good friend is as dear to a man as his own brother?
Such Iliadic themes, like the ‘good friend’ (consider Patroklos in the Iliad), are the themes of the Sirens in the Song of the Sirens:
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10F. Odyssey xii 184-191
‘Come here,’ they sang, ‘renowned Odysseus, honor to the Achaean name, and listen to our two voices. No one ever sailed past us without staying to hear the enchanting sweetness of our song
—and he who listens will go on his way not only charmed, but wiser, for we know all the ills that the gods laid upon the Argives and Trojans before Troy, and can tell you everything that is going to happen over the whole world.’
The nostalgic (love song?) Song of the Sirens, xii 184-191, is replete with Iliadic agenda !
So how does noos / nostos lead to orientation? Now we go back to celestial dynamics... returning to the Island Nightmare.
! Celestial dynamics: sun sets into the Okeanos (Iliad VIII 485) / and rises from the Okeanos (Odyssey xix 433-434). Similarly, the psukh" when it leaves the body “sets” into the Okeanos (Odyssey xx 63ff). ! 10 G. Odyssey xii 1-7
After we left behind the stream of Okeanos, and had got out into the open sea, we went on till we reached the island of Aeaea, where the Dawn has her dwelling and her place to dance, and where the risings of the sun happen.
Where it all comes together is Odyssey xiii 79-95 the nostos: ! 10 H. Odyssey xiii 79-95 Thereon, when they began rowing out to sea, Odysseus fell into a deep, sweet, and almost
deathlike slumber. [81] The ship bounded forward on her way as a four-in-hand chariot flies over the course when the horses feel the whip. Her prow curved as it were the neck of a stallion, and a great wave of dark seething water boiled in her wake. She held steadily on her course, and even a falcon, swiftest of all birds, could not have kept pace with her. Thus, then, she cut her way through the water, carrying one who was as cunning as the gods, but who was now sleeping peacefully, forgetful of all that he had suffered both on the field of battle and by the waves of the weary sea. [93] When the bright star that heralds the approach of dawn began to show, the ship drew near to land.
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! !Chapter 11 Notes
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Key word for this dialogue: olbios ‘blessed’ (for the initiated) and ‘prosperous, happy’ (for the uninitiated). The cult hero is olbios ‘blessed’ after he or she dies. The worshipper of a hero becomes olbios ‘blessed’ by making contact with the hero.
! Most relevant is a word we have considered at length already, s"ma. In Passage A, note the
s"ma of Achilles, which looks out over the Hellespont. ! In Passage A, we see a retrospective
glance at the Iliad - in the Odyssey. !
Odyssey xxiv 35-97: "Happy [olbios] son of Peleus," answered the ghost [psukh"] of Agamemnon, "for having died at Troy far from Argos, while the bravest of the Trojans and the Achaeans fell round you fighting for your body. There you lay in the whirling clouds of dust, all huge and hugely, heedless now of your chariot-riding. ... Then, when we had borne you to the ships out of the fray, we laid you on your bed and cleansed your fair skin with warm water and with ointments. The Danaans tore their hair and wept bitterly round about you. Your mother, when she heard, came with her immortal nymphs from out of the sea, and the sound of a great wailing went forth over the waters so that the Achaeans quaked for fear. ...The daughters of the old man of the sea stood round you weeping bitterly, and clothed you in immortal raiment. The nine muses also came and lifted up their sweet voices in lament—calling and answering one another; there was not an Argive but wept for pity of the dirge they chanted. Days and nights seven and ten we mourned you, mortals and immortals, but on the eighteenth day we gave you to the flames, and many a fat sheep with many an ox did we slay in sacrifice around you. You were burnt in raiment of the gods, with rich resins and with honey, while heroes—horse and foot— clashed their armor round the pile as you were burning, with the tramp as of a great multitude. But when the flames of heaven had done their work, we gathered your white bones at daybreak and laid them in ointments and in pure wine. Your mother brought us a golden vase to hold them— gift of Dionysos, and work of Hephaistos himself; in this we mingled your bleached bones with those of Patroklos who had gone before you, and separate we enclosed also those of Antilokhos, who had been closer to you than any other of your comrades now that Patroklos was no more. [80] Over these the host of the Argives built a noble tomb [tumbos] on a point jutting out over the open Hellespont, that it might be seen from far out upon the sea by those now living and by them that shall be born hereafter. Your mother begged prizes from the gods, and offered them to be contended for in a contest [ag!n] of the noblest of the Achaeans. You must have been present at the funeral of many a hero, when the young men gird themselves and make ready to contend for prizes on the death of some great
chieftain, but you never saw such prizes as silver-footed Thetis offered in your honor; for the gods loved you well. Thus even in death your kleos, Achilles, has not been lost, and your name lives evermore among all mankind. But as for me, what solace had I when the days of my fighting were done? For Zeus willed my destruction on my return [nostos], by the hands of Aegisthus and those of my wicked wife."
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I note in this passage the portrayal of Achilles as a beau mort.
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For a Modern Greek parallel, compare this poem by Ritsos, which was set to music by Theodorakis, reworked by Hadzidakis
! (translation by George Syrimis) ! mallià zgourà pou pàno tous ta dhàhtila pernoùsa tis nìhtes pou kimòsouna ke plài sou xagripnoùsa frìdhi mou gaitanòfridho ke kontilogramèno kàmara pou to vlèma mou koùrniaze anapamèno màtia glarà pou mèsa tous antìfengan ta màkri proinoù ouranoù ke pàskhiza min ta thambòsi dhàkri hìli mou moskomìristo pou os làlages anthìzan lithària ke xeròdhendra ki aidhònia fterougìzan ! Curly hair through which my fingers I would pass, the nights you slept and next to you I kept vigil That eyebrow for me, sword-curved eyebrow and pencil-drawn - an arch in which my gaze would nest in peace. Blue eyes in which would shine the distances
of a morning sky, and I toiled that they would not be blurred by tears. Those sweet-smelling lips
for me, when you spoke there was blossoming of stones and dried out trees, and nightingales would flutter. ! In Passage B, we see a prospective glance at epic beyond our Odyssey - in the Odyssey. !
Odyssey xi 90-137: Then came also the ghost [psukh"] of Theban Teiresias, with his golden scepter in his hand. He knew me and said, 'Odysseus, noble son of Laertes, why, poor man, have you left the light of day and come down to visit the dead in this sad place? Stand back from the trench and withdraw your sword that I may drink of the blood and answer your questions
truly.' [97] So I drew back, and sheathed my sword, whereon when he had drank of the blood he began with his prophecy [= words of a mantis]. [100] 'You want to know,' said he, 'about your return home [nostos], but the gods will make this hard for you. I do not think that you will escape the eye of Poseidon, who still nurses his bitter grudge against you for having blinded his son. Still, after much suffering you may get home if you can restrain yourself and your companions when your ship reaches the Thrinacian island, where you will find the sheep and cattle belonging to the sun, who sees and gives ear to everything. If you leave these flocks unharmed and think of nothing but of getting home [nostos], you may yet after much hardship reach Ithaca; but if you harm them, then I forewarn you of the destruction both of your ship and of your men. Even though you may yourself escape, you will return in bad plight after losing all your men, in another man's ship, and you will find trouble in your house, which will be overrun by high-handed people, who are devouring your substance under the pretext of paying court and making presents to your wife. [118] When you get home you will take your revenge on these suitors; and after you have killed them by force [bi"] or fraud in your own house, you must take a well-made oar and carry it on and on, till you come to a country where the people have never heard of the sea and do not even mix salt with their food, nor do they know anything about ships, and oars that are as the wings of a ship. I will give you this certain token [s"ma] which cannot escape your notice. A wayfarer will meet you and will say it must be a winnowing shovel that you have got upon your shoulder; on this you must fix the oar in the ground and sacrifice a ram, a bull, and a boar to Poseidon. Then go home and offer hecatombs to the gods in the sky one after the other. As for yourself, death shall come to you from the sea, and your life shall ebb away very gently when you are full of years and peace of mind, and your people shall be prosperous [olbioi]. All that I have said will come true.'
! We see here a prophecy of the s"ma of Odysseus. His body will make his worshippers olbioi
because he will be olbios in death. !
We have just seen in what we have read a “crisis” in “reading.” The word crisis is derived from... krisis 'judgment, crisis', abstract noun derived from krinesthai 'judge, distinguish, make distinctions'; hupo-krinesthai is the way for a seer to answer a question about a vision seen by someone else, as in the case of Penelope's dream.
krit"rion = criterion for judging, distinguishing, making distinctions kritikos 'critical' (in both senses: 'crisis-related' or 'criticism-related') !
Consider again Odyssey i 1-10: That man, tell me about him, O Muse, about that many-sided man who wandered far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy. Many cities did he visit, and many were the people with whose customs and thinking [noos] he was acquainted; many pains [algea] he suffered at sea while seeking to save his own life [psukh"] and to achieve the safe homecoming [nostos] of his companions; but do what he might he could not save his men, for they perished through their own sheer recklessness in eating the cattle of the Sun-god Helios; so the god prevented them from ever reaching home. Tell me, as you have told those who came before me, about all these things, O daughter of Zeus, starting from whatsoever point you
choose."
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Odyssey i 3 Odysseus saw the cities of many and came to know their/his noos
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Odyssey i 5 Odysseus seeking to win as a prize his psukh", plus [his nostos and] the nostos of his companions
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noos of Teiresias at Odyssey xi 493-495 / nostos is first word of Teiresias at Odyssey xi 100 Compare Odyssey xi 121-137 with the different version in Odyssey xxiii 267-268: there it is made explicit that Odysseus is to travel through the cities of humankind. The "journey of a soul" through many different cultures, with different values, is key to noos.!
Compare Odyssey i 3: Odysseus, by virtue of traveling throughout the cities of humankind, comes to "know" noos. The question remains: whose noos?
Odyssey xi 126 'I will give you this certain token [s"ma], and you cannot have l"th" about it'. Compare the clip from Kurosawa's Dreams in the film archive, "A gravestone marker for a journey of the soul." 'winnowing-shovel' at Odyssey xi 128; it is a mistake to translate as 'winnowing-fan'; a
winnowing shovel looks just like an oar, but a winnowing-fan does not.
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Two variant tales, collected by folklorists in early-20th-century Greece and analyzed by William F. Hansen, about St. Elias [known as the Prophet Elijah in the Hebrew bible]:
!!!!!!!!!!! Variant 1[a]: Saint Elias was a seaman who lived a dissolute life, but he repented of what he had done and thereby detested the sea. {Variant 1[b]: because he had suffered much at sea and had often nearly drowned, he became disgusted with voyaging.} He resolved to go to a place where people know neither what the sea was nor what ships were. Putting his oar on his shoulder he set out on land, asking everyone he met what he was carrying. So long as they answered that it was an oar, he proceeded to higher and higher ground. Finally, at the top of a mountain he asked his question, and the people answered, 'a stick'. Understanding then that they had never seen an oar, he remained there with them.
!!!!!!!!!!! Variant 2: The Prophet Elias was a fisherman who, because of terrible weather and terrific storms, became afraid of the sea. So he put an oar on his shoulder and took to the hills. When he met a man, he asked him what it was he was carrying; the man answered that it was an oar, and Elias went on. The same happened when he met a second man. But at the top of a mountain, he asked a third man, who replied, 'why, that's a stick'. Saint Elias resolved to stay there. He planted his oar in the ground, and that is why his chapels are all built on hilltops.
!!!!!!!!!!! Variant 3: In some versions, the natives' decisive answer is not 'a stick' but 'a baker's peel' [phtyari tou phournou = "winnowing-shovel of the oven"].
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Feast Day of the Prophet Elias: July 20. This date coincides, roughly, with harvesting season. It is around this time when wheat is gathered and winnowed.
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There is a hero cult of Odysseus in Arcadia, where he is worshipped together with Athena as goddess of pilots and Poseidon as god of the sea (Pausanias 8.44.4); note that Arcadia is mountainous and landlocked. Of all locales in mainland Greece, it is farthest away from the sea.
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Planting of winnowing-shovel on top of a mound of winnowed grain (Theocritus 7.155ff): a
symbolic gesture, meaning "the harvest is accomplished = finished."
! Tomb of Elpenor: Odyssey xi 75-78, xii 13-15. This s"ma 'tomb' is also a 'sign, signal, symbol' meaning "the sailor is dead." !
Odyssey xix 106-114: "Lady," answered Odysseus, "who on the face of the whole earth can
dare to chide with you? Your fame [kleos] reaches the firmament of heaven itself; you are like some blameless king, who upholds righteousness [= good dik"], as the monarch over a great and valiant nation: the earth yields its wheat and barley, the trees are loaded with fruit, the ewes bring forth lambs, and the sea abounds with fish by reason of his virtues, and his people do good deeds under him.
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This word dik" means 'justice' (long-range) and 'judgment' (short-range). The sign of dik" is a thriving or blooming field / garden / orchard / grove / vineyard / etc.
! Supplemental passages and notes
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Aristotle Poetics 1452a29ff, discussing "recognition scenes" in e.g. tragedy: "Recognition [ana-gn!-risis] is ... a change from ignorance to knowledge [gn!-sis], tending either to affection [philia] or to enmity; it determines in the direction of good or ill fortune the fates of the people involved" (tr. Margaret Hubbard).
!
!
From Odyssey xix 535-569: “Listen, then, to a dream that I have had and interpret it [= make a hupo-krisis of it] for me if you can. I have twenty geese about the house that eat mash out of a trough, and of which I am exceedingly fond. I dreamed that a great eagle came swooping down from a mountain, and dug his curved beak into the neck of each of them till he had killed them all. Presently he soared off into the sky, and left them lying dead about the yard; whereon I wept in my room till all my maids gathered round me, so piteously was I grieving because the eagle had killed my geese. Then he came back again, and perching on a projecting rafter spoke to me with human voice, and told me to leave off crying. ‘Be of good courage,’ he said, ‘daughter of Ikarios; this is no dream, but a vision of good omen that shall surely come to pass. The geese are the suitors, and I am no longer an eagle, but your own husband, who am come back to you, and who will bring these suitors to a disgraceful end.’ On this I woke, and when I looked out I saw my geese at the trough eating their mash as usual.” [554] “This dream, lady,” replied Odysseus, “can admit but of one interpretation [hupo-krisis], for had not Odysseus himself told you how it shall be fulfilled? The death of the suitors is portended, and not one single one of them will
escape.” [559] And Penelope answered, “Stranger, dreams are very curious and unaccountable things, and they do not by any means invariably come true. There
are two gates through which these unsubstantial fancies proceed; the one is of horn, and the other ivory. Those that come through the gate of ivory are fatuous, but those from the gate of horn mean something to those that see them. I do not think, however, that my own dream came through the gate of horn, though I and my son should be most thankful if it proves to have done so."
! Here I invoke again the key word krisis.
Again we see a crisis in reading... krisis 'judgment, crisis', abstract noun derived from krinesthai 'judge, distinguish, make distinctions'. A hupo-krisis (verb hupo-krinesthai) is an answer to a question that generates such a krisis.
!
After Odysseus achieves a physical nostos by literally coming home to Ithaca, he still needs to achieve a mental / moral / emotional nostos, For this to happen, the characters in the second half of the Odyssey have to connect with him on various levels. The key to this "connection" is the hero's ascending scale of affection.
!
!The characters involved in the hero's ascending scale of affection include: his dog; his loyal servants, like Eumaios and Eurykleia; his son; his wife; his father. All these characters have to "read" the disguised Odysseus in order to recognize him. Correlated with recognition is philia.
!
A primary form of philia: the relationship between lovers.
!
The challenge of "reading" Odysseus is the challenge of "reading" the ulterior motives of his
ainoi. The ainoi that Odysseus intends for Penelope are a kind of "love song."
! Compare "Cherubino's devinalh" in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. {LINK}
! From Le nozze di Figaro, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte) "Cherubino's song": !
!
voi che sapete che cosa è amor, donne vedete s'io l'ho nel cor! quello ch'io provo, vi ridirò: è per me nuovo, capir nol so! sento un affetto pien de desir, ch'ora è diletto, ch'ora è martir, gelo e poi sento l'alma vampar, e in un momento torno a gelar. ricerco un bene fuori di me,
no so chi il tiene, o so cos' è; sospiro e gemo senza voler, palpito e fremo senza saper; non trovo pace notte né di ma pur mi piace languir così! voi che sapete...
You, who know what thing love is... My ladies, see if I have it in my heart.
That thing that I experience, to you I will retell.
It's new to me, I don't know how to grasp it. I feel a longing full of desire, which is at one moment delight, another moment, pain.
I freeze, and then I sense the soul bursting into flame.
And, the next second, I turn back to freezing. I search for a good thing outside of me. I don't know who holds it, or have any idea what it is.
I sigh and moan without wanting to, I throb and tremble without knowing, I don't find any peace, night or day.
But still it gives me pleasure to languish this way. You, who know what thing love is.. !
In Cherubino’s song, Mozart is using a form of troubadour songmaking called the devinalh.! It is
meant to be understood only by the addressee / beloved of the singer / lover.
! The devinalh is parallel to the ainos. Let us review the definition of ainos in the glossary: 'authoritative utterance for and by a social group; praise; fable'; ainigma 'riddle' !
a. 'praise' as in the victory-songs of Pindar b. 'fable' as in the Fables of Aesop
c. 'riddle' as in the Riddle of the Sphinx, a key symbol in the Oedipus Tyrannos of Sophocles, which we will read later on.
!
Review from earlier dialogues... One of the clearest examples of ainos is the klea andr!n of Iliad
IX 524, referring to the narrative that is "totally recalled" by Phoenix for Achilles and the other
assembled philoi. The ainos here is signaled by what anthropologists call an "index" word (hout! 'thus' at Iliad IX 524). An example of an "index" expression in English: "once upon a time..."
! Review the prerequisites of ainos: ! a. sophos (plural sophoi) 'skilled, skilled in understanding special language' b. agathos (plural agathoi) 'good, noble'
c. philos (plural philoi) 'friend' (noun); 'dear, near-and-dear, belonging to self' (adjective) = 3 qualifications (1 intellectual, 2 moral, 3 emotional) required for understanding ainos in e.g. the poetics of Pindar (his medium calls itself ainos)
! Reminder: ainos is to audio as s"ma is to video. ! As a code, the ainos (or s"ma) can have hidden agenda. ! It can be a secret password for initiation into mysteries, for example. ! The "secret password" can take the form of a song. ! Odyssey xiv 508: Eumaios compliments the speech of the disguised Odysseus by calling it an
ainos
! The ainos is one code, with several messages built in, only one of which is ultimately true; compare the English expression ulterior motive ! anagign!skein 'recognize; read' !
Compare again Aristotle Poetics 1452a29ff, discussing "recognition scenes" in e.g. tragedy (his criteria apply to epic as well): "Recognition [ana-gn!-risis] is ... a change from ignorance to knowledge [gn!-sis], tending either to affection [philia] or to enmity; it determines in the direction of good or ill fortune the fates of the people involved" (tr. Margaret Hubbard)
! The "love story" of Odysseus and Penelope, which preoccupies the second half of the Odyssey, can only be understood in terms of the process of their mutual recognition. ! Reassembly of identity via reassembly of ascending scale of affections (the persons with whom you identify will ultimately identify you).
!
Why all the difficulty of recognizing wife and father?
!
Cave of Polyphemos (think of the meaning of the name), where Odysseus negates his identity:
nostos from the cave will be the key to noos
!
Chapter 12: “Longing for a hero”
!
{Before you read further, I suggest that you revisit Introduction 3, “The Epic Hero,” §§80-104}
! The key word for this time is h"ra ‘season, seasonality, the right time, the perfect time’, which as we have seen is a basic concept related to the concept of the goddess H#ra, the immortal exponent of seasonality, and to the concept of the human h#r"s ‘hero’ (plural h#r"es), the mortal exponent of seasonality.
! There is a supplementary key word: pothos ‘longing, yearning, desire’ !
The first passage this time comes from the Heroikos (‘On Heroes’) by Philostratus (who flourished in the early 3rd century CE). For historical background, I cite the introduction by Berenson and Aitken to their edition of Philostratus On Heroes, available on the Heroes website in “Texts” under “Philostratus.” To understand the application of this background to the readings of epic and tragedy in the course, it would be advantageous to read my “Prologue” to the work. The short version of that prologue is embedded in the introduction to the student edition, where this prologue is renamed as “Preliminaries,” together with the introduction by Casey Dué; these “Preliminaries” are available on the Heroes website in “Texts” under “Philostratus.” The long version of the “Prologue” can be found as the essay “Sign of the Hero” - under “Commentaries.”
!
This dialogue, the Heroikos (‘On Heroes’) by Philostratus, is about the cult hero Protesilaos, who is also a character in the Homeric Iliad. The death of Protesilaos is described in Iliad II 698ff, which is Passage B below. But let us start with Passage A.
! Things to look for in Passage A: - The beauty of the ‘right time’ (h"ra). - Beauty is ‘perfection’. - Beauty tied to presence of hero’s body. - Note the sympathy between the hero and the vegetation. - poikil# : ‘varied,’ i.e never the same: the beauty and dynamism of variation. ! A) From Philostratus On Heroes 2.6-3.6: Phoenician: But, vinedresser, do you live a reflective way of life?
Vinedresser: Yes, indeed, with the handsome Protesilaos.
Phoenician: What connection is there between you and Protesilaos, if you mean the man from Thessaly?
Vinedresser: I do mean that man, the husband of Laodameia, for he delights in hearing this epithet.
Phoenician: But what, indeed, does he do here? Vinedresser: He lives [z#i] here, and we farm [ge"rgoumen] together. Phoenician: Has he come back to life [anabi"sis], or what has happened?
Vinedresser: He himself does not speak about his own experiences, stranger, except, of course, that he died at Troy because of Helen, but came to life again [anabi"sis] in Phthia because he loved Laodameia.
Phoenician: And yet he is said to have died after he came to life again and to have persuaded his wife to follow him.
Vinedresser: He himself also says these things. But how he returned afterwards too, he does not tell me even though I’ve wanted to find out for a long time. He is hiding, he says, some secret [aporrh#ton] of the Fates. His fellow soldiers also, who were there in Troy, still appear [phainontai] on the plain, warlike in posture and shaking the crests of their helmets. Phoenician: By Athena, vinedresser, I don’t believe [pisteuein] it, although I wish these things were so. But if you are not attending to the plants, nor irrigating them, tell me now about these
matters and what you know about Protesilaos. Indeed, you would please the heroes if I should go away believing [pisteuein].
Vinedresser: Stranger, the plants no longer need watering at midday, since it is already late autumn and the season [h"ra] itself waters them. Therefore, I have leisure to relate everything in detail. Since these matters are sacred to the gods and so important, may they not escape the notice of cultivated people! It is also better for us to sit down in the beauty of this place.
Phoenician: Lead the way; I will follow even beyond the interior of Thrace. Vinedresser: Let us enter the vineyard, Phoenician. For you may even discover in it something
to give cheer [euphrosun#] to you. Phoenician: Let us enter, for I suppose a pleasant scent [breath] comes from the plants.
Vinedresser: What do you mean? Pleasant? It is divine! The blossoms of the uncultivated trees are fragrant, as are the fruits of those cultivated. If you ever come upon a cultivated plant with fragrant blossoms, pluck rather the leaves, since the sweet scent comes from them.
Phoenician: How diverse [poikil#] is the beauty [h"ra] of your property, and how lush have
the clusters of grapes grown! How well-arranged are all the trees, and how divine is the fragrance of the place! Indeed, I think that the walkways [dromoi] which you have left untilled are pleasing, but, vinedresser, you seem to me to live luxuriously since you use so much uncultivated land. Vinedresser: The walkways [dromoi] are sacred, stranger, for the hero exercises [gumnazetai] on them.
!
Things to look for in Passage B:
!
The epic micro-narrative of Protesilaos, matching the epic macro-narrative of Achilles.
What they have in common is the pothos they inspire in the hearts of those who belong to their communities.! These communities feel a longing for their cult-hero.
!
Iliad II 695-909
[695] And those that held Phylake and the flowery meadows of Pyrasos, sanctuary of Demeter; Iton, the mother of sheep; Antron upon the sea, and Pteleon that lies upon the grass lands. Of these brave Protesilaos had been chief while he was yet alive, but he was now lying under the earth.
[700] He had left a wife behind him in Phylake to tear her cheeks in sorrow, and his house was only half finished, for he was slain by a Dardanian warrior while leaping foremost of the Achaeans upon the soil of Troy. Still, though his people yearned [had pothos] for their chieftain, they were not without a leader, for Podarkes, of the lineage of Ares, marshaled them;
[705] he was son of Iphiklos, rich in sheep, who was the son of Phylakos, and he was own brother to Protesilaos, only younger, Protesilaos being at once the elder and the more valiant. So the people were not without a leader, though they yearned [had pothos] for him whom they had lost.
!
As we see from this passage, the people of Protesilaos are said to have a ‘desire’ [pothos] for him (Iliad II 703, 709). As I argue in the Prologue to Philostratus On Heroes, what we see here is an indirect reference by Homeric poetry to the hero cult of Protesilaos. Notice that Protesilaos is called ‘beautiful’ or ‘handsome’ in the Philostratus passage, and that he is ‘desired’ in the Homeric passage. The cult hero Protesilaos is estheticized and even eroticized. The hero cult of Protesilaos is mentioned prominently in Herodotus Scroll IX. Much more needs to be said about that Herodotean passage in the dialogue to come. That passage illustrates the negative powers of the cult hero, activated against the opponents of dik#, vs. the positive
powers activated in favor of the supporters of dik#. !
The ‘perfect time’ for the epiphany of Protesilaos is the h"ra. To repeat, h"ra ‘season, seasonality, the right time, the perfect time’ is a basic concept related to the concept of the goddess H#ra, the immortal exponent of seasonality, and to the concept of the human h#r"s ‘hero’ (plural h#r"es), the mortal exponent of seasonality.
!
In Modern Greek, oréos / oréa (from ancient Greek h"ra) means ‘beautiful’. The preoccupation with the sensuous charisma and beauty of the cult hero is made explicit here. This idea of beauty is generated by the idea of the h"ra ‘seasonality’ of the hero.
!
Of course, the hero becomes seasonal only in death, at which point he/she becomes olbios in the sense of ‘blessed’; by metonymy, the hero’s worshippers become olbioi in the sense of ‘prosperous’ by virtue of being connected to the hero’s local earth. We saw that in the last dialogue, when we considered the stylized s#ma of Odysseus.
!
Let us consider again the description of Protesilaos as ‘beautiful’. The attraction is eroticized in the Heroikos. Such eroticizing corresponds to the use of the word pothos ‘desire, yearning’, as in
the Iliadic passage about Protesilaos.
! To work the land, ge"rgia, was considered a sacred activity; compare the title of Virgil’s classic poem on working the land, Georgics.
!
The reticence of the keeper of the hero’s sacred grounds is an allusion to the mysteries inherent in the hero cult of Protesilaos. To know such mysteries, one would have to be initiated into the cult.
! Such myths about coming back to life are central to the mysteries of hero cult. !
A second death, followed by a second resurrection, are typical elements in the myths associated with hero cults.
!
There can be gradations of initiation into the mysteries. It is implied that the degree of the “vinedresser’s” initiation is not as high as that of other devotees.
!
Only priests of the hero cult would know such highest-degree secrets.
!
When heroes from the heroic past appear in the world of the present, what they are doing is making epiphanies.
!
Notice that the man who worships the hero ‘believes in’ the hero, as it were. Here we see a non- Christian analogue to the Christian idea of pisteuein ‘believe’ (as in the Apostles’ Creed: ‘I believe in God’).
! Note the metonymy of the hero’s breath and the breeze in the vineyard. !
For the hero, initiation into the state of being olbios is a matter of telos, that is, a coming-full- circle. For the hero, telos is death. (Compare the last word of Christ in Christian traditions: tetelestai, which means ‘the telos has arrived’ (this expression is usually translated as ‘it is consummated’). Then the hero becomes seasonal.
! For the worshipper of the hero, induction into the mysteries of the hero is a matter of telos, that is, an initiation. For the worshipper, telos is a re-enactment of death.
!
Things to look for in Passage C:
The xenos [ = stranger treated as a guest] receives instruction about the sacred nature of the space he has come to.
kol"nos: A prominent rock in a local landscape. Archaeologists sometimes refer to it as a ‘tumulus.’ By metonymy, kol"nos can mean the whole landscape which includes the rock.
The hero and the sacred space are connected through metonymy.
!
In Chapter 11, we saw that Achilles and Odysseus, as cult heroes, are each marked by an individualized s#ma. As we will see later, this visual marking is relevant to the use of an important word in the work of Philostratus:
!
Philostratus On Heroes 9.1-3. Listen to such stories now, my guest. Protesilaos does not lie buried at Troy but here on the Chersonesus. This large kol"nos here on the left no doubt contains him. The nymphs created these elms around the kol"nos, and they made, I suppose, the following decree concerning these trees: “Those branches turned toward Ilion will blossom early and will then immediately shed their leaves and perish before their season (this was indeed the misfortune of Protesilaos), but a tree on the other side will live and prosper.” All the trees that
were not set round the grave, such as these in the grove, have strength in all their branches and flourish according to their particular nature.
! As we will see in a later dialogue, the kol"nos is a prominent natural landmark that can be imagined as the s#ma of the cult hero. ! Multimedia: Seferis, Arnisi
! sto perigiali to krifo k’aspro san peristeri dipsasame to mesimeri ma to nero glifo ! pano stin ammo tin xanthi grapsame t’onoma tis orea, pou fisixen o batis ke svistike i grafi
! me ti kardia me ti pnoi ti pothous ke ti pathos pirame ti zoi mas - lathos - k’allaxame zoi ! Further reinforceent in ti pothous ke ti pathos, what longings, what passion. ! Earlier, I mentioned Chiffons, “He’s so fine” (1963), and note the detail about the wavy hair: ! http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpAcQrt8-SE !
!
George Harrison, “My sweet lord” (1970), and note especially the detail “I really want to see you, I really want to be with you... [[that is, I want your epiphany]]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wynYMJwEPH8&feature=related
!
!
Things to look for in Passage D: - Achilles inside his s#ma on the Hellespont.! His s#ma, which is a kol"nos, matches that of
The word krifo conveys the idea that we see in crypt.
The longing conveyed by dipsasame to mesimeri in stanza 1 is picked up by orea pou fisixen o batis in stanza 2 and by pirame to zoi mas lathos in stanza 3.
Protesilaos on the other side of the Hellespont. - Touching the s#ma is a metonym for touching the hero.
Philostratus On Heroes 51.12-13
This kol"nos, guest-stranger, which you see standing at the brow of the promontory [akt#], was built [ageirein (‘pile stones together’)] by the Achaeans who came together at the time when he [= Achilles] was mixed together with Patroklos for their joint burial, having provided for himself [= Achilles] and for that one [= Patroklos] the most beautiful of funeral rites. And this is the origin of the custom of singing his name in praise when people celebrate the bonds of love between friends. Of all mortals who ever existed, he [= Achilles] was buried in the most spectacular way, what with all the gifts that Greece bestowed upon him. No longer could the Greeks consider it a beautiful thing to grow their hair long, once Achilles was gone.[1] Whatever gold or other possession each of them had brought to Troy or had taken away from the division of spoils [= spoils taken at Troy] was now collected and piled up on top of the funeral pyre, right then and there. The same thing happened also later when Neoptolemos came to Troy. He [= Achilles] received another round of glorious gifts from his son and from the Achaeans who were trying to show their gratitude [kharis] to him. Even as they were getting ready to sail away from Troy, they would keep throwing themselves on top of the place of burial and believe that they were embracing Achilles.[2]
Elsewhere in the Heroikos, in a passage describing an ancient yearly custom observed by Thessalians who sailed to Troy and performed sacrifice at the tomb of Achilles, the word kol"nos refers, once again, to the tomb of Achilles, and in this context it is used in collocation with another revealing word, s#ma ‘tomb’ (53.11).
So what we see here is the offering of garlands of blossoms for the dead Achilles: E) Philostratus Heroikos 53.8-14
The Thessalian sacrificial offerings [enagismata] that came regularly to Achilles from Thessaly
were decreed for the Thessalians by the oracle at Dodona. Evidently the oracle ordered the Thessalians to sail to Troy each year to sacrifice [thuein] to Achilles and to slaughter some sacrificial victims as to a god, while slaughtering other victims as for the dead. From the very beginnings, the following was the procedure: a ship sailed from Thessaly to Troy with black sails raised, bringing twice seven sacred ambassadors [the"roi], one white bull and one black bull, both tame to the touch, and wood from Mount Pelion, so that they would need nothing from the city [= New Ilion].[3] They also brought fire from Thessaly as well as water drawn from the river Sperkheios for libations. As a consequence (of these practices), the Thessalians were the first to institute the custom of using unwilting garlands [stephanoi] for the funerary rituals [k#dos plural] (in honor of Achilles), in order that, even if the wind delayed the ship, they would not wear garlands [stephanoi] that were wilted or past their season [h"ra]. And evidently they found it necessary to put into the harbor at night and, before touching land, to
sing from the ship a hymn [humnos] to Thetis, which is composed of these words: Thetis color of lapis, Thetis consort of Peleus, you who bore the great son Achilles. The part of him that his mortal
nature brought him was the share of Troy, but the part of him that from your immortal lineage was drawn by the child, the sea [pontos] has that part. Come, proceed to this steep tumulus [kol"nos] in the company of Achilles (to receive) the offerings placed over the fire. Come, proceed without tears in the company of Thessaly, you sea-blue Thetis, you consort of Peleus. When they approached the tomb [s#ma] after the hymn [humnos], a shield was banged upon as in battle, and together with rhythmic coordination they cried alala while calling upon Achilles. When they had garlanded [stephanoûn] the summit of the tumulus [kol"nos] and dug sacrificial pits on it, they slaughtered the black bull as to one who is dead. They also called upon Patroklos to come to the feast, so as to gratify [= make kharis for] Achilles. After they slit the victim’s throat and made this sacrifice [enagizein], they evidently proceeded to go down to the ship, and, after sacrificing [thuein] the other bull on the beach again to Achilles and having begun the offering by taking from the basket and by partaking of the entrails for that sacrifice [thusia] (for they sacrificed [thuein] this sacrifice [thusia] as to a god), they sailed away toward dawn, taking the sacrificed animal so as not to feast in the enemy’s country.[4]
! To make direct mental contact with a hero, the worshipper has to be initiated into the mysteries hero's cult: !
Pausanias (2nd century CE) describes an initiation into the mysteries of a hero cult (9.39.5ff). It is like a blueprint. The oracle of the cult hero Trophonios is mentioned already in Herodotus (1.46), over 600 years earlier: he reports that Croesus had consulted the oracle of Trophonios, as well as the oracle of the cult hero Amphiaraos. In the description of Pausanias, notice that oikos in the context of hero cult refers to the ‘resting place’ of a cult hero.
!
Pausanias (2nd century CE) describes an initiation into the mysteries of a hero cult (9.39.5ff):
!
When a man has made up his mind to descend to the oracle of Trophonios, he first lodges in a certain building [oik#ma] for an appointed number of days, this being sacred to the Good Daim"n and to Good Fortune. While he lodges there, among other regulations for purity he abstains from hot baths, bathing only in the river Hercyna. Meat he has in plenty from the sacrifices, for he who descends sacrifices to Trophonios himself and to the children of Trophonios, to Apollo also and to Kronos, to Zeus with the epithet King [Basileus], to Hera Charioteer [H#niokhos], and to Demeter whom they name with the epithet Europa and say was
the wetnurse of Trophonios. [9.35.6] At each sacrifice a diviner [mantis] is present, who looks into the entrails of the sacrificial victim, and after an inspection prophesies to the person descending whether Trophonios will give him a kind [eumen#s] and gracious reception. The entrails of the other victims do not declare the mind of Trophonios so much as a ram, which each inquirer sacrifices over a pit [bothros] on the night he descends, calling upon Agamedes. [5] Even though the previous sacrifices have appeared propitious, no account is taken of them unless the entrails of this ram indicate the same; but if they agree, then the inquirer descends in good hope. The procedure of the descent is this. [9.39.7] First, during the night he is taken to the river Hercyna by two boys of the citizens about thirteen years old, named Hermae,[6] who after taking him there anoint him with oil and wash him. It is these who wash the descender, and do all the other necessary services as his attendant boys. After this he is taken by the priests, not at once to the oracle, but to fountains of water very near to each other. [9.39.8] Here he must drink water called the water of Forgetfulness [L#th#], that he may forget all that he has been thinking of hitherto, and afterwards he drinks of another water, the water of Memory [Mn#mosun#], which causes him to remember what he sees after his descent. After looking at the image [agalma] which they say was made by Daedalus (it is not shown by the priests save to such as are going to visit Trophonios), having seen it, worshipped it and prayed, he proceeds to the oracle, dressed in a linen tunic, with ribbons girding it, and wearing the boots of the native locale.[7] [9.39.9] The oracle is on the mountain, beyond the grove. Round it is a circular basement of white marble, the circumference of which is about that of the smallest threshing floor, while its height is just short of two cubits. On the basement stand spikes, which, like the cross-bars holding them together, are of bronze, while through them has been made a double door. Within the enclosure is a chasm [khasma] in the earth, not natural, but artificially constructed after the most accurate masonry. [9.39.10] The shape of this structure is like that of a bread-oven. Its breadth across the middle one might conjecture to be about four cubits, and its depth also could not be estimated to extend to more than eight cubits. They have made no way of descent to the bottom, but when a man comes to Trophonios, they bring him a narrow, light ladder. After going down he finds a hole between the floor and the structure. Its breadth appeared to be two spans, and its height one span. [9.39.11] The descender lies with his back on the ground, holding barley-cakes [mazai] kneaded with honey, thrusts his feet into the hole and himself follows, trying hard to get his knees into the hole. After his knees the rest of his body is at once swiftly drawn in, just as the largest and most rapid river will catch a man in its eddy and carry him under. After this those who have entered the shrine learn the future, not in one and the same way in all cases, but by sight sometimes and at other times by hearing. The
return upwards is by the same mouth, the feet darting out first. [9.39.12] They say that no one who has made the descent has been killed, save only one of the bodyguards of Demetrius. But they declare that he performed none of the usual rites in the sanctuary, and that he descended, not to consult the god[8] but in the hope of stealing gold and silver from the shrine. It is said that the body of this man appeared in a different place, and was not cast out at the sacred mouth. Other tales are told about the man, but I have given the one most worthy of consideration. [9.39.13] After his ascent from Trophonios the inquirer is again taken in hand by the priests, who set him upon a chair called the Throne of Memory [Mn#mosun#], which stands not far from the shrine, and they ask of him, when seated there, all he has seen or learned. After gaining this information they then entrust him to his relatives. These lift him, paralyzed with terror and unconscious both of himself and of his surroundings, and carry him to the building [oik#ma] where he lodged before with Good Fortune and the Good Daim"n. Afterwards, however, he will recover all his
faculties, and the power to laugh will return to him. [9.39.14] What I write is not hearsay; I have myself inquired of Trophonios and seen other inquirers.
!
G1. In making mental contact with a cult hero, the worshipper expects to get in touch with a mind that knows everything.
G2. We will see that heroes are “psychic” about the heroic past: in other words, when worshippers in the present make contact with the consciousness of the heroes of the past, those heroes will know everything about the world of heroes, not only about their own world in the past. They thus surpass the power of poets in knowing about the world of heroes:
!
Philostratus On Heroes 7.4-6 At any rate, among those who critically examine Homer’s poems, who will you say reads [anagign"skein] and has insight [di-horân] into them as Protesilaos does? Indeed, my guest, before Priam and Troy there was no epic recitation [rhaps"idia], nor had anyone sung of events that had not yet taken place. There was poetry about prophetic matters and about Herakles, son of Alkm#n#, recently arranged but not yet developed fully, but Homer had not yet sung. Some say that it was when Troy was captured, others say it was a few or even eight generations later that he applied himself to poetic composition. Nevertheless, Protesilaos knows everything of Homer and sings of many Trojan events that took place after his own lifetime, and also of many Hellenic and Median events.
! ! !
! !
[1] The wording connotes an aetiology, as if the death of Achilles were the single reason that explains why Achaeans no longer wore their hair long.
[2] Translation adapted from Berenson and Aitken 2001.153.
[3] The ritually dramatized hostility between the Thessalians and the city of New Ilion seems to be a reflex of an old Thessalian connection with Sigeion as the rival city that represented the interests of Athens in the era of the Peisistratidai. As allies of Athens, the Thessalians would have been welcome as visitors to the sacred sites in the part of the Troad controlled by Sigeion in that era. In a later era, however, after Sigeion had been destroyed by New Ilion, the Thessalians would have become personae non gratae at the sacred sites taken over by New Ilion.
[4] Translation adapted from Berenson and Aitken 2001.157, 159.
[5] Pausanias' earlier description of the myth of Trophonios (9.37.5ff): "The earth opened up and swallowed Trophonios at the point in the grove at Lebadeia where is what is called the pit [bothros] of Agamedes, and next to it is a stele." Agamedes was the brother of Trophonios. In the corresponding myth, Agamedes died when the two brothers were buried alive, while Trophonios escaped; later, he experiences the mystical process of "engulfment."
[6] "Hermae" is the plural of "Hermes." [7] Note that the groundedness of the local hero cult is reinforced by the idea of local footwear. [8] Note that Pausanias considers the hero in the afterlife to be a theos 'god'.
Chapter 13 Title: “Better off dead” !
The key word for this time is telos. This word signals ‘initiation’ (into the mysteries). In the Glossary, telos is defined as ‘coming full circle, rounding out, fulfillment, completion, ending, end; successfully passing through an ordeal; ritual, rite’. The name Tellos in the micro-narrative we have just read is derived from the word telos. Note that the hero is defined in terms of krinein ‘judge, distinguish’, which as we have seen in the Odyssey is the power of discerning
the true from the untrue. ! To sum up: telos
1. ‘goal, fulfillment, completion, end [of life].’ OR 2. ‘successful passing through an ordeal; initiation.’ ! olbios: ambiguity between insider’s and outsider’s definition ! The name of Tellos is an ainos. ! Notes on tim#:
‘honor, social recognition’ (for the things that a hero does)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! uninitiated,
and in ‘normal’ contexts)
‘cult honors, ritual performance’ (for the initiated, and in ritual contexts) !
Herodotus 1.30.2-5: “Athenian xenos, we have heard much about your wisdom [sophia] and your wanderings, that you have gone all over the world philosophizing, so now I desire to ask you who is the most olbios man you have seen.” Croesus asked this question expecting the answer to be himself, but Solon, instead of flattering him, told it as it was and said, “O King, it is Tellos the Athenian.” Croesus marveled at what he had said and replied sharply, “In what way do you judge [krinein] Tellos to be the most olbios?” Solon said, “Tellos was from a prosperous polis and his children were good and noble [agathoi]. He saw them all have children of their own, and all of these survived. His life was well off by our standards, and his death was most distinguished: when the Athenians were fighting their neighbors in Eleusis, he came to help, routed the enemy, and died most beautifully. The Athenians buried him at public expense on the spot where he fell and gave him much tim#.”
!
For the uninitiated, the word tim# means simply ‘honor’; for the initiated, it means ‘honor given to a cult hero’.
!
The place-name Eleusis signals the ritual process of being initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries. More on these Mysteries later on.
! Things to look for in Passage B:
The story of Kleobis and Biton is a perfect “parable” (ainos) explaining the relevance of the meaning of h"ra and H#ra to the meaning of h#r"s.
!
Herodotus 1.31.1-5: When Solon had provoked him by saying that the affairs of Tellos were so olbios, Croesus asked who he thought was next, fully expecting to win second prize. Solon answered, “Kleobis and Biton.” They were Argive in genos, they had enough to live on, and on top of this they had great bodily strength. Both were prize-winning athletes [athlophoroi], and this story is told about them: There was a festival of H#ra in Argos, and their mother absolutely had to be conveyed to the sacred precinct by a team of oxen. But their oxen had not come back from the fields in time [h"ra], so the youths took the yoke upon their own shoulders under constraint of time [h"ra]. They drew the wagon, with their mother riding atop it, traveling 45 stadia until they arrived at the sacred precinct. When they had done this and had been seen by the entire gathering, their lives came to the best fulfillment [ariston telos], and in their case the god made clear that for human beings it is better to be dead than to live. The Argive men stood around the youths and congratulated them on their strength; the Argive women congratulated their mother for having such children. She was overjoyed at the feat and at the praise, so she stood before the image and prayed that the goddess might grant the best thing for humanity to her children Kleobis and Biton, who had given great tim# to the goddess. After this prayer they sacrificed and feasted. The youths then lay down in the sacred precinct and went to sleep, and they never got up again; they remained in the pose that they had assumed in reaching their telos. The Argives made and
dedicated at Delphi statues of them, since they were aristoi.”
!
[[On the Multimedia page, we post some picture of these statues, which have been found by archaeologists. The statues are now housed in the Museum at Delphi.]]
!
This passage of Herodotus is a perfect “parable” (ainos) explaining the relevance of the meaning of h"ra and H#ra to the meaning of h#r"s.
!
Relevant is the key word for Dialogue 11: olbios ‘blessed’ (for the initiated) and ‘prosperous, happy’ (for the uninitiated). The cult hero is olbios ‘blessed’ after he or she dies. The worshipper of a cult hero becomes olbios ‘blessed’ by making contact with the hero.
!
For an introduction to the concept of the cult hero, see again Introduction 3, “The Epic Hero,”
§§80-104. There the direct evidence for the practice of hero cults is reviewed. There is also indirect evidence in the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey, which frequently make references to the practice of hero cult. But the Homeric references are made on the basis of an understanding that everyone knows about the practice anyway.
!
Let us return to the narrative about Kleobis and Biton in Passage B. The stylized death of these two young men is a dramatization of the perfect heroic moment. Significantly, these young men are sons of the priestess of H#ra herself, who is the goddess of that perfect moment.
!
Note this wording in Passage B: “and in their case the god made clear that for human beings it is better to be dead than to live.” For the uninitiated, this wording means that you are better off dead
that you might as well choose to be put out of your misery instead going on with life. For the initiated, this same wording means that a life after death will be better for you than the life you are living now.
! Just as Tellos is a cult hero, so also are Kleobis and Biton. !
Notice that cult heroes, before they became cult heroes, did not necessarily give tim# to the gods. Consider the Silver Generation in the context of the overall myth of the Five Generations of Humankind at verses 106-201 of the Hesiodic Works and Days. After the death of heroes, however, humans will give tim# to to them as cult heroes.
!
When a hero dies, the cult of his body compensates for that death. A case in point is the passage we are about to see, where a baby named Demophon dies and becomes a cult hero, thanks to the power of his “baby-sitter,” the Earth Mother Demeter.
!
So here are some things to look for: - tim# of baby-hero Demophon - The ‘mystery’ of the cult is the hero’s resurrection. - h"ra: perfect seasonality of nature as the perfect moment of initiation. - The land becomes sacred through contact with hero.
!
Homeric Hymn to Demeter 265-268: 260!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ... immortal and ageless for all days
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! would I have made your philos little boy, and I would have given him an honor [tim#] that is imperishable [a-phthi-tos].
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But now there is no way for him to avoid death and doom.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Still, he will have an honor [tim#] that is imperishable [a-phthi-tos], for all time, because he had once sat
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! on my knees and slept in my arms. 265!!!!!!!!!! At the right timely season [h"ra], every year, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! the sons of the Eleusinians will have a war, a terrible
battle !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! among each other. They will do so for all days to come. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am Demeter, the holder of honors [timai]. I am the greatest !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !! boon and joy for immortals and mortals alike. ! Note that Demophon, as a cult hero, will get the tim# of cult (line 261). !
In this case, the hero cult involves a seasonally-recurring athletic festival. The actual athletic event is a stylized ‘battle’ that is staged every year at Eleusis, which became the central place of initiation for citizens of the Athenian city-state. This athletic event was known as the Ball#tus, which was officially held on a seasonally-recurring basis to compensate for the death of the baby cult hero Demophon. This mock-battle seems to have been the ritual kernel of a whole complex of events known as the Eleusinian Games. Parallel institutions are the Nemean and the
Isthmian Games, pan-Hellenic athletic events, which were held on a seasonally-recurring basis to compensate for the deaths of the baby cult heroes Arkhemoros and Melikertes respectively.
!
Just as the cult hero Demophon gets tim# ‘honor’ that is aphthitos ‘imperishable, unwilting’ in compensation for death (261), so also the epic hero Achilles gets kleos ‘glory’ that is aphthiton ‘imperishable, unwilting’ (Iliad IX 413) in compensation for death.
!
In the Homeric tradition, references to hero cults tend to be implicit, not explicit. That is because the religious practice of hero-cult is fundamentally a local phenomenon while the Homeric tradition is non-local or “pan-Hellenic” (that is, common to a majority of Greek speaking locales). Homeric references to olbioi - that is, to those whose local earth is in contact with the dead hero - imply hero-cult without really revealing the mysteries of the hero cult.!!!!
!
A case in point is the passage in the Odyssey that we considered earlier, where the psukh# of Teiresias, during its moments of consciousness made possible by the drinking of the sacrificial sheep’s blood that is poured for Teiresias by Odysseus, foretells the story of Odysseus beyond the Odyssey as we know it. In this meta-story, we see that Odysseus dies at precisely the moment when he reaches the point of a coincidence of opposites. At that point, he will die, and there will be a hero cult connected with his body at the place of his death. Those who come into contact with the body in that place by making contact with the earth that covers him there will be olbioi - if they are righteous (see the end of the passage below):
! Relevant is a passage we have already read: !
Odyssey xi 119-137: When you get home you will take your revenge on these suitors; and after you have killed them by force [bi#] or fraud in your own house, you must take a well-made oar and carry it on and on, till you come to a country where the people have never heard of the sea and do not even mix salt with their food, nor do they know anything about ships, and oars that are as the wings of a ship. I will give you this certain token [s#ma] which cannot escape your notice. A wayfarer will meet you and will say it must be a winnowing shovel that you have got upon your shoulder; on this you must fix the oar in the ground and sacrifice a ram, a bull, and a boar to Poseidon. Then go home and offer hecatombs to the gods in heaven one after the other.! As for yourself, death shall come to you from the sea, and your life shall ebb away very gently when you are full of years and peace of mind, and your people shall be prosperous [olbioi]. All that I have
said will come true.’
!
As we review this passage, we need to keep in mind that all cult heroes are local and localized. Also to consider... - Cult worship reinforces seasonality of nature. - End of journey [telos] is also initiation [telos].
!
In this passage from the Odyssey, we see the mystical word olbios, which means ‘prosperous’ on the surface but also ‘blessed’ underneath the surface. The deeper meaning has to do with the hero’s achieving an afterlife, rendering him ‘blessed’, while his corpse renders the local population ‘prosperous’. There is a built-in metonymy in the reciprocal relationship linking the ‘blessed’ heroes and the ‘prosperous’ population that worships them.
!
I talked a minute ago about the moment when Odysseus dies, which happens when he reaches the point of a coincidence of opposites. What is that point? The place of the death of Odysseus will be as far away from the sea as possible. It will be where the oar that he carries on his shoulder is mistaken for a winnowing shovel. And yet, Odysseus will share the sacred space of his hero-cult with Poseidon, god of the sea, even though this space is as far away from the sea as possible. In the historical period, as we know from the testimony of Pausanias (2nd century CE), Odysseus was actually worshipped as a cult hero in Arcadia, which is as far away from the sea as you can be in the Peloponnesus. Pausanias says that Odysseus shares his sacred space with Poseidon as god of the sea, and with Athena as goddess of sea-pilots. In the Homeric Odyssey, these two divinities are the primary and the secondary divine antagonists respectively of Odysseus.
! For more on god-hero antagonism in myth and god-hero symbiosis in ritual, see Nagy, Best of the Achaeans, ch. 7. !
In the Odyssey here, the detail about sacrificing to Poseidon at the point of a coincidence of opposites, where the oar of Odysseus is mistaken for a winnowing shovel, refers indirectly to the death of Odysseus at that point and to the symbiosis of Odysseus as cult hero with Poseidon as his ritual antagonist. The ostentatious usage of s#ma in this context signals both the ‘sign’ that tells about the hero’s death and, more literally, the ‘tomb’ of the hero at the place of his death. In terms of this interpretation of the prophecy of Teiresias, death came to Odysseus ‘far from the sea’ - not ‘out of the sea’. In the original Greek, the wording of the prophet is ambiguous: it could have either of the two meanings.
!
The idea of a hero cult, where the body of the hero hidden in the local earth becomes a talisman of fertility and prosperity to those who come into contact with that earth, can be seen positively as a realization of dik# in the long-term sense of ‘justice’.
!
This word dik# means ‘justice’ (long-term) and ‘judgment’ (short-term). The sign of dik# is a thriving or blooming field / garden / orchard / grove / vineyard / etc. The cult hero is an exponent of dik#. The presence of his or her body in the local earth can be viewed as the cause of vegetal thriving or blooming.
!
This word dik#, with its two primary metaphors of (1) the straight line and (2) the thriving cultivation, is basic to the concept of the cult hero. For a brief historical sketch of hero cults, see again Introduction no. 3.
!
The opposite of dik# is hubris ‘outrage’. The three categories of hubris: (1) human, e.g. Antinoos, (2) animal, (3) plant (undergrowth or overgrowth, such as excessive wood / leaf production). Metaphors of dik#: (1) straight line and (2) thriving cultivation = cultivated field / garden / orchard / grove / vineyard / etc.; hubris is the opposite, that is, (1) crooked line and (2) failing cultivation = desert or overgrowth.
!
In the world of the “present,” from the standpoint of Greeks in the historical period who worship the heroes who supposedly lived in the world of the heroic past, these heroes can be imagined as kings and queens from the past. For example, one of the cult words used for worshipping a male cult hero is ‘king’ (anax).
!
In the world of the heroic past, from the standpoint of Greeks in the historical period, the idea of a just king, a king who is an exponent of dik#, is seen in terms of a thriving or blooming field / garden / orchard / grove / vineyard / etc.
! There is a reference to this world in the words of the disguised Odysseus, addressed to his wife Penelope. This passage contains a perfect example of dik# as a sign of the cult hero. ! Here we review another passage from the Odyssey:
!
Odyssey xix 107-114: “My lady,” answered Odysseus, “who on the face of the whole earth can dare to chide with you? Your fame [kleos] reaches the firmament of heaven itself; you are like some blameless king, who upholds righteousness [= good dik#], as the monarch over a great and valiant nation: the earth yields its wheat and barley, the trees are loaded with fruit, the ewes bring forth lambs, and the sea abounds with fish by reason of his virtues, and his people do good deeds under him.
!
This epic image of the just king as an exponent of dik#, standing in his blooming garden, corresponds to the religious image of the hero in hero cult, “planted” in the local “mother earth” as a talisman of fertility and prosperity for the community that worships him or her.
!
There is a further reference to this idea of a heroic king, in the climactic meeting between father (“ancestor”) and son (“descendant”) in the Garden of Laertes:
!
Odyssey xxiv: As he went down into the great orchard, ... he found his father alone, hoeing a vine. ... He went up to his father, who was bending down and digging about a plant. [244] “I see, sir,” said Odysseus, “that you are an excellent gardener - what pains you take with it, to be sure. There is not a single plant, not a fig tree, vine, olive, pear, nor flower bed, but bears the trace of your attention.”
!
Odysseus’ father is the most difficult character for the hero to “read” or “recognize” - even more difficult than Penelope. In terms of the sequence of narration, the placing of Laertes’ recognition after that of Penelope suggests that the pat#r ‘father’ (the plural pateres means ‘ancestors’) is even higher in Odysseus’ ascending scale of affections than the wife. Compare the distinction of Kleopatra as a character and Kleopatra as a name. In Meleager’s ascending scale of affections, the wife Kleopatra is highest. But the meaning of her name is even higher for Achilles’s ascending scale of affections.!!!
! Again, we see Homeric poetry referring here indirectly to the practice of hero cult. !
Odysseus’ father is the most difficult character for the hero to “read” or “recognize” - even more difficult than Penelope. In terms of the sequence of narration, the placing of Laertes’ recognition after that of Penelope suggests that the pat#r ‘father’ (the plural pateres means ‘ancestors’) is even higher in Odysseus’ ascending scale of affections than the wife. Compare
the distinction of Kleopatra as a character and Kleopatra as a name. In Meleager’s ascending scale of affections, the wife Kleopatra is highest. But the meaning of her name is even higher for Achilles’s ascending scale of affections.!!!
! Again, we see Homeric poetry referring here indirectly to the practice of hero cult. ! [[What follows is a discussion that is meant to supplement the dialogue that has taken place.]] !
The heroes of hero cult are not only immortalized in paradise-like settings; they can also "come back" into the everyday world on special occasions, called "epiphanies." Sometimes the epiphany is metonymic, that is, that a sign of the hero appears instead of the hero himself (or herself).! The word s#ma in the sense of 'tomb' indicates the hero as connected simultaneously to (1) a local resting place for his or her body in the local "mother earth" and (2) a paradise-like setting beyond everyday time and place. The same word s#ma in the sense of 'sign' indicates an epiphany of the hero or of something connected to the hero. The meaning of the hero is indicated by the word s#mainein, which means literally 'mean' or 'mean in a special way.
!
We start with a “miracle” connected with the cult hero Protesilaos.
!
Here are some things to look for:
!
The hero communicates a message about justice (dik#) through a s#ma ‘sign.’
The s#ma hinges on the word tarikhos, which has a double meaning : both ‘preserved food’ (secular) and ‘preserved body’ (sacred).
In Egyptian religion (as expressed by the Greek language), the prototypical tarikhos is Osiris. In traditions connected with the hero Orpheus, the soul is imprisoned in the s#ma of the s"ma (body).
!
Herodotus 9.120. The people of the Chersonesus say that a portent happened to one of the guards while he was roasting salted fish [tarikhoi]: the salted fish on the fire began to jump
and writhe just like newly-caught fish. A crowd gathered in amazement, but when Artayktes saw the portent he called to the man roasting the salted fish and said, “Athenian xenos, have no fear of this portent; it has not been sent to you. Instead Protesilaos of Elaious indicates [s#mainein] to me that even when dead and dried [tarikhos] he holds power from the gods to punish one who treats him without dik#.
!
Here the dead Protesilaos sends a meaning (s#mainein). The question is, for whom is the meaning intended? The Persian "villain," Artayktes, says that the meaning is intended only for him. But the real question is, does Herodotus intend the meaning for Greeks as well?
!
The "meaning" of the hero here is a combination of the "miracle" of the resurrection of the dead fish and the riddling use of the word tarikhos (derived probably from Hittite or Luvian), which can refer both to preserved fish and to preserved human bodies. "Preserved" in the everyday sense would refer to the salting or drying of fish in order to keep them from putrefaction. Similarly, it can refer to the mummifying of the corpse, again in order to keep it from putrefaction.
In the sacred sense of the Egyptian mysteries of Osiris, however, "preservation" refers to resurrection after death, and the key to the mystery of resurrection is the ritual of mummification. For Herodotus, this sacred sense of tarikhos was comparable to the mysteries of resurrection in hero cult.!!
!
For such deeper meaning, the Greek conceptualization is that of a "higher" meaning. The word s#mainein is conventionally used to designate communication by someone whose perspective is from a higher vantage point than everyone else.
!
The one with the highest vantage point of them all is Apollo, god of intelligence; as a sun-god, he has an intellect that towers over the whole universe. That is why Heraclitus can say of him:
!
Heraclitus 22 B 93 DK:
The Lord [= Apollo] whose oracle is in Delphi neither says nor conceals: he indicates [s#mainein].
! - Apollo communicates [s#mainein] from the vantage point of the sun: he is all-seeing. - s#mainein means ‘say’ in the language of scouts who are ‘sent up hill’ on missions of reconnaissance. ! When Herodotus first "quotes" the oracle of Apollo, the god says: ! F) Herodotus 1.47:
I know [oida] the number of the sands and the measure of the sea. I understand the mute and I hear the one who does not speak. The smell has come to my senses of a hard-shelled tortoise, boiling with meat of lamb, where bronze is spread below, bronze set above.
!
[[Note by GN: Boiled lamb is a typical offering to cult heroes; boiled tortoise is meant to be a strange additional ingredient.]]
!
Here we see that the surface narrative of Herodotus is concerned with human events; underneath the surface, however, it is concerned with the workings of the natural and cosmic order. The history is conveyed by the main framing narrative. The workings of the natural and cosmic order are conveyed by the framed narrative of Apollo's utterances and heroes' meanings. The agents of this order are cult heroes, who in death are completely in synchronization with nature and the cosmos. That is why Protesilaos in death can be an agent of the natural and cosmic order, which comes from the gods. He rewards the just and punishes the unjust. He is thus the agent of dik#.
! To sum up:
Herodotus quotes Apollo and thereby emulates the god’s solar vantage point.! Also, he emulates the ground-level vantage point of the hero who travels ‘the pathways of words.’
oida: “I have seen, therefore I know”; related to historia ‘history, inquiry’ activated through vision.
! Herodotus himself uses the same language to describe the way he too communicates: ! G) Herodotus 1.5: Concerning these things, I am not going to say that they were so or
otherwise, but I will indicate [s#mainein] the one who I myself know [oida] first began unjust deeds against the Hellenes. I will go on further in my account, treating equally of great and small cities of humankind, for many of those that were great in the past have become small, and those that were great in my day were formerly small. Knowing that human good fortune [eudaimonia] never remains in the same state, I will mention both equally.
! To sum up:
The historian as one who has seen and, therefore, knows (oida) can indicate (s#mainein) what is morally true by way of his moral authority as a historian.
Unlike the singer who says what he hears! (kleos) from the Muse, the historian says (s#mainein) what he sees (historia) from his own experience and ultimately from the vision of Apollo.
!
Even the "historical" framing narratives of! Herodotus are full of "lofty" speech suggestive of hero cult. A case in point is his use of the word oikos, which in everyday speech means 'house' but in the language of hero cults means 'abode' of a cult hero. One the surface, the Persian "villain" appropriated the "house" of a Greek man. Underneath the surface, he violated the sacred abode of a cult hero:
! H) Herodotus 9.116: !
Xerxes’ governor Artayktes, a Persian and a clever and impious man, was turannos of this province. He had deceived the king in his march on Athens by robbing from Elaious the property of Protesilaos son of Iphiklos. The grave of Protesilaos is at Elaious in the Chersonese, with a sacred precinct around it. There were many goods there: gold and silver bowls, bronze, apparel, and other dedicated offerings, all of which Artayktes carried off by the king’s gift. He deceived Xerxes by saying, “Master, there is here the house [oikos] of a Hellene who waged war against your land, but he met with dik# and was killed. Give me his oikos so that all may know not to wage war against your land.” He thought he would easily persuade Xerxes to give him a man’s oikos by saying this, since Xerxes had no suspicion of what he really thought. When he said that Protesilaos waged war against the king’s land, he had in mind that the Persians consider all Asia to belong to them and to their successive kings. So the king made him the gift, and he carried the goods from Elaious to Sestos, planting and farming the sacred precinct. Whenever he came to Elaious, he would even have sex with women in the sanctuary.
!
To sum up: The historian is an indicator of what is justice (dik#).
The narrative hinges on double meanings in the case of oikos and the words for “planting and farming.”
Only the initiated can understand double meanings as conveyed by the medium of ainos. ! Further review: Notes on Mozart’s Magic Flute:
International anthem of initiation into the mysteries of Freemasonry
Its ‘charter myth’ is the MYSTERIUM of resurrection after the ordeal of death. Modeled on the resurrection of the Egyptian god Osiris.
Greek musterion is saying ‘and non-saying’ in sacred contexts.
!
Pausanias (2nd century CE) describes an initiation into the mysteries of a hero cult (9.39.5ff):
!
When a man has made up his mind to descend to the oracle of Trophonios, he first lodges in a certain building [oik#ma] for an appointed number of days, this being sacred to the Good Daim"n and to Good Fortune. While he lodges there, among other regulations for purity he abstains from hot baths, bathing only in the river Hercyna. Meat he has in plenty from the sacrifices, for he who descends sacrifices to Trophonios himself and to the children of Trophonios, to Apollo also and to Kronos, to Zeus with the epithet King [Basileus], to Hera Charioteer [H#niokhos], and to Demeter whom they name with the epithet Europa and say was the wetnurse of Trophonios. [9.35.6] At each sacrifice a diviner [mantis] is present, who looks into the entrails of the sacrificial victim, and after an inspection prophesies to the person
descending whether Trophonios will give him a kind [eumen#s] and gracious reception. The entrails of the other victims do not declare the mind of Trophonios so much as a ram, which each inquirer sacrifices over a pit [bothros] on the night he descends, calling upon Agamedes. [1] Even though the previous sacrifices have appeared propitious, no account is taken of them unless the entrails of this ram indicate the same; but if they agree, then the inquirer descends in good hope. The procedure of the descent is this. [9.39.7] First, during the night he is taken to the river Hercyna by two boys of the citizens about thirteen years old, named Hermae,[2] who after taking him there anoint him with oil and wash him. It is these who wash the descender, and do all the other necessary services as his attendant boys. After this he is taken by the
priests, not at once to the oracle, but to fountains of water very near to each other. [9.39.8] Here he must drink water called the water of Forgetfulness [L#th#], that he may forget all that he has been thinking of hitherto, and afterwards he drinks of another water, the water of Memory [Mn#mosun#], which causes him to remember what he sees after his descent. After looking at the image [agalma] which they say was made by Daedalus (it is not shown by the priests save to such as are going to visit Trophonios), having seen it, worshipped it and prayed, he proceeds to the oracle, dressed in a linen tunic, with ribbons girding it, and wearing the boots of the native locale.[3] [9.39.9] The oracle is on the mountain, beyond the grove. Round it is a circular basement of white marble, the circumference of which is about that of the smallest threshing floor, while its height is just short of two cubits. On the basement stand spikes, which, like the cross- bars holding them together, are of bronze, while through them has been made a double door. Within the enclosure is a chasm [khasma] in the earth, not natural, but artificially constructed after the most accurate masonry. [9.39.10] The shape of this structure is like that of a bread-oven. Its breadth across the middle one might conjecture to be about four cubits, and its depth also could not be estimated to extend to more than eight cubits. They have made no way of descent to the bottom, but when a man comes to Trophonios, they bring him a narrow, light ladder. After going down he finds a hole between the floor and the structure. Its breadth appeared to be two spans, and its height one span. [9.39.11] The descender lies with his back on the ground, holding barley- cakes [mazai] kneaded with honey, thrusts his feet into the hole and himself follows, trying hard to get his knees into the hole. After his knees the rest of his body is at once swiftly drawn in, just as the largest and most rapid river will catch a man in its eddy and carry him under. After this those who have entered the shrine learn the future, not in one and the same way in all cases, but by sight sometimes and at other times by hearing. The return upwards is by the same mouth, the feet darting out first. [9.39.12] They say that no one who has made the descent has been killed, save only one of the bodyguards of Demetrius. But they declare that he performed none of the usual rites in the sanctuary, and that he descended, not to consult the god[4] but in the hope of stealing gold and silver from the shrine. It is said that the body of this man appeared in a different place, and was not cast out at the sacred mouth. Other tales are told about the man, but I have given the one most worthy of consideration. [9.39.13] After his ascent from Trophonios the inquirer is again taken in hand by the priests, who set him upon a chair called the Throne of Memory [Mn#mosun#], which stands not far from the shrine, and they ask of him, when seated there, all he has seen or learned. After gaining this information they then entrust him to his relatives. These lift him, paralyzed with terror and unconscious both of himself and of his surroundings, and carry him to the building [oik#ma] where he lodged before with Good Fortune and the Good Daim"n. Afterwards, however, he will recover all his faculties, and the power to laugh will return to him. [9.39.14] What I write is not hearsay; I have myself inquired of Trophonios and seen other inquirers.
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J1. In making mental contact with a cult hero, the worshipper expects to get in touch with a mind that knows everything.
J2. We will see that heroes are “psychic” about the heroic past: in other words, when worshippers in the present make contact with the consciousness of the heroes of the past, those
heroes will know everything about the world of heroes, not only about their own world in the past. They thus surpass the power of poets in knowing about the world of heroes:
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Philostratus On Heroes 7.4-6 At any rate, among those who critically examine Homer’s poems, who will you say reads [anagign"skein] and has insight [di-horân] into them as Protesilaos does? Indeed, my guest, before Priam and Troy there was no epic recitation [rhaps"idia], nor had anyone sung of events that had not yet taken place. There was poetry about prophetic matters and about Herakles, son of Alkm#n#, recently arranged but not yet developed fully, but Homer had not yet sung. Some say that it was when Troy was captured, others say it was a few or even eight generations later that he applied himself to poetic composition. Nevertheless, Protesilaos knows everything of Homer and sings of many Trojan events that took place after his own lifetime, and also of many Hellenic and Median events.
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[1] Pausanias' earlier description of the myth of Trophonios (9.37.5ff): "The earth opened up and swallowed Trophonios at the point in the grove at Lebadeia where is what is called the pit [bothros] of Agamedes, and next to it is a stele." Agamedes was the brother of Trophonios. In the corresponding myth, Agamedes died when the two brothers were buried alive, while Trophonios escaped; later, he experiences the mystical process of "engulfment."
[2] "Hermae" is the plural of "Hermes." [3] Note that the groundedness of the local hero cult is reinforced by the idea of local footwear. [4] Note that Pausanias considers the hero in the afterlife to be a theos 'god'. Chapter 14 Champions of dik# ‘justice’ ! 1. The key word is dik#
‘justice’ (long-range), ‘judgment’ (short-range) 2. The opposite of this word is hubris ‘outrage’.
In the sphere of humans, hubris is manifested in excessive behavior that violates morality, as in the case of the suitor Antinoos in the Odyssey
In the sphere of animals, it is manifested in excessive violence or sex
In the sphere of plants, it is manifested in unbalanced and excessive growth of some aspects of the given plant - at the expense of other aspects. For example, excessive production of wood or leaf in an apple tree results in a deficient production of apples. For another example: when a lettuce “gone to seed,” it fails to produce leaves.
Here is a picture of “Natasha’s hybristic lettuce.” ! 3. Metaphorically, dik# can be pictured as
a straight line or
a flourishing garden / orchard / grove / field / etc.;
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hubris is the opposite, pictured as
a crooked line or
a sterile land, where the sterility is caused either by overgrowth or by undergrowth
So, the opposition between dik# and hubris is matched by a metaphorical opposition between the flourishing of cultivated land and the notional sterility of, say, a desert or a jungle.
As for the metaphorical opposition between a straight and a crooked line, the moral
implications are evident in a wide range of cultures. In English, for example, people who are “crooked” in speech are “not straight,” that is, they are “not direct.”
The concept of “direct” is very useful for our purposes, because the most basic meaning of Greek dik# is ‘direction, directness’.
Generally, Homeric poetry does not address the problem of justice, that is, of what is right vs. wrong, what is truth vs. what are lies. (Note that “truth” tends to be viewed in the singular
while “lies” tend to be viewed in the plural.)
A very instructive example of the tension between dik# as ‘justice’ in the long term and ‘judgment’ in the short term is the litigation scene portrayed as a central picture worked into the cosmic artifact known as the Shield of Achilles in Rhapsody XVIII of the Iliad. At XVIII 508, we see a contest or debate that centers on the question of the ‘straightest’ possible formulation of dik# - in the context of a neikos ‘quarrel’, as mentioned in XVIII 497. Notice that the people who have to make up their mind about the big question of justice in the Iliad are described as a crowd of people standing around the central scene of the litigation. That crowd can be imagined as the audience, as it were, of Homeric poetry. Have another look at my essay on the Shield of Achilles, available on the “Heroes” website.
Another instructive example is a passage we have already considered in Rhapsody xix of the Odyssey. At xix 106-114, we see a picture of a king in a flourishing field. (I am deliberately using the English word ‘field’ here. Like the Greek word agros, this English word ‘field’ can refer either to nature or to culture, cultivation.) The kleos of Penelope, says Odysseus in disguise, will reach the heavens like that of a king who upholds good dik# (eudiki$s, accusative plural, at verse 111), so that the earth flourishes and the people prosper.
We may compare the image embedded in the prophecy of Teiresias to Odysseus in Odyssey xi 136-137: the people around you will be olbioi. As I noted earlier, we see here a picture of Odysseus himself as a stylized cult hero whose body finds its resting place in a flourishing field. Nature and culture are fused in this setting of agriculture. As we saw earlier, the silhouette of a mound topped by an oar or winnowing shovel can mean two things at the same time: “this is the mound that is the tomb of a sailor who died” and “this is the mound that is the accumulation of grain that is harvested from a flourishing field.”! When “the sailor is dead,” “the harvest is complete.” In this context, we may also compare the garden of Laertes in Odyssey xxiv.
Cult heroes are fused with the seasonality of agriculture 12. Cult heroes are the phulakes
‘guardians’ of dik#, as we are about to see in Hesiod Works and Days 122-126, 172-173.
Before we proceed in earnest to Hesiodic poetry, we should consider a rare example of dik# in the absolutized sense of ‘justice’ in Homeric poetry. When Nestor speaks of the aftermath of the Trojan War, in Odyssey iii 132-135, he notes that Zeus planned a nostos that is lugros ‘baneful’ for the Achaeans (verse 132). Why? Because the ‘Argives’ had no sense of noos and no dik# (verse 133), and, consequently, they were doomed to be punished by the m#nis of Athena (135).
In this context, we should recall the significance of the name of the chief of the suitors, Antinoos. This figure is literally ‘antithetical to noos’. He is extrinsically noble but intrinsically base. He is socioeconomically noble but morally base. Odysseus, by contrast, is intrinsically noble though he is extrinsically base. He is morally noble though he is socioeconomically base. His baseness is exteriorized when he is reduced to the lowest level of the socioeconomic hierarchy of his own society at the time of his arrival back home in Ithaca.
As we saw earlier, it takes noos to bring together the 1) intellectual, 2) moral, 3) emotional
aspects of understanding the “meaning” of a hero.
With that said, we are ready to move on to Hesiodic poetry. Basically, Hesiod is the hero of the speech-act
A case in point is Focus Passage A. For this text, I choose the first ten verses of the Hesiodic Works and Days. As we see from these verses, the meaning of dik# in *both* the short-term sense of ‘judgment’ *and* the long-term sense of ‘justice’ is fused in the figure of Zeus. Only for Zeus is a ‘judgment’ the same thing as ‘justice’. And that model is about to be extended to the figure of Hesiod himself. As we read in Works and Days verses 9-10, the dik# of Zeus is in action while Hesiod talks to Perses. So the action of Zeus is the speech of Hesiod. That is how Hesiod becomes the ultimate master of the speech act.
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Passage (A) Hesiod Works and Days 1-10 !!!!!!
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!!!!!!!!!!! Muses of Pieria, you who make kleos with your songs,
!!!!!!!!!!! come and tell of Zeus, making a song about your father,
!!!!!!!!!!! on account of whom there are mortals both unworthy of talk and worthy,
!!!!!!!!!!! both worth speaking of and not—all on account of great Zeus.
!!!!!!!!!!! Easily he gives power, and just as easily he ruins the powerful.
!!!!!!!!!!! Easily he diminishes the distinguished, and magnifies the undistinguished.
!!!!!!!!!!! Easily he makes straight the crooked and withers the overweening
!!!!!!!!!!! —Zeus, the one who thunders on high, who lives in the highest abode.
!!!!!!!!!!! Heed me, seeing and hearing as you do, and with dik# make straight the divine laws [themis plural].
!! 10!!!! !!!! While you do that, I am ready to tell genuine [et#tuma] things to Perses.
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Hesiod becomes a hero by virtue of becoming the ultimate master of the speech act, as we see from a comparison of the beginning of the Hesiodic Works and Days and the beginning of
the Hesiodic Theogony. !
In Works and Days 9-10, we see that Zeus ‘sorts out’ (as expressed by the verb of krisis) what is ‘divine law’ (themis) and what is not, and he accomplishes this ‘sorting out’ by way of his dik# ‘judgment’ - while Hesiod speaks to Perses. The speaking of Hesiod, as a speech act, takes place in the context of a neikos ‘quarrel’, Works and Days 35, between Hesiod as the righteous brother and Perses as the unrighteous brother.
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We now turn to Focus Passage B, Theogony 85-87. At verses 85-86, we see how an ideal king ‘sorts out’ (krisis) what is ‘divine law’ (themis) and what is not, and he accomplishes this ‘sorting out’ by way of his dik# ‘judgment’. But doing so, the ideal king can bring to an end a great neikos ‘quarrel’, as we see at verse 87.
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Passage (B) Hesiod Theogony 65-97:
And they {the Muses}, sending forth a lovely voice,
sing and dance and make kleos for the norms [nomoi] and accustomed ways of all the immortals, as they send forth a lovely voice.
Anyway, back then, they went to Olympus, glorying in their beautiful voice with immortal song. And the dark earth resounded all around them
as they sang, and the lovely steppings of their feet made a sound from below
as they proceeded towards their father, the one who is king in the sky, with sole possession of the thunder and the gleaming thunderbolt,
having defeated, with his power [kratos], Kronos his father. Each thing was well arranged by him, as he assigned the norms and marked out the honors [timai][1] for the immortals.
These things, then, the Muses sang, they who have abodes in Olympus, the nine daughters begotten by great Zeus, Kleio {Clio} and Euterpe and Thaleia {Thalia, ‘Festivity’} and Melpomene
and Terpsichore and Erato and Polyhymnia and Ourania {Urania}
and Kalliope {Calliope}. That one {Calliope} is the most important of them all, for she accompanies revered kings.
Whosoever among sky-nourished kings is given honor [tim#] by these daughters of great Zeus and is beheld by them when he is born,
for such a man they pour sweet dew upon his tongue, and from his mouth flow sweet words. The people,
all of them, look towards him as he sorts out the divine ordinances [themis plural] by way of straight judgments [dikai]. And he, speaking without stumbling
and with his powers of understanding, can even put an end to a great quarrel [neikos].[2]
It is for this reason that there are kings, kings with good thinking [phrenes], namely, because they can easily turn right around the {wrong} things that are done to people who are wronged in the assembly [agora].
They can do it by persuasion, using soft words.
And when he {such a king} goes to a gathering [ag"n], the people turn to him as if he were a god,
with his gentle command of respect [aid"s], and he stands out among the assembled. Such is the sacred gift of the Muses for humankind. For it is because of the Muses and far-shooting Apollo that there are singers {poets} and players of the lyre [kitharis] on this earth.
And it is because of Zeus that there are kings. Blessed [olbios] is he whom the Muses love. And a sweet voice [aud#] flows from his mouth. !
There is one thing that is missing in this picture of an ideal king. And this thing that is missing can be described as a significant absence. The one thing that is missing is a sk#ptron ‘scepter’. Someone else already has the scepter. Hesiod himself receives it in Theogony 30. The Muses themselves give Hesiod a sk#ptron ‘scepter’ in Theogony 30.
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This gift given by the Muses is a symbol of the authorization inherent in the poetic form of the Theogony. From an anthropological point of view, a theogony is a speech-act of authorization. But Hesiod’s theogony authorizes not kings. Rather, it authorizes Hesiod himself as an overarching representative of authority. Hesiod is a master of truth, absolute truth: that is the essence of the word al#thea at Theogony 28.
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So, both in the Theogony and in the Works and Days, Hesiod figures as the absolute master of the speech act, as the master of the absolute truth. His status as cult hero is based on this mastery. Hesiod is programmed by the Theogony and by the Works and Days to become such a cult hero.
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So too in Works and Days, Hesiod is ultimately authorized - in this case, by virtue of making
kings obsolete.
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The kings take the side of Perses by making a crooked dik# ‘judgment’ in Works and Days
39/249/269.
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The narrative of Hesiod is the narrative of a crooked line becoming a straight line. By the time we reach verse 275 of the Hesiodic Works and Days, dik# has shifted from a relativized concept of ‘judgment’ to become an absolutized concept of ‘justice’.
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I return here to the metaphorical opposition of a straight line vs. a crooked line, dik# vs. hubris, and to the metaphorical opposition of a flourishing field vs. a sterile field. I should add that, in the technical language of agriculture, the two metaphors converge. For a gardener, for example, the Greek way to refer to the ‘pruning’ of a plant is to use words having to do with ‘straightening’ (ithunein, etc.).
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These metaphors are applicable in the master narrative of the Homeric Odyssey, which can be viewed as a story about a crooked line trying to become a straight one. I note that that the story of the Odyssey finishes in an orchard.
! 29. Similarly in the Hesiodic Works and Days, the embedded master narrative starts with the disequilibrium of injustice and moves towards the equilibrium of justice. !
In response to the injustice of the unrighteous Perses and the crooked kings, the righteous Hesiod engages in a complex speech act that can be divided into four main parts:
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First comes the story of Prometheus and Pandora (verses 42-105), which is all about the work ethic. The “work ethic” here is understood in terms of agriculture, which in turn is understood as a sacred activity that stays in rhythm with the natural life cycle.
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Second comes the story of the Five Generations of Humankind (verses 106-201). The symbolism of the number five in this story centers on the idea of a cycle.
Essentially, Generations 1 and 2 stand for the positive and negative images of the hero as pictured in hero cults; Generations 3 and 4 stand for the negative and positive images of the hero as pictured in poetry; Generation 5 is the composite, the here-and- now. Comparable symbols are the Five Peoples in Indic traditions (and the related idea of five directions - north / south / east / west / “here”); also the Five “Provinces” of Ireland. The metaphor of metals correlated with the sequence of Five Generations of Humankind - gold / silver / bronze / / iron - is symbolic of human degeneration. The decreasing of value in this sequence is made possible by leaving blank the fourth space in the sequence of spaces occupied by gold / silver / bronze / / iron. The same blank fourth space makes it possible to set up the dichotomies of better and worse, worse and better for Generations 1 and 2, 3 and 4, in that 4 could not be a “better” if there were an explicit metal occupying the blank fourth space which would have to be worse than Bronze, not better.
! Summary: Generations 1 and 2: positive and negative images of the hero in hero cults Generations 3 and 4: negative and positive images of the hero in poetry Generation 5 is the composite, the here-and-now. !
Third comes the ainos of the Hawk and the Nightingale (202-212); the “moral” of this fable is implied in what follows (275-278), where we hear that beasts, unlike
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humans, habitually devour each other. !
Fourth comes an apocalyptic vision of absolute dik#, culminating with a city of dik#
(225-237) juxtaposed with a city of hubris (238-247)
After these four micronarratives, the logic of the overall macronarrative takes hold. The man of dik# will get rich (280-281), while the man of hubris will lose it all (325-326). And, in fact, the unrighteous brother Perses loses it all (396).
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There are parallels in the poetry of Theognis, which we will examine in future dialogues. Here I give two examples, which should be considered “previews” of themes that link the first half of this course on heroes with the second half.
! Passage (C) Theognis 213-218 !
!!!!!!!!!!! My thumos! Keep turning and showing a new side of your versatile nature in each encounter with every philos.
214!!!!! Keep mixing your temperament to match that of each philos. !!!!!!!!!!! Have the temperament of a complex octopus, 216!!!!! who always looks like whatever rock he has just clung to. !!!!!!!!!!! Now be like this; then, at another time, become someone else in your coloring. 218!!!!! It is true to say that sophia is better than being atropos.
!
The last word in this passage, a-tropos is all-important. It means 'having no versatility, having no power to turn'; cf. Odysseus at Odyssey i 1 as polu-tropos ‘having much versatility, having many ways to turn’. Such themes are relevant to the description of Odysseus as polu-tropos in Odyssey i 1. This word, meaning ‘turning many different ways’, is applied to Odysseus because this hero can change his identity to match wherever he is. He can be different things to different people by literally turning himself into a different person. As we see from the verses of Theognis (213-218), the octopus as pictured as such a personality, since this animal can
change its color to match wherever it is. !
Like Odysseus, the figure of Theognis is extrinsically base but intrinsically noble, as we will see in a later dialogue when we examine further passages from Theognis (such as verses 649-652; also verses 1197-1202, where he complains of his loss of property). In the poetry of Theognis, he complains of failing to achieve justice in his own lifetime. Beyond his lifetime, however, the prospects are different. Once dead, the hero can return as a ghost, revenant (especially in
337-350). This theme is evident elsewhere as well in Theognis (1123-1124).
! Passage (D) Theognis 1123-1125: !
!!!!!!!!!!! Do not remind me of my misfortunes! The kinds of things that happened to Odysseus have happened to me too.
1124!!! Odysseus, who returned, emerging from the great palace of Hades, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and who then killed the suitors with a pitiless thumos. ! Appendix: The image of the hero in the city state.
!
!1. The key word here, related to the key word for the overall dialogue, is kosmos ‘cosmos; constitution; beauty of song’ (also ‘beauty of adornment’)
! Passage A) Theognis 667-682
!
!!!!!!!!!!! If I had the wealth, Simonides, that I used to have,
668!!!!! I would not be distressed as I am now at being together with the agathoi.
!!!!!!!!!!! But now my possessions have passed me by, even though I was aware, and I am
speechless
670!!!!! because of my lack of wealth, though I am aware of one single thing much better than many other things:
!!!!!!!!!!! that we are now being carried along, with white sails lowered, 672!!!!! beyond the pontos of Melos, through the dark night,
!!!!!!!!!!! and they refuse to bail, and the sea washes over 674!!!!! both sides of the ship. It is a difficult thing for anyone
!!!!!!!!!!! to be saved, what with the things they are doing. They have deposed the helmsman [kubern#t#s],
676!!!!! the noble [esthlos] one, who was standing guard, with expertise. !!!!!!!!!!! They seize wealth by force [bia], and order [kosmos] has been destroyed. 678!!!!! There is no longer an equitable division of possessions, aimed at the collective interest, !!!!!!!!!!! but the carriers of merchandise rule, and the kakoi are on top of the agathoi.
!!!!!!!!!!! Let these things be allusive utterances [ainigma pl.] hidden by me for the agathoi. !!! 682! !! One could be aware of even future misfortune, if one is sophos. !
!2. In the historical period, starting with ca. 600 B.C.E., we of course find no ultimate city of dik#, no ultimate city of hubris. Those two cities exist only in the apocalyptic vision of the Hesiodic Works and Days.
!3. But we do find heroes of justice, as venerated in individual city states.
!4. These heroes are viewed as lawgivers or quasi-lawgivers. They are heroes of dik# like Hesiod, but they are venerated on a local level.
!5. Each such hero, as a lawmaker, is viewed by each city as the author of the given city’s customary laws. In the myths about lawmakers, such authorship is correlated with some kind of fundamental crisis that afflicts the given city.
Here are three of the most celebrated lawmakers in local traditions: in Sparta: Lycurgus in Athens: Solon
in Megara: Theognis
!6. What makes these cities in historical times most different from these same cities in “heroic” times is the obsolescence of kings. Kings have been eliminated in most cities, with the notable exception of Sparta.
!7. Even in Sparta, the institution of kingship was really a “constitutional” monarchy; the real form of government in Sparta was an oligarchy. As for “unconstitutional” monarchies in the historical period, a prime example was Syracuse. Of course the idea that the kings of Syracuse were “unconstitutional” stems not from them but from their political enemies.
(Here I introduce briefly a point to which I will return in a later dialogue. The kings of Syracuse called themselves turannoi ‘tyrants’. This term was not negative, as far as a king like Hieron of Syracuse was concerned. There are other historical examples of one-man rule, however, where the one-man ruler preferred to be called neither turannos ‘tyrant’ nor even basileus ‘king’ One such example is Peisistratos of Athens. I will have more to say about him later.)
!8. To return to the main point I am making now ... In the city states of the historical period, there were basically three alternative forms of government: A) tyranny B) oligarchy C) democracy
!9. In the fifth century, prominent examples are A) Syracuse, B) Sparta, C) Athens.
As for the city of Megara in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, all three forms of government existed at one time or another.
The poetry attributed to Theognis relates to all three forms of government.
Megara was once a great and powerful city, as we see from the verses of Theognis (11-14)
implying that the Trojan Expedition was launched from there. Megara was the metropolis or ‘mother city’ of Byzantium.
The concept of the city is encoded in the verses of Theognis (15-18), containing the key formula ‘whatever is beautiful is philon’. This formula captures the essence of the meaning of kosmos.
This word kosmos can refer to A) the universe as a “cosmos,” that is, as a macrocosm; B) the constitution of a city as a microcosm of the universe; C) a song as an expression of both macrocosm and microcosm.
As we learn from Herodotus, the city state of Sparta had a constitution that was called the kosmos by the Spartans. I parallel idea is at work in the formula ‘I cannot please all’, as spoken by Theognis (verse 24), where the justness of the words of Theognis is equated with the justness of Zeus in regulating the universe (which includes the regulation of weather). Similarly Solon #2: ‘I cannot please all’.
In Theognis (39-52) we see a foil for the city: it is the sinister fertility of a city that is ‘pregnant’ with hubris, and giving birth to a turannos. Conventionally, hubris is a sign of sterility; so the image of fertility is sinister here, signaling the opposite of the just city.
! Focus Passage B)
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I fear, son of Polypaos, that hubris will destroy this polis 542!!!!! —the same hubris that destroyed the Centaurs, eaters of raw flesh. !!!!!!!!!!! I must render this dik#, Kyrnos, along the straight line of a carpenter’s rule and square, 544!!!!!! and I must give to both sides their equitable share, !!!!!!!!!!! with the help of seers, portents, and burning sacrifice, 546!!!!! so that I may not incur shameful blame for veering.
!
We see a more explicit expression of this theme elsewhere in Theognis (1081-1082).
Such themes recur in our later readings, especially in Aeschylus Agamemnon and Sophocles
Oedipus Tyrannus.
Such themes are relevant to the description of Odysseus as polutropos in Odyssey i 1. This word, meaning ‘turning many different ways’, is applied to Odysseus because this hero can change his identity to match wherever he is. He can be different things to different people by literally turning himself into a different person. As we see from the verses of Theognis (213-218), the octopus as pictured as such a personality, since this animal can change its color to match wherever it is.
Like Odysseus, the figure of Theognis is extrinsically base but intrinsically noble (as in verses 649-652). We may compare a passage from Theognis (1197-1202) where he complains of his loss of property.
In a related passage of Theognis (337-350), he complains of failing to achieve justice in his own lifetime. Beyond his lifetime, however, the prospects are different. Once dead, the hero can return as a ghost, revenant. This theme is evident elsewhere as well in Theognis (1123-1124).
This theme of the revenant applies to Odysseus at the beginning of Odyssey xx. This theme also helps account for the horrific deeds of the hero when he punishes the suitors and their collaborators. Such horror is typical of the hero as revenant.
Elsewhere in Theognis (1197-1202), we see further ramifications of the theme of the hero’s anger over the violation of his property in his absence.
In a passage from Theognis that I have already quoted (667-682), the metaphor of the ship of state is explicit. And the ‘helmsman’ or ‘pilot’ of this ship, its kubern#t#s, is an exponent of dik# who speaks by way of an ainigma (there is another important reference to the metaphor of
the kubern#t#s at verses 855-856). This theme of Theognis as pilot in the verses of Theognis is comparable to the theme of Odysseus as pilot in the Odyssey.
In Theognis (541-546), hubris is pictured as the destruction of a city (cf. also verses 1103-1104); in this connection, I draw attention to the hubris of Centaurs, eaters of raw meat;
comparable is the implicit hubris of Achilles in his own bestial moments. In this same passage from Theognis (541-546), note the emphasis placed on the ritual correctness of sacrifice, and on the role of the lawgiver as presiding over the sacrifice (cf. also verses 805-810). I stress the ritual as well as ethical correctness or ‘straightness’ of the dik# of the hero as lawmaker. Comparable to this figure of the hero is the Indic construct of Manu the Lawgiver, who is a paragon of ritual as well as ethical correctness.
I return to the theme of the hero’s anger over the violation of his property in his absence. In one passage of Theognis (1197-1202) this loss is blamed on a dangerous sea-voyage. Relevant is the s#ma ‘sign’ of the crane. The riddling message is this: “stop sailing and start ploughing.”
I close by drawing attention to a riddle in Theognis (1209-1210) about Aithon the exile. This name is related to the name chosen by Odysseus in one of his “Cretan lies.”
! ! ! !
[1] West Th. commentary p. 180 translates ‘provinces’ or ‘spheres of influence’, citing some very interesting illustrations of this sense.
[2] Compare the context of neikos at Works and Days 35. Dialogue 15 notes
!
This dialogue introduces a new phase of the course: it is about the reshaping of heroes in Greek tragedy.
The case in point here is Agamemnon in the epic Iliad and in the tragedy Agamemnon.
I emphasize the evolution of tragedy in the historical context of the feast of City Dionysia: for a compressed summary of the essential background, read Nagy on Athenian state theater, in the Sourcebook.
! 1. key word: at" veering, aberration, derangement; disaster; punishment for disaster.
Notice the cause-and-effect ambivalence: at" can be the result of damage or its cause; at" is a key concept in tragedy; compare hamartia, sometimes translated as ‘flaw’.
! 1a. The basic metaphor of at": being blown off course while sailing a ship 1b. The basic metaphor of hamartia: missing the mark while shooting at a target ! 1c. Some background... Aeschylus was a pioneer of tragedy.
An interesting detail about him: he fought in the battle of Marathon, in the year 490 BCE. One of his early works is the Persai, produced in 472; the khor"gos was Pericles (by hindsight, Pericles is the chief exponent of democracy in the Classical period of the 5th century).
Another work of Aeschylus was the Seven against Thebes, produced in the year 467. Most famous is his trilogy of the Oresteia (Agamemnon, Libation-Bearers, Eumenides), produced in the year 458.
Aeschylus visited the tyrant Hieron in Syracuse sometime after 472; he produced there the
Aitnaiai and a re-performance of the Persai.
1d. Tyrants in Athens (Peisistratidai) pioneered theater, democracy inherited it. 1e. key concept in tragedy: turannos as king or tyrant
1f. Aeschylus is a pioneer in introducing epic themes into theater, specifically tragedy, at the feast of the City Dionysia; case in point, Agamemnon
1g. In Iliad XIX, Agamemnon the king says that he is not guilty; he says that at" made him do it
(verses 87-89).! In the case of Achilles, Phoenix tells him in Iliad IX 512 that at" is the punishment for someone who rejects the emotion of pity.
1h. But the Iliad never passes judgment on Agamemnon - or on Achilles. 1i. Agamemnon is afflicted with at"; how about Achilles?
1j. chain of evil as background for the Oresteia trilogy:! Thyestes (father of Aegisthus) makes a corrupt sacrifice in order to win kingship; Thyestes seduces the wife of his brother Atreus (father of Agamemnon and Menelaos); Atreus has revenge by tricking Thyestes into eating his own children; Agamemnon kills his own daughter, and this killing is what starts the winds that will propel the fleet of the Achaeans to Troy; after Troy is destroyed by the Achaeans, Agamemnon forces the Trojan princess Cassandra to be his bedmate; meanwhile, “back at the ranch,” Clytemnestra accepts Aegisthus as her bedmate; Clytemnestra helps Aegisthus kill Agamemnon when he comes home; Orestes kills Clytemnestra and Aegisthus when he comes home from exile.
! ! A) Aeschylus, Agamemnon 720 ff:
Chorus: (strophe 2) Even so [hout!] a man reared in his house a lion’s whelp, robbed of its mother’s milk yet still desiring the breast. Gentle it was [720] in the prelude [= before the time of telos] of its life, kindly to children, and a delight to the old. Much did it get, held in arms like a nursling child, with its [725] bright eye turned toward his hand, and fawning under compulsion of its belly’s need. (antistrophe 2) But brought to full growth by time it demonstrated the nature it had from its parents. Unbidden, in return [kharis] for its fostering, [730] it prepared a feast with a slaughter of destruction [at"] inflicted on the flocks; so that the house was defiled with blood, and they that lived there could not control their anguish, and great was the carnage far and wide. [735] A priest of Derangement [at"], by order of a god, it was reared in the house.
! 1k. The word hout! ‘even so’ that introduces this story signals an ainos. Compare hout! at
Iliad IX 524 introducing the story of Meleager. !
1l. Compare Herodotus Book 6 (not in Sourcebook), where the mother of Pericles dreams that she gives birth to a lion cub.
! 1m. We see here the telos of viciousness. ! B) Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1ff:
Watchman:! I ask the gods for release from these ordeals [ponoi] of mine, throughout this long year’s watch, in which, lying upon the palace roof of the descendants of Atreus, upon my bent arm, like a dog, I have learned to know well the gathering of the night’s stars, those radiant potentates conspicuous in the firmament, [5] bringers of winter and summer to mankind. So now I am still watching for the signal [sumbolon] of the flame, the gleaming fire that is to bring news from Troy [10] and tidings of its capture. ... [20] But tonight may there come a happy release from these ordeals [ponoi] of mine! May the fire with its glad tidings flash through the gloom! Oh welcome, you blaze in the night, a light as if of day, you harbinger of the setting up [kata- stasis] of many khoroi in Argos in thanksgiving for this glad event! [25] Iou! Iou! To Agamemnon’s Queen I thus make a signal [s"main!] to rise from her bed, and as quickly as she can to utter in a proper way [euph"me!] in her palace halls a shout of ololu in welcome of this fire, if the city of Ilion [30] truly is taken, as this beacon unmistakably announces. And I will join the khoros in a prelude upon my own account. ... [35] For the rest I stay silent; a great ox stands upon my tongue - yet the house itself, could it but speak, might tell a plain enough tale; since, for my part, by my own choice I have words for those who know, and to those who do not know, I am without memory.
!
2a. The word euph"me!! means ‘utter in a proper way’ or ‘be silent’ for those who are initiated when it is applied in a sacred context; it means ‘be silent’ when it is applied in a non-sacred
context.
! 2b. Notice that tragedy stylizes itself here as khoros. ! Richard Douglas Abrams writes to GN on April 7, 2006: As regards the signal fires, the following from my notes on Paris may be of interest. !
“A rather fascinating communication system connected the Louvre's royal occupants, with distant cities. Claude Chappe's semaphore system allowed communication between the Louvre and Lille, 130 miles distant, in 2 minutes and Calais in 3. Bordeaux and Lyon were similarly communicated with.
The system was introduced in 1792 and was used until 1854. The tour of St. Sulpice was the first relay point. A statue of Chappe was erected on the corner of Rue du Bac and Boulevard St. Germain after the Morse system replaced the Telegraphe Aerien. The Nazis removed it in 1942 along with 200 other statues, which were melted down for the manufacture of shell casings.”!
!
Aeschylus, Agamemnon 40ff:
Chorus:! This is now the tenth year since Priam’s mighty adversary, King Menelaos, and with him King Agamemnon, the mighty pair of Atreus’ sons, joined in honor of throne and scepter by Zeus, [45] set forth from this land with an army of a thousand ships manned by Argives, a warrior force to champion their cause. Loud rang the battle-cry they uttered in their rage, just as eagles scream which, [50] in lonely grief for their brood, rowing with the oars of their wings, wheel high over their nests, because they have wasted the toil [ponos] of guarding their nurslings’ nest. [55] But some one of the powers supreme - Apollo perhaps or Pan, or Zeus - hears the shrill wailing scream of the clamorous birds, these sojourners in his realm, and against the transgressors sends an Erinys at last though late. [60] Even so Zeus, whose power is over all, Zeus lord of xenoi, sends the sons of Atreus against Alexander, so that for the sake of a woman with many a husband he may inflict many and wearying struggles - when the knee is pressed in the dust and [65] the spear is splintered in the onset - on Danaans and on Trojans alike. The case now stands where it stands - it moves to fulfillment [telos] at its destined end. Not by offerings burned in secret, not by secret libations, [70] not by tears, shall man soften the stubborn wrath of unsanctified sacrifices.
!
3a. An Erinys (pl. Erinyes) is a Fury, a superhuman personification of the vengeful anger stored up in those who died. The Erinyes represent a collectivized way of imagining the angry spirits of the dead. When someone dies angry, there is unfinished business to be processed after death.
! 3b. Who is the nestling? In the immediate context, the metaphor points to Helen.
!
Aeschylus, Agamemnon 105ff:
!Chorus: (strophe 1) I have the authority to proclaim the augury of power [kratos] given on their way to [105] princely men - since my age still breathes Persuasion upon me from the gods, the strength of song - how the twin-throned power [kratos] of the Achaeans, [110] the single-minded captains of Hellas’ youth, with avenging spear and arm against the Teucrian land, was sent off by the inspiriting omen appearing to the kings of the ships - kingly birds, [115] one black, one white of tail, near the palace, on the spear-hand, in a conspicuous place, devouring a hare with offspring unborn caught in the last effort to escape.
Sing the song of woe, the song of woe, but may the good prevail!
!
(antistrophe 1) Then the wise seer of the host, noticing how the two warlike sons of Atreus were
two in temper, recognized the devourers of the hare as the leaders of the army, and [125]
thus interpreted the portent and spoke: “In time those who here issue forth shall seize Priam’s town, and fate shall violently ravage before its towered walls all the public store of cattle. [130] Only may no jealous god-sent wrath glower upon the embattled host, the mighty bit forged for Troy’s mouth, and strike it before it reaches its goal! [135] For, in her pity, holy Artemis is angry at the winged hounds of her father, for they sacrifice a wretched timorous thing, together with her young, before she has brought them forth. An abomination to her is the eagles’ feast.”
!!!!!!!!!!! Sing the song of woe, the song of woe, but may the good prevail! !
(epode) [140] “Although, O Lovely One, you are so gracious to the tender whelps of fierce lions, and take delight in the suckling young of every wild creature that roams the field, promise that the issue be brought to pass in accordance with these signs [sumbola], portents [145] auspicious yet filled with ill. And I implore Paean, the healer, that she may not raise adverse gales with long delay to stay the Danaan fleet from putting forth, urging another sacrifice, one that knows no law, unsuited for feast, worker of family strife, dissolving wife’s reverence for husband. For there abides m"nis - [155] terrible, not to be suppressed, a treacherous guardian of the home, a wrath that never forgets and that exacts vengeance for a child.” Such utterances of doom, derived from auguries on the march, together with many blessings, did Kalkhas proclaim to the royal house; and in accord with this,
!!!!!!!!!!! Sing the song of woe, the song of woe, but may the good prevail! !
(strophe 2) [160] Zeus, whoever he may be - if by this name it pleases him to be invoked, by this name I call to him - as I weigh all things in the balance, I have nothing to compare [165] save “Zeus,” if in truth I must cast aside this vain burden from my heart. ...But whoever, heartily taking thought beforehand, sings a victory song for Zeus, [175] he shall gain wisdom altogether. Zeus, who sets mortals on the path to understanding, Zeus, who has established this as a fixed law: “Learning comes by suffering [pathos].” But even as the ordeal [ponos], bringing memory of pain, drips over the mind in sleep, [180] so equilibrium [being s!phr!n] comes to men, whether they want it or not. Violent, it seems to me, is the kharis of daimones enthroned upon their awesome seats.
!
4a When Agamemnon and Menelaos are pictured as birds who are robbed of the nestling in their nest, they are exponents of dik"; when Agamemnon and Menelaos are pictured as birds devouring a pregnant hare, then they are exponents of the opposite of dik".
And Artemis is angry. Angry at whom or at what? So far, she is angry at a timeless metaphor. Notice that she is sympathetic to the young of
predatory lions, not only to the young of animals that are preyed upon. 4b. Kalkhas the seer interprets the sign: Troy will be taken.
4c. Compare the sign of the snake eating 9 nestlings in Iliad II: again, we see here the themes of fertility/destruction.
4d. at" is double-edged:! destruction of Troy is both dik" and hubris. 4e. The m"nis is a cosmic sanction. 4f. A sumbolon ‘signal’ is a “piece of the puzzle.”
!
Aeschylus, Agamemnon 960ff:
Clytemnestra:! There is the sea - and who shall drain it dry? - producing stain of abundant purple, costly as silver [960] and ever fresh, with which to dye our clothes; and of these our house, through the gods, has ample store; it knows no poverty. Vestments enough I would have devoted to be trampled underfoot had it been so ordered in the seat of oracles [965] when I was devising a
ransom for your life [psukh"]. For if the root still lives, leaves come again to the house and spread their over-reaching shade against the scorching dog star Sirius; so, now that you have come to hearth and home, it signals [s"main!] that warmth has come in wintertime; [970] and again, when Zeus makes wine from the bitter grape, then immediately there is coolness in the house when its rightful lord occupies his halls.
!
5a. The purple fabric is not a “red carpet.” It is not meant to be stepped on. Just the opposite. To step on the purple fabric is to show one’s disregard of the bounties of nature. It is an arrogant act of wasting all the work of weaving and dyeing the fabric.
!
Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1179ff.:
Cassandra: And now, no more shall my prophecy peer forth from behind a veil like a new- wedded bride; [1180] but it will rush upon me clear as a fresh wind blowing against the sun’s uprising so as to dash against its rays, like a wave, a woe far mightier than mine. No more by riddles [ainigma pl.] will I put knowledge in your phrenes.
!
6a. Cassandra’s prophetic voice is equating the stoppage of winds with the stoppage of vision - of prophetic vision. As she prepares to die, the wind starts blowing again. The wind starts
returning just as the clarity of vision starts returning.
!
Agamemnon 1309ff.:
This house stinks of blood-dripping slaughter. ... [1310]! It is like a breath from a charnel house.
... Yet once more I would like to speak, but not a dirge. I pray to the sun, in the presence of his latest light, that my enemies may at the same time pay to my avengers a bloody penalty for 1325 slaughtering a slave, an easy prey. Alas for human fortune! When prosperous, a mere shadow can overturn it; if misfortune strikes, the dash of a wet sponge blots out the drawing. 1330 And this last I deem far more pitiable.
!
7a. If Cassandra is referring to her own misfortune, then the blotting out of Cassandra, as if she were a two-dimensional sketch rather than a three-dimensional person, is an act that will call for further vengeance.
! Dialogue 16 notes
!
1. Key word: tim", pl. timai ‘honor; honor paid to a otherworldly force by way of cult’. ! A) Aeschylus Eumenides 856-869
[Athena is speaking:] And you, if you have a seat of tim" [855] at the house of Erekhtheus, will be honored by a multitude of men and women and you will have more honor than you would ever have from other mortals. So do not set on my land whetstones that hone my peoples’ desire for bloodshed, harmful to young hearts, crazed with passions not of wine; and do not make my people like fighting-cocks so that they kill each other in bold, internecine war. Let there be war from abroad, and without stint, wars that bring a fierce desire for good kleos; but I say there will be no bird-fights in my abode [oikos]. I make it possible for you to choose to do good and to be treated [paskh!] well and with good tim", to share in this land that is most phil" to the gods.
!
1a. The Erinyes are being promised a tim" that is analogous to the tim" received by the dead in the
cult of the dead (“ancestor worship”) or in the cult of heroes. Those two kinds of cult are morphologically analogous. You can even say that the cult of heroes is a stylized form of the cult of the dead.
!
1b. In the passage we have just read, the analogy is made explicit with the mention of the hero- cult of Erekhtheus. Erekhtheus was the chief cult-hero of Athens, as we saw already when we read Iliad II 547.
!
Aeschylus Libation-Bearers 84-99
[Electra is speaking:] You handmaidens who set our house in order, [85] since you are here as my attendants in this rite of supplication, give me your counsel on this: what should I say while I pour these offerings of sorrow? How shall I find gracious words, how shall I entreat my father? Shall I say that I bring these offerings to a philos husband from a phil" wife—from my own mother? I do not have the assurance for that, nor do I know what I should say as I pour this mixed offering onto my father’s tomb. Or shall I speak the words that men are accustomed [nomos] to use: “To those who send these honors may he return benefits” - a gift, indeed, to match their evil?
Or, in silence and dishonor, even as my father perished, shall I pour them out for the earth to drink and then retrace my steps, like one who carries refuse away from a rite, hurling the vessel from me with averted eyes?
!
2a. Here Electra, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, is attempting to perform a ritual in the context of the cult of the dead. She is performing the ritual in order to give tim" to her father Agamemnon, but she is not sure about the rules of the ritual. She is morally correct but she has not yet learned to be ritually correct. She knows that her mother is not morally correct, because she had actually killed her husband, Electra’s father. So evidently Clytemnestra does not “mean it” when she sends her daughter Electra to perform rituals of the cult of the dead. ! 2b. By implication, what is happening is a stylized hero-cult in the making.
!
Aeschylus Libation-Bearers 118-130 [Electra] What should I say? Instruct my inexperience, prescribe the form. [Chorus] - Pray that some daim!n or some mortal may come to them— [Electra] As judge or as avenger, do you mean? [Chorus] - Say in plain speech, “One who will take life for life.” [Electra] And is it right for me to ask this of the gods? [Chorus] - How could it not be right to repay an enemy with ills?
[Electra] Supreme herald [k"rux] of the realm above and the realm below, O Hermes of the nether world, come to my aid, summon to me the daimones beneath the earth to hear my prayers, spirits that watch over my father’s house, and Earth herself, who gives birth to all things, and having nurtured them receives their increase in turn. And meanwhile, as I pour these lustral offerings to the dead, I invoke my father.
!
3a. Electra is starting to “get the hang of it,” as she prays to Hermes, mediator of relationships between the living and the dead. She performs the right kind of pouring of libations and the right kind of wording that goes with the libations.
! D) Aeschylus Libation Bearers 399-404
[Electra] Hear, O Earth, and you powers below with your tim"!
[Chorus] And it is the eternal law [nomos] that drops of blood spilled on the ground demand yet more blood. Murder cries out on the Fury [Erinys], which from those killed before brings one at" in the wake of another at".
!
4a. Again we see the Erinys as the personification of the anger stored up by someone who died angry. The anger is “unfinished business” that has to get finished somehow. But the finishing never seems to happen: it is a chain of evil: ‘one at" in the wake of another at"’.
!
Aeschylus Libation Bearers 575-578
[Orestes is speaking:] I will skewer him with my swift sword and lay him dead. The fury [Erinys] that has no fill of slaughter shall, for her third and crowning drink, drink unmixed blood!
!
5a. The killing of Aegisthus by Orestes is being imagined in advance. The shedding of the blood of Aegisthus is verbalized as a libation of blood, without any other liquid of libation mixed in. In the cult of the dead, the libation would be the a libation of the blood of a sacrificial animal. Here the blood is that of Aegisthus himself.
!
Aeschylus Eumenides 696-710
[Athena is speaking] I advise my citizens not to support and respect anarchy or tyrannical oppression, and not to drive all fear out of the city. For who among mortal men, if he fears nothing, behaves with dik"? [700] If you with dik" fear reverence, you will have a defense for your land and the salvation [s!t"ria] of your polis, such as none of mankind has, either among the Scythians or in Pelops’ realm. I establish this tribunal, and it will be untouched by desire for profit [kerdos], worthy of reverence, quick to anger, a guard of the land, awake on behalf of those who sleep. I have given you advice [par-ainesis], my citizens, at length about the future; but now you must rise, take a ballot, and make a decision [diagn!sis] about the case [dik"]
under the sacred obligation of your oath. The word has been spoken. !
6a. Athena, goddess of synthesis, has just made possible the first vote of the first jury in the first trial by jury. This moment inaugurates, in terms of the myth created by the drama, the beginning of the polis - which is imagined as the beginning of civilization as defined by the polis. Remember the formulation of Aristotle: a human being reaches his full potential as an organism of the polis.
!
Aeschylus Eumenides 794-807, 824-836
Be persuaded by me not to bear the decision with heavy grief. [795] For you are not defeated; the trial [dik"] resulted in an equal vote, which is in truth [al"theia] no blight on your tim", since clear testimony from Zeus was available, and the one who spoke the oracle gave evidence proving that Orestes should not suffer harm, despite his actions. Do not be angry, do not hurl your heavy rage on this land, do not make the land fruitless, letting loose your heart’s poison with its fierce sharpness that eats away the seeds. For I do promise you with all dik" that you shall have sanctuaries and sacred hollows in this land of dik", where you will sit on bright thrones at your hearths, worshipped with tim" by the citizens here.
...
You are not without tim", goddesses, so do not be moved by your excessive rage [825] to make
the land cursed for mortals. I also rely on Zeus - what need is there to mention that? - and I alone of the gods know the keys to the house where his thunderbolt is kept safe. But there is no need of it. So be obedient to me and do not make empty threats against the land; do not threaten that all things bearing fruit will not prosper. Calm the dark waves of your bitter passion, now that you are honored with reverence and abide [oike!] together with me; when you have the first-fruits of this great land as burnt sacrifices on behalf of children and of conjugal rites [telos pl.], you will approve [ep-aine!] my words forever.
!
7a. Athena, goddess of synthesis, has synthesized the anger of the Erinyes into the social force that makes it possible to achieve justice under the rule of law. The angry spirits of the Erinyes, analogous to the spirits of cult heroes when they are angry at the unjust, are being accommodated under the umbrella of dik" ‘justice’ as established in the polis. The imagery of fertility and prosperity, as conferred by the cult hero upon the just, is here applied to the social institution of trial by jury, which replaces the “tribal” and “pre-polis” system of the vendetta.
!
Aeschylus Eumenides 903-915
Sing hymns that are not about evil victory, but hymns of the land and the waters of the sea [pontos] [905] and the heavens; and sing that the gusts of wind will blow over this land in the sun, and that the fruit of the earth and offspring of the beasts of the field will flourish abundantly for my citizens and will not fail in the course of time, and that there will be the salvation [s!t"ria] of human seed. May you be ready to weed out those who do not worship well; for I, like a gardener, cherish the race [genos] of these dikaioi people, exempt as it is from sorrow [penthos]. These are your duties. I will not stand for it if this polis, which is victorious in well-known martial contests [ag!nes], is not honored among mortals.
!
8a. In the image of Athena the ‘gardener’, the synthesis that is Athens, the notionally perfect society, becomes complete. This imagery is derived directly from the symbolic world of hero cult. As the goddess of synthesis, she teaches Athenians a hymn to synthesis. It is really a hymn to herself.
!Dialogue 17: on Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus. The powers of the cult-hero in death. ! Key word: kol!nos is a prominent rock in a local landscape, ‘shining’ or ‘white’ from afar. By metonymy, it can mean the whole landscape, as in the case of the grove that is entered by the
wretch Oedipus. By further metonymy, Colonus / Kol!nos, a district of Athens, was named after this prominent landmark.
!
review Philostratus, On Heroes 9.1-3 Listen to such stories now, my guest [xenos]. Protesilaos does not lie buried at Troy but here on the Chersonesus. This large kol!nos here on the left no doubt contains him. The nymphs created these elms around the kol!nos, and they made, I suppose, the following decree concerning these trees: “Those branches turned toward Ilion will blossom early and will then immediately shed their leaves and perish before their
season (this was indeed the misfortune of Protesilaos), but a tree on the other side will live and prosper.” All the trees that were not set round the grave, such as these in the grove, have strength in all their branches and flourish according to their particular nature.
!
A1. Scenarios for immortalization (See Best of the Achaeans Ch.10@20-@50, especially @41
and @50n2):
white rock, jumping off from !!!!!!!! e.g. Ino
engulfment by earth!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! e.g. Amphiaraos
thunderbolt, being struck by!!!!!!!!!!! e.g. Herakles
thuella, being spirited away by!!!!!!! e.g. Phaethon, Hesiod Theogony 986-991; !!!! 5) nostos!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! e.g. Memnon to Land of Aithiopes
!
A2. For background on hero cults, it is useful to consider these references of Herodotus (the underlines indicate specially important cases):
Erekhtheus the Autochthon of Athens; Aiakidai ; Adrastos; Artachaees; Astrabakos; Herakles; Hesiod and Homer; Kleobis and Biton; Kyrnos; Lycurgus as Lawgiver; Miltiades; Onesilaos; Orestes; Philippos; Phylakos and Autonoos; Protesilaos; Solon as Lawgiver; Talthybios; Tellos; Timesios.
!
A3. Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus: !Kol"nos as arg"ta ‘shining’ at 670, hippot"n at 59, euhippou kh!ras 668-669; Thorikios petros 1595, where Oedipus sits down for the last time, to be purified; the entire temenos, e.g. 136, is sacred to
1) Poseidon, 55; 2) Demeter, 1600, eukhloou; 3) Erinues, 39ff; = Eumenides at 42, 86 A4. Areion is son of Poseidon and Demeter Erinus: Pausanias 8.25.5 A5. Cf. Skironites, begotten by Poseidon at Kolonos: see Sourcebook. A6. Cf. the association of Xanthos the god-horse with the Erinus at Iliad XIX 408ff. !
Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus 668ff [the speaker of the chorus is speaking to Oedipus, addressing him as a xenos]
Xenos, in this land of fine horses you have come to earth’s fairest home, the shining Colonus [Kol!nos] {670} Here the nightingale, a constant guest, trills her clear note under the trees of green glades, dwelling amid the wine-dark ivy {675} and the god’s inviolate foliage, rich in berries and fruit, unvisited by sun, unvexed by the wind of any storm. Here the reveller Dionysus ever walks the ground, {680} companion of the nymphs that nursed him. And, fed on heavenly dew, the narcissus blooms day by day with its fair clusters; it is the ancient garland of the Great Goddesses. {685} And the crocus blooms with a golden gleam. Nor do the ever- flowing springs diminish, from which the waters of Cephisus wander, and each day with pure {690} current it moves over the plains of the land’s swelling bosom, giving fertility. Nor have the khoroi of the Muses shunned this place, nor Aphrodite of the golden rein. And there is a thing such as I have not heard of on Asian ground, {695} nor as ever yet born in the great Dorian isle of Pelops: a plant unconquered, self-renewing, causing terror to destroying enemies. {700} It greatly flourishes in this land—the gray-leafed olive, nurturer of children. Youth can not harm it by the ravages of his hand, nor can any who lives with old age. For the sleepless eye {705} of Zeus Morios [guard of the sacred olive trees], watches over it, and gray-eyed Athena. And I have another praise [ainos] to tell for this polis our mother, {710} the gift of a great daim!n, a glory most great: the might of horses, the might of colts, and the might of the sea. For you, son of Cronus, lord Poseidon, have set her on the throne of this pride, {715} by establishing first in our roads the bit that cures the rage of horses. And the shapely oar, well-fitted for the sea, in flying past the land leaps to follow the hundred-footed Nereids.
! B1. The “Great Goddesses” are the Erinyes. B2. Note their garlands. !
Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus 1638ff: Immediately Oedipus felt for his children with blind hands, and said: {1640} “Children, you must bear up nobly in your phrenes and depart from this
place; do not consider it right [dikaion] to look upon what is not themis, or to hear such speech as you may not hear. Go in haste; let only Theseus be entitled to remain to learn of those things that are done [dra!].” 1645 So he spoke, and every one of us listened; with streaming tears and mourning we followed the maidens away. But when we had gone off, very soon we looked back and saw that Oedipus was nowhere any more and our lord [= Theseus] was alone, {1650} holding his hand in front of his face to screen his eyes, as if he had seen some terrifying sight, one that no one could endure to behold. And then after a short time, {1655} we saw him adore together the earth and Olympus of the gods in the same prayer. But by what fate Oedipus perished, no man can tell, except Theseus alone. It was no fiery thunderbolt of the god that removed him, {1660} nor any rising of a gust of wind [thuella] from the pontos; it was either an escort from the gods, or else the dark world of the dead gaped open, with good intention [noos], to receive him. The man passed away without lamentation or sickness or
suffering, and beyond all mortal men he was wondrous.
!
C1. We see here references to five different ways of immortalization. Two of the five ways are only implicit. One is the nostos - which applies not so much to Oedipus as to Sophocles himself. The other is the white rock, which is really the place itself. The idea of jumping off the white rock that is Kol"nos is only a notional jump - diving into the notional depths below.!!
!
C2. The word dra! means ‘do’ or ‘perform ritual, sacrifice’. Corresponding to dra!, which is “active,” there is paskh! ‘have things done to one, suffer’. A derivative of dra! is the noun drama. A derivative of paskh! is the noun pathos ‘suffering, experience, passion; emotion’. The “passion” that is suffered by a hero in myth corresponds to the “emotion” that is experienced by an everyday person in ritual [drama].
!
C3. About not seeing and not saying, not visualizing and not verbalizing: compare mu! ‘I have my mouth closed’ or ‘I have my eyes closed’; must"s ‘he who is initiated’; must"rion ‘secret of initiation’.
!
C4. A thunderbolt signals that it is time to go:! OC 1460f, 1606f, cf. 1471 C5. The way it happened, cannot be seen or said:! OC 1641ff, cf. 1761ff. C6. Only Theseus is to witness the dr!mena, 1644; cf. Herodotus 5.67.5 C7. Compare mu! ‘I have my mouth closed’ or ‘I have my eyes closed’
C8. must"s ‘he who is initiated’; must"rion ‘secret of initiation’. See Pindar’ s Homer Ch.1 p. 31 (“In complex societies...”) up to p. 33 (“...in the context of ritual and myth.”).
C9. mysterium tremendum OC 1623ff C10. secret place OC 1545f
C11. On the expression ‘the dark world of the dead gaped open, with good intention [noos], to receive him’: compare the name Eumenides = those with good intention.
!
Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus 1586ff: In that you touch upon what is indeed worthy of wonder. How he departed from here, you yourself must know since you were here: with no one of his philoi as guide, but rather with himself leading the way for us all. {1590} When he
had come to the Descending Way, which is bound by steps of bronze to earth’s deep roots, he paused at one of the many branching paths near the hollow crater in the rock, where the faithful covenant of Theseus and Peirithoos has its memorial. {1595} He stood midway between that basin and the Thorikios Rock, and between the hollow pear-tree and the marble tomb; then he sat
down and loosened his filthy clothing. And then he called his daughters, and bade them bring water from some flowing source, so that he might wash and make a drink-offering. {1600} They went to the hill which was in view, the hill of Demeter of the tender plants and in a short time brought what their father had commanded. Then they washed him and dressed him, as is the custom [nomos]. But when all his desire was fulfilled, {1605} and nothing that he required was still undone, then Zeus of the Underworld sent forth his thunder, and the maidens shuddered as they heard. They fell weeping at their father’s knees, and did not cease from beating their breast, and from wailing loud. ...{1620} In this way, clinging close to one another, the father and his daughters sobbed and wept. But when they came to the end [telos] of their crying, and the sound of wailing went forth no more, there was a silence; suddenly a voice called aloud to him, so that everyone {1625} felt the hair on their heads stand up from the sudden terror. The god called him again and again: “Oedipus! You, over there, Oedipus! Why do you delay our going? Too long you have been lingering.” And when he perceived that he was called by the god, {1630} he asked that lord Theseus should come to him; and when he did, he said: “Philos, give me the sworn pledge of your right hand for my children; and you, my daughters, for him. Give your solemn word [kat-aine!] never to betray them by your own free will, but always to bring to a telos whatever is in your phrenes for their benefit.”
!
D1. About the ‘Descending Way’... At this sacred place in Colonus, Theseus and Peirithoos journeyed down to the Underworld. Both were immobilized by sitting on the ‘Throne of Lethe’. Herakles eventually rescued Theseus but, in some versions, Peirithoos was stuck there permanently.
D2. About ‘near the hollow crater’... The Greek word krat"r means ‘mixing-bowl’ and, by extension, ‘crater’. Oedipus is ‘poured out’ into the crater. He is an auto-libation.
D3. Thorikios means ‘Leaping Rock’; it is apparently derived from thoros ‘leaping; semen’.
D4. About ‘Demeter of the tender plants’... The epithet eukhloos ‘of the tender plants’ is related to khlo" ‘growth of tender plants’, which is related to the epithet of Demeter, Khlo" = Chloe. This epithet is also a name, as in the ancient erotic novel Daphnis and Chloe.
D5. About ‘then they washed him’... This procedure is essential for the cult of the dead. Wait till you see what happens to Socrates (when we read Plato).
!
Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus 576ff: Oedipus says, essentially, that he will donate his corpse! (the Thebans only want it on the edges of their community, 399-400).
!
Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus 621-623 (Oedipus will punish the unjust = the Thebans): And then my sleeping and long-hidden corpse,
cold in the earth, will drink hot blood of theirs, if Zeus endures if his son’s word is true.
!
F1. Cf. Theognis lines 337ff
F2. Consider those heroes in Herodotus whose maleficence toward the enemy is emphasized over their beneficence toward their own.
! G) Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus 1656-1662 (adapted from the version of Robert Fitzgerald) But the way in which he [Oedipus] died no one of the mortals could reveal except Theseus. No fire-bearing thunderbolt of the god finished him off. Nor did any gust from the sea [pontia thuella], set in motion at that time. But it was either a messenger from the gods, or else the
underworld opened in love the unlit door of earth. ! H)! Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus
1679-1682 (adapted from the version of Robert Fitzgerald) It was not war nor the deep sea that overtook him, but something invisible and strange caught him up - or down - into a space unseen !
H1. Sophocles born at Colonus, described at OC 668ff (= focus passage B) H2. This tribute to Sophocles’ “home town” is, in a way, his own nostos!!! ! Session 18: on Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannos
!
Key word: miasma ‘pollution, miasma’.
!
A) Plato Republic 9.571c-d [Socrates talks about epithumiai [desires] and h"donai [pleasures] in sleep . . .]:
“When one part of the psukh" sleeps - I mean the part that is logistikon [rational] and h"meron [domesticated] and arkhon [in control] of the other part, which is th"ri!des [beast-like] and agrion [savage] - then this other part, which is glutted with sita [grain] or meth" [intoxicants], skirt#i [prances, bolts] and seeks to push aside sleep and to glut its own "thos [pl.]. When it is like this, it dares to do everything, released as it is from all sense of aiskhun" [shame] and phron"sis [thinking]. It does not at all shrink back from attempting to lay hands on his mother or on any other human or god or beast, and to commit whatever polluting [= miasma-making] murder, or to eat whatever food. In a word, there is nothing in the realm of noos [in Plato’s time pronounced nous] and shame that it will not do.”
!
A1. miaiphonein = ‘to commit polluting [= miasma-making] murder’: the wording suggests the taboo topic of father-killing.
! A2. ‘to eat whatever food’ . . . the wording suggests the taboo topic of cannibalism. !
A3. Note the contrast in Republic 9.571d-e with the other part of psukh" in sleep, where the logistikon is what is awake and not the opposite. So we see here a contrast between two different kinds of subconscious that can be “awake” while we sleep.
The basic idea: inside the unconscious of every citizen is a sleeping tyrant. ! B) Sophocles
Oedipus Tyrannos 91-109
{Creon} If you want to hear in the presence of these people, I am ready to speak: otherwise we can go inside.
{Oedipus} Speak to all. The sorrow [penthos] that I bear for these is more than for my own life [psukh"].
{Creon}{95} I will tell you what I heard form the god. Phoebus our lord clearly bids us to drive out the defilement [miasma], which he said was harbored in this land, and not to nourish it so that it cannot be healed.
{Oedipus} With what sort of purification? What is the manner of the misfortune? {Creon}{100} By banishing the man, or by paying back bloodshed with bloodshed, since it is
this blood which brings the tempest on our polis. {Oedipus} And who is the man whose fate he thus reveals?
{Creon} Laios, my lord, was leader of our land before you directed [ = euthun! ‘direct’ literally means ‘make straight’] this polis.
{Oedipus}{105} I know it well - by hearsay, for I never saw him.
{Creon} He was slain, and the god now bids us to take vengeance on his murderers, whoever they are.
{Oedipus} Where on earth are they? Where shall the dim track of this old guilt [aitia] be found?
! B1. Antidote to miasma is katharsis = catharsis = ‘purification’ ! C) Aristotle Poetics
1449b24-28 [his definition of catharsis = katharsis]:
“Tragedy is the mimesis of a serious and complete action that has magnitude, with seasoned speech . . . . The mimesis is done by those who perform [dra!] instead of through narrative, bringing about through pity and terror the purification [katharsis] of such emotions [pathos pl.].”
! C1. The noun of the verb dra! is drama. ! C2.! pathos means emotion for the person who attends the Theater, but it means larger-than-life
suffering for the larger-than-life hero ! D) Aristotle Rhetoric 1371a31-b10 [on mim"sis = re- enactment; imitation; representation]:
Both understanding and wonder are, for the most part, pleasant. In wonder there is the desire to understand . . . . Since both understanding and wonder are pleasant, it is necessary that a work of mim"sis also be pleasant, like painting, sculpture, poetry, and everything that is well represented, even if the thing represented is not in itself pleasant. For it is not there that the pleasure lies, but in the inference “This is that.” What happens as a result is that we understand something.
!
D1. This drama is all about hamartia. Sometimes translated as “flaw” - but we must think of the “flaw” in terms of plot, not only character.
! E) Aeschylus Libation Bearers 514-522 [Orestes is speaking about his mother]:
“But it is not off the track to inquire {515} from what motive she came to send her libations, seeking too late to make amends [tim"] for an irremediable experience [pathos]. They would be a sorry return [kharis] to send to the dead who have no phrenes: I cannot guess what they mean. The gifts are too paltry for her offense [hamartia]. {520} For though a man may pour out all he has in atonement for one deed of blood, it is wasted effort. So the saying goes. If indeed you know, tell me: I wish to learn.”
! E1. Compare also the use of the word at".
E2. Speaking of things going wrong . . . Here is where I show the clip from The Night of the Iguana.
Note that the character comes apart while his discourse comes apart. “A City without Walls.” This clip is taken from The Night of the Iguana, a film based on a play by Tennessee Williams. Richard Burton plays the rôle of a tormented Episcopalian priest. The scene you are about to see takes place at the very beginning of the film, before the title or the names of the actors are indicated. Shannon, the priest, is about to deliver his Sunday sermon. He chooses as his topic a quotation from the Book of Proverbs, chapter 25, verse 28 (King James Version):
“He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down, and without walls.” Before he gets to announce his quotation, Shannon gets ready for his sermon by praying. He turns away from his listeners and toward the front of the church, toward God, as it were. He looks straight into the camera as he prays. You might say that we get a “God’s-eye-view” of his prayer. The prayer starts:
“May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be always pleasing to Thee, my Lord and my Redeemer!”
Shannon’s gaze toward his God seems unswerving - or is it? Shannon turns back toward the congregation and begins his sermon.
His prayer has prepared him (has it not?) for meshing what he thinks on the inside (“meditations”) and what he feels on the inside (“of my heart”) with what he speaks on the outside. He is ready to start with the quotation from Proverbs. So he goes ahead and says it:
“He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down, and without walls.” So far, so good . . . Now he must build on his “thesis sentence,” as we like to call it in expository writing. He launches into the rest of the paragraph . . .
“And as we think about these words, we may each ask ourselves: how often do we stray from the straight and narrow?”
That leads him to think about human weakness and frailty. How weak is man! He tries to loop back to the point where he started, “how often do we stray from the straight and narrow?” Suddenly, you can tell that his eye has become unsteady: you can tell that his formerly straight gaze has become shaken, has begun to stray, to swerve. His unsteady eye is catching the hostile looks that are coming at him from the congregation.
The unsteadiness of the eye translates into an unsteadiness of speech. His speech now becomes shaken, has begun to stray, to swerve.
He tries to repeat “how often do we stray from the straight and narrow?” But he can't. He gets stuck between “how often do we” and “stray.” He tries again, and he gets stuck again. “How often do we, how often do we, . . .”
Where he should have continued with the following word, “stray,” he loses it, and he starts to bellow:
“All right!” There follows a stream of enraged bellowing. His speech breaks down. He breaks down on the outside. He breaks down on the inside.
He has lost his rule, his control, over his own spirit. Shannon, the leader of his congregation, breaks down - and the congregation breaks up. The city that is broken down, without walls . . . That’s it. No more sermon. He is now raving mad. His voice gets louder and louder as his syntax gets more and more disjointed. The congregation breaks out in murmurs. The congregation breaks up. It starts to scatter. Like some demon, he pursues them as they spill out of the church, into the rain.
! F) Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannos 1283-1285 [messenger is speaking]:
“But now on this day there is lamentation, at", death, disgrace; of all the evils {1285} that can be named, not one is missing.”
!
F1. Freud’s early notion of Nachträglichkeit (double meaning in German: ‘supplement’ or ‘resentment’, ‘grudge’ - compare also the English expression “unfinished business”), where some unformulated early experience in life becomes also a fulfillment, via “repetition,” at some later stage in life. This notion helps us contemplate the emotional “unfinished business” that each member of the audience of tragedy brings into State Theater.!
% G) Aristotle Politics 1342a8-15 [on catharsis = katharsis]:
We see from sacred songs that whenever those who are in a state of enthousiasmos [= being entheos ‘possessed’ = ‘having a theos (god) inside] use songs that stir up the psukh", they are put into a condition as if they had undergone a medical treatment and katharsis. People liable to pity or terror must experience the same thing - and other generally emotional [path"tikoi] people, as much as is appropriate for each. All of them attain some katharsis and are pleasantly relieved.
! G1. Earlier, we saw that mim"sis gives pleasure. Now we see the concept of pleasant relief. G2. Sophocles OT 393: reference to the ainigma of the Sphinx; message of ainigma:! hobbling tyrant
G3. On the meaning of Oidipous, cf. Hesiod WD! 497 (starving man), 524 (the “boneless one”), 533! (the 3-legged one)
G4. OT 221: sumbolon, here and elsewhere:! the ‘coming together’ of paths of interpretation %
H) Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannos 14-57
Oedipus, ruler of my land, you see the age of those who sit {15} on your altars: some, nestlings still too tender for flight; others, bowed with age, priests of Zeus like me; and some, these here, the chosen youth. The rest of the folk sit {20} with wreathed branches in the agora, and before the twin temples of Athena, and where Ismenus gives answer by fire. The polis, as you yourself see, is now sorely buffeted, and can no longer lift her head from beneath the angry waves of death. {25} A blight has befallen the fruitful blossoms of the land, the herds among the pastures, the barren pangs of women. And the flaming god, a most hateful plague, has swooped upon us, and ravages the polis; he lays waste to the house of Cadmus, but enriches Hades with {30} groans and tears. It is not because we rank you with the gods that I and these children are suppliants at your hearth, but because we deem you the first among men in life’s common chances and in dealings with the daimones. {35} Coming to the city of the Cadmeans, you freed us of the tax that we rendered to the hard songstress [= by solving the riddle of the Sphinx] and when you knew no more than anyone else, nor had you been taught, but rather by the assistance of a god, as the story goes, you uplifted our life. {40} Now, Oedipus, most powerful, we, your suppliants, beseech you to find some succor for us, whether you hear it from some divine omen, or learn of it from some mortal. For I see that the outcome of the counsels of experienced men
{45} most often have effect. Come, best [aristos] among mortals, resurrect our polis! Come, take care, since now this land gives you kleos as its savior [s!t"r] for your former zeal. Let it not be our memory of your reign that {50} we were first set up straight and then cast down; resurrect this polis so that it falls no more! With good omen you provided us that past happiness; show yourself the same now too, since if you are to rule this land just as you do now, {55} it is better to be lord of men than of a wasteland. Neither tower nor ship is anything, if it is empty and no men dwell within.
!
H1. About the underlined word ‘resurrect’... The verb anortho! means either ‘to cause to stand up straight, to make erect’ or, mystically, ‘resurrect’.
H2. About the underlined wording ‘set up straight’... The idiom is es orthon ‘into a straight position’
H3. About the second occurrence of the underline word ‘resurrect’: note that, again, the verb is
anortho!.
H4. At line 16 . . . your altars; H5. At lines 24f . . . ship of state; H6. At lines 25f, phthi-, vegetal and human; contrast fertility and kingship in Od. xix 109-114;
H7. At line 873, hubris “breeds” [phuteuei] the turannos (to be more precise: the word means ‘vegetally generates’; cf. Theognis line 39 and line 1081);
H8. At line 46 best of men, an-ortho! [cause to stand up straight or resurrect] the polis!!!! again at line 51;
H9. At line 48, Oedipus as savior [s!t"r]; lines 149f, Apollo as savior [s!t"r]; H10. At lines 376-377, god-hero antagonism, via Teiresias as representative of Apollo; cf. line
439, the ainigma of Teiresias; cf. line 438: this day will phuteuein you; H11. At line 439 =
ainigma; cf. 371, the “blindness” passage % I) Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannos 58-77
My piteous children, I know quite well the desires with which you have come; I know well that you {60} all are sick, and though you are sick I know well that there is not one of you who is as sick as I. Your pain comes on each of you for himself alone, and for no other, but my psukh" groans at once for the polis, for myself, and for you. {65} You are not awakening me from sleep; no, be sure that I have wept many tears, gone many ways in the wanderings of my thought. I have
made use of the only remedy which I could find after close consideration: I sent my wife’s brother {70} Creon, Menoikeus’ son, to Apollo’s Pythian residence in order to learn what we might do or say to protect this polis. And now, when the lapse of days is reckoned, I’m troubled about what he is doing, for he tarries oddly {75} beyond the fitting length of time. But when he arrives, I will be kakos if do not perform all that the god reveals.
!
I1. Same idea at 93-94;
I2. At line 68, iasis ‘cure’, send Kreon to Oracle; cf. the meaning of pharamakos ‘scapegoat’; I3. At line 97, miasma = defilement = pollution;
I4. At line 132, eg! phan! = I will cast light; cf. the meaning of <<Phoibos>> Apollo; I5. At line 895, why should I be part of the khoros?
I6. At line 1083, I am the product of the seasons, the months are my brothers; cf. 438: this day will phuteuein you;
I7. At line 439 = ainigma;
I8. At lines 1403ff, scrambled identity: (1) the wife is the mother, (2) the sons are the brothers who will one day kill each other, (3) the prime enemy is the father;
!
Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannos 216-226
You pray. And in answer to your prayer, if you will give a loyal reception to my words [epos pl.], and minister to your own disease, you may hope to find succor and relief from woes. These words I will speak publicly, as one who was a stranger [xenos] to the report, {220} a stranger to the deed. I would not go far on the trail if I were tracing it alone, without a clue [sumbolon]. But as it is - since it was only after the event that I was counted a Theban among Thebans - to you, Cadmeans all, I do thus proclaim: Whoever of you knows by whom Laios son of Labdakos
{225} was slain, I bid him to indicate [s"main!] all to me.
!
Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannos 1266-1285
And when the hapless woman was stretched out on the ground, then the sequel was horrible to see: for he tore from her raiment the golden brooches with which she had decorated herself,
{1270} and lifting them struck his own eyeballs, uttering words like these: “No longer will you behold such evils as I was suffering [paskh!] and performing! Long enough have you looked on those whom you ought never to have seen, having failed in the knowledge of those whom I yearned to know - henceforth you shall be dark!” {1275} With such a dire refrain, he struck his eyes with raised hand not once but often. At each blow the bloody eye-balls bedewed his beard, and did not send forth sluggish drops of gore, but all at once a dark shower of blood came down like hail. {1280} These mingled evils have broken forth upon the heads of them both, not of one alone, on husband and wife together. Their old prosperity [olbos] was once true prosperity, and justly [dikaia] so. But now on this day there is lamentation, at", death, disgrace; of all the evils
{1285} that can be named, not one is missing.
!
Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannos 1327-1335 {Chorus} Man of dread deeds, how could you extinguish [marain!] your vision in this way?
Who among the daimones urged you on?
{Oedipus} It was Apollo, philoi, Apollo {1330} who gave telos to these evil, evil sufferings [pathos pl.] of mine. But the hand that struck my eyes was none other than my own, wretched that I am! {1335} Why was I to see, when sight showed me nothing sweet?
! L1. At line 1328, extinguish his eyes = make the light of his eyes go out by itself.
L2. Compare verse 132, eg! phan! = I will cast light; cf. the meaning of <<Phoibos>> (Phoebus) Apollo.
! ! ! Notes for Session 19 !
The hero as mirror of men’s and women’s experiences. !
Key word: telos ‘coming full circle, rounding out, fulfillment, completion, ending, end; successfully passing through an ordeal; ritual, rite’. To be linked with another key word, athlos (aethlos) ‘contest, ordeal; competition’; derivative word: athl"t"s ‘athlete’; related concepts are ag! n ‘contest, ordeal; competition’ and ponos ‘pain’ [sharp, shooting pain] and kamatos ‘pain’ [dull, aching pain].
LINK to Pindar’ s Homer Ch.5 p. 136 (“Having contemplated...) up to p. 140n28. % A1. Focus passage “A” illustrates the ritual mentality of the hunter: !
Euripides Hippolytus 73-87: For you, goddess, I bring this woven garland [stephanos] culled from a virgin meadow, where it is not fit for the shepherd to pasture his flocks, nor has iron yet come there, but unspoiled still in springtime the bees fly through this meadow. Aid!s tends it with pure river water, and those who by their nature always use moderation [s!phrosun"] in all things, instead of having learned it, they can pick flowers, but it is not lawful [themis] for the kakos. Phil" mistress, for your golden locks accept this headband from my reverent hand. I alone among mortals have this privilege: I keep company with you and make conversation, hearing your voice although not seeing your face. So let it be that I reach the telos of my life just as I began it.
! A2. Hippolytus is making a garland for Artemis. ! A3. Experiences that are ingredients for coming of age, initiation, rite of passage: !
men’s experiences:! song and dance, marriage; athletics; hunting, war women’s experiences:! song and dance, marriage; athletics [mostly running]; menstruation,
childbirth !
A5. The underlinings indicate asymmetry from a modern point of view but symmetry from an ancient point of view.
! B1. A perfect illustration is a passage we have seen before: it is the narrative about the athletes Kleobis and Biton, and how they reached the perfect telos... !
Herodotus 1.31.1-5: When Solon had provoked him by saying that the affairs of Tellos were so olbios, Croesus asked who he thought was next, fully expecting to win second prize. Solon answered, “Kleobis and Biton.” They were Argive by birth, they had enough to live on, and on top of this they had great bodily strength. Both were prize-winning athletes [athlophoroi], and this story is told about them: There was a festival of Hera in Argos, and their mother absolutely had to be conveyed to the sacred precinct by a team of oxen. But their oxen had not come back from the fields in time [h!ra], so the youths took the yoke upon their own shoulders under constraint of time [h!ra]. They drew the wagon, with their mother riding atop it, traveling 45 stadia until they arrived at the sacred precinct. When they had done this and had been seen by the entire gathering, their lives came to the best fulfillment [ariston telos], and in their case the god made clear that for human beings it is better to be dead than to live. The Argive men stood around the youths and congratulated them on their strength; the Argive women congratulated their mother for having such children. She was overjoyed at the feat and at the praise, so she stood before the image and prayed that the goddess might grant the best thing for humanity to her children Kleobis and Biton, who had given great tim" to the goddess. After this prayer they sacrificed and feasted. The youths then lay down in the sacred precinct and went to sleep, and they never got up again; they remained in the pose that they had assumed in reaching their telos. The Argives made and dedicated at
Delphi statues of them, since they were aristoi.!
! B2. To repeat, is all a matter of ritual, ordeal = athlos or ag!n (this will be the key word for the dialogue on Euripides’ Bacchae) or ponos or kamatos !
Now, back to Euripides Hippolytus. Ritual background: there are two crucial rites of passage to consider: from childhood to adolescence, from adolescence to adulthood
In the case of adulthood:! here is a stage of sexuality, reproduction In the case of pre-adulthood: there are still restrictions on these activities.
There are two goddesses mainly involved:! Artemis / Aphrodite. Both have the title Dios thugat"r
‘daughter of Zeus’.
There is a complementarity of these goddesses on the level of ritual, but a rivalry on the level of myth.
You can see the complementary in rituals of hunting: Artemis must be present and Aphrodite must be absent (in other words, hunting and sex don’t mix).
For ordinary people in the world of ritual: there is a successful transition from Artemis to Aphrodite
For a hero like Hippolytus in the world of myth, however, there is no such successful transition. Euripides is interested in aetiology (that is, where myth “explains” ritual).
Note the beginning of the Hippolytus. At line 32, there is a reference to a sacred space in Athens where Aphrodit" epi hippolut!i ‘Our Lady of Horses Unbridled’ is worshipped; this name contains the imagery of chariot-driving.
All this is relevant to the myth of Hippolytus. The basic narrative is this... Theseus has two fathers, Poseidon (god) and Aigeus (man); he has a liaison with an Amazon called Antiope alias Hippolyte; their bastard son is Hippolytus.
Amazons are women in myth who do what men do in ritual: they live out in myth what men experience in the ritualized activities of war, athletics, hunting, song and dance. So too does Hippolytus live out these same experiences in myth.
Meanwhile, Theseus marries Phaidra (‘Moonglow’) The unrequited love of Phaidra for Hippolytus leads to the death of both
It is the stuff of a love song, or we might call it ballad. But a love song is also a song of initiation, especially female initiation (this was demonstrated by Vladimir Propp in his research on female initiation-rituals surviving in Russia).
In the city of Trozen, love songs were sung and danced by girls in a coming-of-age ritual. The next passage explicitly describes this ritual. This description takes the form of a prophecy made by the goddess Artemis in response to the death of Hippolytus. Note the key words (a) tim" (b) ai!n (c) penthos. Artemis says to the dying Hippolytus:
!
Euripides Hippolytus 1423-1430: To you, poor sufferer, in recompense for these miseries, I will grant the greatest timai in the polis of Trozen: unwed girls before marriage will cut off their hair for you, and through the length of time [ai!n] you will harvest the sorrows [penthos pl.] of their tears. It will be the care of the virgin girls to make songs about you, and so Phaedra’s love for you will not fade away unremembered and remain a secret.
!
LINK... On tim" as ‘honor’ conferred by worship in cult, see Best of the Achaeans Ch.7@1.
!
The young girls are dying to their happy moments of plaiting their hair with garlands when they cut of their hair. This ritual death is parallel to the mythical death of Hippolytus.
! D1. The ritual song of initiation comes to life in the first choral song (notice how ballad-like this song seems to us!), featuring the key word harmonia... !
Euripides Hippolytus 121-175: There is a rock which is said to drip water from the stream of Okeanos, sending forth a fixed stream for dipping water-jars. It was there that my friend [phil"] was washing purple robes in the river’s stream and spreading them upon the back of a warm sunny rock. From there the rumor first came to me of my mistress, how wasting away on her sickbed she keeps herself within the house, and a thin veil shadows her blond head. This is the third day, I hear, that her lips have not touched food, and she keeps her body pure from the grain of Demeter, eager to hide her sorrow [penthos] and to put into the cheerless harbor of death. Dear Phaedra, are you possessed either by Pan or Hekate, or do you wander because of the devoted Korybantes or the mountain mother? Have you committed an error offending Artemis of Diktynna, with her wild beasts, and are wasting for neglect of her unoffered sacrifices? For she ranges through the sea, as well as over the islands of the sea, upon the watery eddies of the brine. Or your husband, the well-born ruler of the sons of Erekhtheus, does someone in the palace cherish him in a union hidden from your bed? Or has someone sailing from Crete reached the harbor most welcome to sailors, bringing a report to the queen, and in distress over her sufferings [pathos pl.] her psukh" is tied down to her bed? In women’s difficult tuning [harmonia], a bad, wretched sort of helplessness [am"khania] often makes its abode, arising both from birth pains and irrationality. This breeze once shot through my womb, but I called upon the heavenly helper in labor, the guardian of the arrows, Artemis, and she, much envied, always comes to me with the help of the gods. But look here, the aged Nurse before the palace doors is bringing her from the house, though on her brow the gloomy cloud deepens. My psukh" longs to know what it is, and why the queen, with changed complexion, wastes away.
!
D2. Note the use of phil": it is a sign of the principle of choral solidarity. The chorus identifies with Phaedra’s ordeal.
D3. When the chorus says “My psukh" longs to know what it is, just think of who is performing this!
D4. On harmonia... The metaphor is this: women are like a stringed instrument, in need of tuning or balance. There is another dimension as well: harmonia can refer to the harnessing of a chariot. D5. Note the references to women’s ordeals and the imagery of the womb and the breeze. The relationship between the womb and wind is controlled by Artemis. Remember the Agamemnon of Aeschylus, where Artemis stops the wind until Iphigeneia gets sacrificed; and she stops the wind again until Cassandra gets slaughtered.
! E1. Note the “wandering mind” of Phaedra: it “wanders” where the boys are. Compare Freud’s concept of hysteria. Where Artemis is. E) Euripides Hippolytus 198-249 Phaedra:
Lift my body, keep my head steady; the fastenings of my limbs are unstrung. 200 Raise my shapely arms, attendants, my headdress is heavy to wear, take it away, let my hair fall over my shoulders. ... Alas! Would that from a dewy fountain I might draw a draught of pure water for myself, 210 and lying beneath the poplars in a grassy meadow I might rest. ... 215 Take me to the mountains - I will go to the woods and to the pine trees, where the beast-killing hounds tread, and where they approach the dappled deer. By the gods, I long to shout to the dogs, 220 and by my fair hair to cast a Thessalian spear, holding a barbed dart in my hand.
Nurse:
Why, my child, are you anxious for these things? Why is the hunt your concern? 225 And why do you long for the flowing spring when nearby, next to these towers, there is a watery hill, from
which you might have a drink? Phaedra:
Artemis of sea-beaten Limna, goddess of the racecourse thundering with horses’ hooves, 230 would that I were on your plains curbing Venetian steeds!
Nurse:
Why again, in madness, have you cast out this utterance? One moment you were going to the hills and set your desire for the hunt, 235 but now on the waveless sands you wish for horses. These things are worth much prophesying; which of the gods drives your from your course
and strikes aside your phrenes, child? Phaedra:
Wretched me, what have I done? 240 Where have I strayed from good sense? I have gone mad and fallen by derangement [at"] from a daim!n. Woe is me! Nurse, cover my head again; I feel shame [aid!s] for what I have said. 245 Hide me! Tears fall from my eyes, and for shame my face is turned away. Although it is painful to come to one’s senses, to be mad is evil; dying in ignorance rules.
! E2. Note that Phaedra’s limbs are ‘unstrung’: consider her lack of harmonia !
F) Euripides Hippolytus 732-751: Would that I were beneath some steep cavern, where a god might make me into a bird amid the winged flocks! Away I would soar over the waves of the Adriatic sea [pontos] and to the waters of the river Eridanos, where the unhappy sisters in their grief for Phaethon drip into the purplish swell the amber brilliance of their tears. Then might I reach the apple-bearing shores of the singing Hesperides, where the ruler of the sea [pontos] no longer gives a path for sailors over the deep, dark waters, and find there the holy boundary of heaven which Atlas holds, and the ambrosial fountains which well up by the couch of Zeus, and where the sacred earth, bestower of good things, increases the happiness [eudaimonia] of the gods.
!
F 1. Phaethon was the son of Helios, the sun. He lost control of his father’s chariot, so Zeus killed him with a thunderbolt.
! !
Notes on session 20 on Euripides Bacchae The hero’s agony !
Key word ag!n, pl. ag!nes ‘coming together; competition, antagonism; agony; ordeal; trial’ (LINK See Pindar’ s Homer p. 385 [“Given that the Theater...”] up to p. 388n31):
!
A)! Euripides Bacchae 912-976 {Dionysus:}
You there! Yes, I’m talking to you, to the one who is so eager to see the things that should not be seen
and who hurries to accomplish things that cannot be hurried. I’m talking to you, Pentheus.
Come out from inside the palace. Let me have a good look at you 915!!!!!!!!!! wearing the costume of a woman who is a Maenad Bacchant,
spying on your mother and her company. The way you are shaped, you look just like one of the daughters of Kadmos. {Pentheus:} What is this? I think I see two suns, and two images of Thebes, the seven-gated polis.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Were you ever before a beast? You have certainly now become a bull.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! {Dionysus:} !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The god accompanies us, now at truce with
us, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! though formerly not propitious. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Now you see what it is right for you to see. 925!!!!!!!!!! {Pentheus:}
So how do I look? Don’t I strike the dancing pose [stasis] of Ino or the pose struck by my mother Agaue?
{Dionysus:}
Looking at you I think I see them right now.
Oh, but look: this strand of hair [plokamos] here is out of place. It stands out, not the way I had secured it underneath the headband [mitra].
{Pentheus:}
While I was inside, I was shaking it [= the strand of hair] forward and backward,
and, in the Bacchic spirit, I displaced it [= the strand of hair], moving it out of place.
{Dionysus:}
Then I, whose concern it is to attend to you, will
arrange it [= the strand of hair] all over again. Come on, hold your head straight.
{Pentheus:}
You see it [= the strand of hair]? There it is! You arrange [kosmeîn] it for me. I can see I’m really depending on you.
{Dionysus:}
And your waistband has come loose. And those things are not in the right order. I mean, the pleats of your peplos, the way they
extend down around your ankles. {Pentheus:}
That’s the way I see it from my angle as well. At least, that’s the way it is down around my right foot,
but, on this other side, the peplos does extend in a straight line down around the calf.
{Dionysus:} I really do think you will consider me the foremost among those dear to you
when, contrary to your expectations, you see the Bacchants in full control of themselves [= s"phrones].
{Pentheus:}
So which will it be? I mean, shall I hold the thyrsus with my right hand
or with this other one? Which is the way I will look more like a Bacchant?
{Dionysus:}
You must hold it in your right hand and, at the same time, with your right foot you must make an upward motion. I approve of the way you have shifted in your thinking.
{Pentheus:} 945 Couldn’t I carry on my shoulders the folds of Kithairon, Bacchae
and all?
{Dionysus:} You could if you should so wish. Your earlier phrenes were not sound, but now they are the way they should be.
{Pentheus:} Shall we bring levers, 950 or throwing a shoulder or arm under the mountain-tops shall I lift them up with my hands?
{Dionysus:} Please don’t destroy the seats of the Nymphs and the place where Pan plays his pipe.
{Pentheus:} You’re right. The women are not to be taken by force; I’ll hide in the pines.
{Dionysus:} 955 You will hide yourself in hiding as you should be hidden, coming as a crafty spy on the Maenads.
{Pentheus:} I imagine that they are in the bushes held in the closest grips of love, like birds.
{Dionysus:} You have been sent as a guard against this very event. 960 Perhaps you will catch them, if you yourself are not caught before.
{Pentheus:} Bring me through the midst of the Theban land. I am the only Theban who dares to perform this deed.
{Dionysus:} You alone enter the struggle for this polis, you alone.
!
Therefore the ordeals [ag!nes] which have to be await you. 965 Follow me. I am your saving [s!t"r] guide; another will lead you down from there.
{Pentheus:} Yes, my mother. {Dionysus:} And you will be remarkable [having a s"ma] to all. {Pentheus:} I am going for this reason. {Dionysus:} You will return here being carried... {Pentheus:} You allude to my luxuriance [habrot"s].
{Dionysus:} ...in the arms of your mother. {Pentheus:} You even will compel me to be in luxury [truph"]. {Dionysus:} 970 Yes indeed, with such luxury [truph"].
{Pentheus:} I am undertaking worthy deeds.
{Dionysus:} You are terrifying, terrifying, and you go to terrifying sufferings [pathos], with the result that you will attain a kleos that reaches heaven. Extend your hands, Agave, and you too, her sisters, daughters of Kadmos. I lead the youth 975 to this great ag!n, and Bromius and I will be the victors. The rest the affair itself will signal [s"main!].
A1. On pathos, see LINK Best of the Achaeans Ch.6@26n3 (“On pathos ‘thing suffered’...”).
!
A2. Dionysus here has not yet fully revealed himself as a god. His antagonist, Pentheus (from penthos), is incompletely initiated and cannot focus by seeing the god clearly. Pentheus has double vision. The psychology of double vision is analogous to the semantics of the expression “to be beside yourself.” Notice the theriomorphic nature of the epiphany of the god here: that is, he appears as a beast.
!
A3. Notice that the hair of Pentheus is out of order (= out of kosmos). Consider the metonymy.
!
A4. A word that is directly relevant to the problem of focusing on the god is bakkhos
= god in myth (Latinized as Bacchus) vs. devoté in ritual; the feminine of bakkhos as ‘devoté in ritual’ is bakkh" ‘bacchant’, plural bakkhai (Latinized as Bacchae). Review: entheos ‘he/she who has the god inside’ (theos ‘god’); cf. enthousiasmos ‘state of being possessed by the god’ (from this word English “enthusiasm” is derived).
! A5. Pentheus thinks that Dionysos is a bakkhos (at best); the audience already knows that Dionysos is the Bakkhos - in other words, the god himself. !
A6. Notice that the bakkhai are s!phrones as singers / dancers. The dictum applies: equilibrium in ritual, disequilibrium in myth. The disequilibrium leads to catastrophe.
!
A8. Why is Pentheus deinos ‘terrifying’? It is because he evokes the emotion of fear - because he is about to be dismembered. In the context at hand, Pentheus thinks that he is ‘terrifying’ because he will terrify the women who are under the Dionysiac influence.
!
A9. Notice that Pentheus is destined to get kleos, according to his ritual antagonist, the god Dionysos.
!
B) Euripides Bacchae 135-167: He is sweet in the mountains, whenever after running in the sacred band he falls on the ground, wearing the sacred [hieron]
garment of fawn-skin, hunting the blood of the slain goat, the pleasure [kharis] of living flesh devoured, rushing to the 140 Phrygian, the Lydian mountains, and the
leader of the dance is Bromius. Evohe! The plain flows with milk, it flows with wine, it flows with the nectar of bees. 145 Like the smoke [G.N. adopts the manuscript reading kapnÒw] of Syrian incense, the Bacchic one, raising high the fiery flame from the pine torch, bursts forth from the narth"x, arousing the stragglers with his racing and khoroi, agitating them with his cries, 150 tossing his luxuriant [trupheros] hair to the air. And among the Maenad cries his voice rings deep: “Onward, Bacchants, onward Bacchants, with the luxury of Tmolos that flows with gold, 155 sing and dance of Dionysus, accompanied by the heavy beats of kettle-drums, glorifying the god of delight with Phrygian shouts and cries, 160 when the sweet-sounding sacred [hieros] pipe sings out the sacred [hiera] tunes 165 for those who wander to the mountain, to the mountain!” And the Bacchant, rejoicing like a foal with its mother, rouses her swift foot in a gamboling dance.
!
B1. Notice the image of Dionysos tossing his luxuriant disheveled hair.
!
B2. Notice the intersubjectivity of the chorus with the sacrificial herd.
!
B3. We see here the god Dionysos as a young exarkhos ‘choral leader’, bursting forth from narth"x).
!
B4. Dionysus as god of Theater; City Dionysia is the prime occasion for State Theater. For historical background, read Nagy’s introduction about State Theater.
! B5. Line 860:! Dionysus becomes god in the telos ! B6. Lines 275ff: bread vs. wine (cf. earth vs. sea; cf. Demeter vs. Dionysus)
!
C1. Now we come to the “birth of tragedy,” according to the aetiological version of Euripides:
! C) Euripides Bacchae 677-716
I was just driving the herd of cattle up the hill, at the time when the sun sends forth its rays, warming the earth. 680 I saw three companies of women’s khoroi, one of which Autonoe led, the second your mother Agave, and the third khoros, Ino. All were asleep, their bodies relaxed, some resting their backs against pine foliage, 685 others in a s!phr!n manner laying their heads at random on the oak leaves, not, as you say, drunk with the goblet and the sound of the pipe, hunting out Kypris [= Aphrodite] through the woods in solitude. Your mother raised a cry, 690 standing in the midst of the Bacchants, to wake them from sleep, when she heard the lowing of the horned cattle. And they threw deep sleep from their eyes and sprang upright - a marvel of orderliness to behold - old, young, and still unmarried virgins. 695 First they let their hair loose over their shoulders, and as many of them as had released the fastenings of their knots, secured their fawn-skins, girding the dappled hides with serpents licking their jaws, and some, as many as had abandoned their new- born infants and had their breasts still swollen, holding in their arms a gazelle or wild wolf-pup 700 gave them white milk. They put on garlands of ivy, and oak, and flowering yew. One took her thyrsos [narth"x] and struck it against a rock, 705 whence a dewy stream of water sprang forth. Another let her thyrsos strike the ground, and there the god sent forth a stream of wine. All who desired the white drink scratched the earth with the tips of their fingers and obtained springs of milk. 710 Sweet streams of honey dripped from their ivy thyrsoi. Had you been present and seen this, you would have approached with prayers the god whom you now blame. We herdsmen and shepherds gathered [= literally sun"lthomen ‘we came together’] in order to 715 wrangle [give eris] with one another concerning this strange behavior, full of marvel.
!
C2. Here we see the three meanings of ag!n: coming together of the herdsmen, their competing, and, in their song and dance, re-enacting the wonders of Dionysus, featuring the agony of Pentheus (and, ultimately, of Dionysus himself as the victim of dismemberment). !
C3. Socrates says in Plato’s Phaedo (69c): ‘For many, as they say in the mysteries [teletai], are the bearers of the! thyrsus [narth"x], but few are the bakkhoi [=devotees of Bacchus]’; Compare the Christian aphorism: “many are called but few are
chosen” (Matthew 22:14). Compare such “half-baked” initiates as Kadmos and Teiresias in the Bacchae of Euripides.
!
C4. The disintegration of Pentheus the hero is modeled on the unspoken and mystical disintegration of Dionysos the god. That theme is not attested directly in the Bacchae of Euripides.
!
C5. Even the women of Thebes, when they are possessed by Dionysos, behave in a s! phr!n way - until they come into contact with Pentheus. Then the equilibrium turns to disequilibrium.
!
C6. The first thing the Maenads do is let their hair loose over their shoulders.
!
C7. Notice the metonymy of liquids flowing on contact with the narth"x.
!
C8. Ideas for holiday presents... [Subtext: this lame joke is based on the title of an old TV series “I Remember Mama.”]
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The I Dismember Mama Doll.! Know anyone who’s fed up with Mom?! This tension-release toy is the perfect gift for all the disgruntled children and neurotic adults on your shopping list.! Cuddly long-suffering Mama doll is held together with Velcro.! Throw a fit, tear her limb from limb, toss the parts around the room.! Then put her back together again as good as new and say you’re sorry.! Substantial discount on orders of 50 or more.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!Dialogue 21 about Plato “The Living Word” Part I !
Something comparable to think about... Consider this statement, made by a musician, about Bach’s Goldberg Variations (there are 32 of them, technically, = Aria plus 30 variations plus Aria)... “It is, in short, music which observes neither end nor beginning, music with neither real climax nor real resolution ...” - Glenn Gould 1956.
!
Key word: daimonion = ‘the daim!n thing’ or ‘the little daim!n’, which is Socrates’ parody of the wording used by the State in accusing him of introducing unacceptable concepts of daimones:
!
A1. The State’s accusation was that Socrates does not “believe” (nomizei, derivative of nomos) in the gods that the state “believes” in ... but that Socrates does “believe” in new “divinities” = daimonia [= plural of daimonion] of his own. The State’s wording of the charge against Socrates
becomes the basis for his own wording of the inner voice that prevents him from doing something wrong. He calls that inner voice his daimonion.
!
A2. “I have a thing that is divine [theion] and daimonion” -! described as an inner voice that stops Socrates from doing things that are morally wrong. The familiar daimonion [Jowett translates it as “oracle”] within me [in the Greek, simply “the usual mantic power of the daimonion”] used to oppose me in the past, but not now. The Jowett translation ‘oracle’ is not all that bad, since it conveys the idea of Apollo’s oracle in particular.
!
A3. What does the daimonion not tell Socrates not to experience? It does not tell him not to die, because dying ‘now’ is not wrong – it is right. It really is the h!ra, the right time, as we see at the end of this passage. These two words daimonion and h!ra belong to the language of heroes, and the same goes for a third word, s!meion, which is used here as a synonym of daimonion.
!
From Plato Apology of Socrates
Hitherto the oracular [mantik!] art of the daimonion within me has constantly been in the habit of opposing me even about trifles, if I was going to make a slip or error about anything; and now as you see there has come upon me that which may be thought, and is generally believed to be, the last and worst evil. [40b] But the sign [s!meion] did not oppose me, either as I was leaving my house and going out in the morning, or when I was going up into this court, or while I was speaking, at anything which I was going to say; and yet I have often been stopped in the middle of a speech; but now in nothing I either said or did touching this matter has the oracle opposed me. What do I take to be the explanation of this? I will tell you. I regard this as a proof that what has happened to me is a good [agathon], [40c] and that those of us who think that death is an evil [kakon] are in error. This is a great proof to me of what I am saying, for the customary sign [s! meion] would surely have opposed me had I been going to evil and not to good [agathon]. Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good [agathon], for one of two things:—either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul [psukh!] from this world to another. Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, [40d] but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by the sight of dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain [kerdos]. For if a person were to select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the great king, [40e] will not find many such days or nights, when compared with the others. Now if death is like this, I say that to die is gain [kerdos]; for eternity is then only a single night. But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead are, what good [agathon], O my friends and judges, can be greater than this? [41a] If indeed when the pilgrim [the"ros] arrives in the world below, he is delivered from those who profess justice in this world, and finds the true [al!th!s] judges who are said to give judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and other sons of gods who were righteous in their own life, that pilgrimage [the"ria] will be worth making. What would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer? No, if this be true [al!th!s], let me die again and again.
[41b] I, too, shall have a wonderful interest in a place where I can converse with Palamedes, and Ajax the son of Telamon, and other heroes of old, who have suffered death through an unjust [non-dikaios] judgment [krisis]; and there will be no small pleasure, as I think, in comparing my own sufferings [pathos plural] with theirs. Above all, I shall be able to continue my search into true and false knowledge; as in this world, so also in that; I shall find out who is sophos, and who pretends to be sophos, and is not. What would not a man give, O judges, to be able to examine the leader of the great Trojan expedition; [41c] or Odysseus or Sisyphus, or numberless others, men and women too! What infinite delight would there be in conversing with them and asking them questions! For in that world they do not put a man to death for this; certainly not. For besides being happier in that world than in this, they will be immortal, if what is said is true [al!th!s]. Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and know this of a truth [al!th!s]—[41d] that no evil [kakos] can
happen to a good [agathos] man, either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by the gods; nor has my own approaching end happened by mere chance. But I see clearly that to die and be released was better for me; and therefore the oracle gave no sign [s!meion]. For which reason also, I am not angry with my accusers, or my condemners; they have done me no harm, although neither of them meant to do me any good; [41e] and for this I may gently blame them. Still I have a favor to ask of them. When my sons are grown up, I would ask you, O my friends, to punish them; and I would have you trouble them, as I have troubled you, if they seem to care about riches, or anything, more than about virtue [aret!]; or if they pretend to be something when they are really nothing,—then reprove them, as I have reproved you, for not caring about that for which they ought to care, and thinking that they are something when they are really nothing. [42a] And if you do this, I and my sons will have as our experience [pathos] at your hands something that is just [dikaion]. The hour [h"ra] of departure has arrived, and we go our ways—I to die, and you to live. Which is better is known only to the god.
A4. Note the references by Socrates to heroes [= “demigods”; Jowett’s rendering, not adopted in the adapted version of his translation in the Sourcebook, is “sons of God”] who are to be joined by Socrates in the afterlife. They include Homer and Hesiod; they are now deathless. On the idea of Homer and Hesiod as cult-heroes of the Hellenes by virtue of their being the premier teachers of Hellenic civilization, see Herodotus 2.53 and the commentary in LINK Pindar’ s Homer Ch. 8@22.
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A5. Socrates will also meet, in the afterlife, Ajax (= Aias); why does Socrates single him out? Because what people did to him was wrong, just as what people are doing to Socrates is wrong.
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A6. The idea of having a dialogue with a dead hero like Ajax (or even like Homer himself, who was considered to be a cult hero in the era of Socrates) is a way of establishing a communion with the heroic world. This way of communicating transcends the poet’s inspiration by the Muse. Compare the dialogue of the initiated gardener with the non-initiated sailor in the On Heroes of Philostratus: that dialogue leads into a direct dialogue with the consciousness of dead heroes. The worshipper of the cult hero can enter into a communion with the consciousness of the cult hero.!
! B1. Some background on the death of Socrates... In Plato’s Apology, Socrates refers to Aristophanes Clouds, which we know was staged in year 423. Socrates is ridiculed in that comedy because he is an intellectual: examples of contemporary intellectuals are Gorgias and
Prodicus. A key word is sophos in the sense of ‘sophist’.
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B2. The story of Socrates’ quest, as reported in the Apology... Chairephon goes to Delphi on a pilgrimage [= the!ria in Greek]. His quest is to ask who is most sophos of men. The priestess of Apollo answers for the god: that no one is more sophos than Socrates. Socrates asks himself: what kind of “riddle” [ainigma] is the god saying?
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B3. Note the reference in the Apology to the wanderings [planai, plural of plan"], and labors [ponoi] of Socrates (expressed in the form of a heroic quest). Compare the veering/wandering of Odysseus in Odyssey 1.2
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from Plato Apology of Socrates [22a] I will tell you the tale of my wanderings [planai, plural of plan"] and of the labors [ponoi], as I may call them, which I endured only to find at last the oracle [manteion] irrefutable.
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C1. Observe how Socrates refers to Achilles’ choice of death in Iliad XVIII 94ff (compare also Iliad IX 413). Socrates reads out of the Iliadic passage what Achilles is saying, but the reading by Socrates is framed in terms of what is right and what is wrong, whereas the reading by “Homer” is not. In effect, Socrates is having a dialogue with Achilles by quoting him in ways that correspond to the philosopher’s frame of reference – and to the citizen-warrior’s frame of reference.
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From Plato Apology of Socrates. Someone will say: And are you not ashamed, Socrates, of a course of life which is likely to bring you to an untimely end? To him I may fairly [dikai"s] answer: There you are mistaken: a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong [doing dikaia or not] acting the part of a good [agathos] man or of a bad [kakos]. [28c] Whereas, according to your view, the heroes who fell at Troy were not good for much, and the son of Thetis [= Achilles] above all, who altogether despised danger in comparison with disgrace; and when his goddess mother said to him, in his eagerness to slay Hector, that if he avenged [paid honor or tim! to] his companion Patroklos, and slew Hector,
he would die himself—"Fate," as she said, "waits upon you next after Hector"; he, hearing this, utterly despised danger and death, [28d] and instead of fearing them, feared rather to live in dishonor [basely, like a kakos man], and not to avenge [give tim! to] his friend. "Let me die next," he replies, "and exact justice [dik!] from the enemy, rather than abide here by the beaked ships, a scorn and a burden of the earth." Had Achilles any thought of death and danger? For wherever a man's place is, whether the place which he has chosen or that in which he has been placed by a commander, there he ought to remain in the hour of danger; he should not think of death or of anything, but of disgrace. And this, O men of Athens, is a true saying [al!th!s].
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C2. The characterization of Socrates in his bravery is made parallel to the characterization of Achilles in his own bravery. Socrates is saying, in effect: I must not desert my post. That is the ethic of the hoplite = citizen soldier; for Socrates, this ethic of the hoplite is transformed into the ethic of the philosopher.
! C3. Note the way Socrates elsewhere describes himself as a gadfly (how is this image an
ainos?). Notice that he “stings” an aristocratic but intellectually lazy “horse.” ! C4. A man who fights for dik" must lead a private, not a public, life. !
C5. Note the list of the philoi present at the trial, including Plato. ! C6. Socrates says that he deserves the honors due to an Olympic victor. ! C7. Socrates says: the greatest good for man is to discuss aret" (translated here as “virtue”) C8. The unexamined life is not worth living !
C9. References to pollution in the Apology: “this confounded Socrates!” [Jowett’s “confounded” translates miaros ‘polluted’ (adjective of miasma ‘pollution’). Todd Compton, in an article written for the American Journal of Philology 1990, shows that Plato is tapping
into the myth of Aesop in his role as a ritual scapegoat or pharmakos. On Aesop as a pharmakos, see LINK Best of the Achaeans Ch.16@1, starting with “From the epic tradition of the Aithiopis, all the way to the end of @8.
! D1. Further remarks about the trial and death of Socrates, year 399 before our era... In the Apology, Socrates is quoted as saying that Plato was present at the trial. ! D2. Was Plato also present when Socrates died? Here is the answer... !
From Plato Phaedo [Phaedo is “quoted” as saying. [59b] Of native Athenians there were, besides Apollodorus, Critobulus and his father Crito, Hermogenes, Epigenes, Aeschines, and Antisthenes; likewise Ctesippus of the deme of Paeania, Menexenus, and some others; but Plato, if I am not mistaken, was not feeling well.
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D3. So the “transcriber” Plato, who is only mentioned twice in the writings of Plato, was not there when Socrates died. How can we trust his “quotations” of Socrates?
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Plato is present when Socrates delivers his speech as dramatized in the Apology. But he is absent (“sick”) during the dialogue as dramatized in the Phaedo.
What are the implications for the status of a text like Plato’s Phaedo? Where does Plato live in his texts?
Where does Socrates “live”?
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E1. Plato’s Socrates has never written anything down. But he does compose two masterpieces during his last days.
! E2. Just before he dies, Socrates turns a fable [what is the Greek word for “fable”?] of Aesop into poetry and then composes a hymn to Apollo; “this is in honor of the festival of Apollo that consecrates the time between Socrates’ trial and his death, delaying his execution” (Todd Compton, American Journal of Philology 1990 p. 340). On the Festival of Apollo, see Phaedo 28b-c. On Aesop as a cult-hero and as a ritual antagonist of Apollo, see LINK Best of the Achaeans Ch.17@@1-2.!!
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From Plato Phaedo In the course of my life I have often had intimations in dreams “that I should make music [mousik!].” The same dream came to me sometimes in one form, and sometimes in another, but always saying the same or nearly the same words: Make and cultivate music [mousik!], said the dream. [61a] And hitherto I had imagined that this was only intended to exhort and encourage me in the study of philosophy, which has always been the pursuit of my life, and is the noblest and best of music [mousik!]. The dream was bidding me to do what I was already doing, in the same way that the competitor in a race is called on by the spectators to run when he is already running. But I was not certain of this, as the dream might have meant music
[mousik!] in the popular sense of the word, and being under sentence of death, and the festival giving me a respite, I thought that I should be safer if I engaged with the holiness, [61b] and, in obedience to the dream, composed a few verses before I departed. And first I made a hymn [humnos] in honor of the god of the festival, and then considering that a poet, if he is really to be a poet or maker, should not only put words together but make stories [muthoi], and as I am not a maker of stories [muthologikos], I took some fables [muthoi] of Aesop, which I had ready at hand and knew, and turned them into verse. Tell Evenus this, and bid him be of good cheer; that I would have him come after me if he be a wise man, and not tarry; [61c] and that today I am likely to be going, for the Athenians say that I must.
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E3. Socrates “made” a hymn to Apollo; and the verb is poie! (poi"t"s ‘poet’! is ‘he who makes’). On important parallelisms between the ainos-traditions of Aesop and the ainigma- traditions of the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi, see Pindar’ s Homer Ch.11@17 (starting with “After quoting a passage in the Histories...”) up through @22. At Phaedo 61b, fables of Aesop are called muthoi.
! E4. Remember: one of Plato’ s central points is that Socrates does not leave writings behind. ! F1. Here is the “swansong” of Socrates. Think of Schubert’s “hymn” To Music
The swan is the sacred bird of what god? Why is the swan called the therap!n of the god? Why is Socrates called “the fellow minister” of the swans? ! ! F) from Plato Phaedo
Socrates smiled and said: [84e] O Simmias, how strange that is; I am not very likely to persuade other men that I do not regard my present situation as a misfortune, if I am unable to persuade you, and you will keep fancying that I am at all more troubled now than at any other time. Will you not allow that I have as much of a prophetic [mantikos] capacity in me as the swans? For they, when they perceive that they must die, having sung all their life long, [85a] do then sing more than ever, rejoicing in the thought that they are about to go away to the god whose ministers [therap"n plural] they are. But men, because they are themselves afraid of death, slanderously affirm of the swans that they sing a lament at the last, not considering that no bird sings when cold, or hungry, or in pain, not even the nightingale, nor the swallow, nor yet the hoopoe; which are said indeed to tune a song of sorrow, although I do not believe this to be true of them any more than of the swans. [85b] But because they are sacred to Apollo and have a prophetic [mantikos] capacity and anticipate the good things of another world, therefore they sing and rejoice in that day more than they ever did before. And I, too, believing myself to be the consecrated minister of the same god, and a fellow minister [homo-doulos] with the swans, and thinking that I have received from my master a prophetic [mantikos] capacity that is not inferior to theirs, would not go out of life in a less happy state than the swans.
! F 2. mousik": much more than just ‘music.’ What is the significance of Socrates’ Hymn to Apollo? Note that “Homer” was known to Socrates as the poet of a Homeric Hymn to Apollo. ! G1. Compare the “swansong” of Schubert: ! G) “An die Musik” (To Music) by Franz Schubert (D. 547 Op. 88 No. 4). Text by Franz von
Schober
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! Notes for Dialogue 22 Shades of the Hero How the consciousness of the hero lives on in the post-heroic world. Key word for this time: pateres ‘fathers’ or ‘ancestors’, as in the name Patroklos / Patrokleês.
Related key word: ainigma (from ainos) ‘riddle, enigma’, derived from verb ainissomai ‘say in
a riddling way’. This word will return to play an important role in the Oedipus Tyrannus of Sophocles.
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Amphiaraos, speaking from the dead as one of the pateres, visualizes his son, Alkmaion.
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!The word theaomai ‘see’ (in the dialect used by Pindar, thaeomai) is derived from thea
‘vision’. A related word is theatron, which means literally ‘instrument for seeing’.
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Wo mich des Lebens wilder Kreis umstrickt, Hast du mein Herz zu warmer Lieb entzünden, Hast mich in eine beßre Welt entrückt!
Oft hat ein Seufzer, deiner Harf’ entflossen, Ein süßer, heiliger Akkord von dir
Den Himmel beßrer Zeiten mir erschlossen, Du holde Kunst, ich danke dir dafür!
You, O sacred art, how often, in hours that were gray, while I was caught up in the savage cycle of life,
you brought back my heart to warm love, reigniting it, and spirited me off to a better world.
Often has a sigh drifted from your harp - a sweet and holy chord coming from you,
revealing from the heavens a glimpse of better times You, O sacred art, I thank you for this.
Du holde Kunst, in wieviel grauen Stunden,
The word saphês / saphes ‘clear’ has to do with clarity of vision. Thus a seer is a clairvoyant. !
A) Pindar Pythian 8.35ff
[35] For you follow, at wrestling matches, in the footsteps of your mother’s brothers. You did Theognetos proud, the one in the Olympics. Also Kleitomakhos, whose victory at the Isthmians gave proof to the boldness of his limbs. Making great the house[1] of the Meidulidai,[2] you win as a prize the words that once the son of Oikles[3] said [ainissomai], [4] when he saw [40] the Sons[5] holding their ground at Thebes, by the power of the spear,
at the time when they, the Epigonoi,[6] had come from Argos, on the second expedition. Thus he [7] spoke about those who fought: [45] “By inherited nature, the noble purpose [lêma] shines forth from fathers [pateres][8] to sons. I can see [theaomai] clearly [saphes] Alkmaion, [9] wielding the patterned snake on his blazing shield,[10] in the forefront of the gates of Kadmos.”[11]
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We see here that the heroes in the age of heroes are stylized ancestors for the post-heroic age. If a man as an athlete in the post-heroic age ‘did his ancestors proud’, he also did the heroes of the heroic age proud. That is the logic of hero cult as a stylized form of ancestor worship.
! B) Pindar Pythian 8.95ff
[95] Creatures of a day. What is a someone, what is a no one? Man is the dream of a shade. But when the brightness given by Zeus comes, there is at hand the shining light of men, and the life- force [aiôn] gives pleasure. Aigina! Philê Mother! Make an armada[12] of freedom for this polis as you bring it back to light and life,[13] back to Zeus! May Aiakos the Ruler be there. So also Peleus. And noble Telamon. And especially Achilles.[14]
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For a detailed analysis of focus passages A and B, see the Heroes website: go to Texts and then go to:
G. Nagy, “Refractions of Epic Vision in Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes and Pindar’s Pythian 8.”
! What is a skia in Homer? How is it related to psukhê?
Does the translation ‘of’ in ‘dream of a shade’ mark a subjective or objective genitive? Note that aiôn means both ‘life force’ and ‘eon.’
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As we see from my analysis in the paper that I cited, successful persons in the post-heroic age are imagined positively as if they were “dreamed” by their ancestors in the heroic age.
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Such positive “dreaming” is matched by a sinister negative “dreaming” when the hero is angry, as we see in focus passages C and D:
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Aeschylus Seven 709-711... Yes, it [the daimôn] boiled over with the curses [kateugmata, from eukhomai] of Oedipus! True are the visions [opsis plural] of apparitions-in-dreams [en- hupnia], - visions of dividing the father’s property.
! This passage C is thematically the reverse of A and B.
There was a comedy by Aristophanes called The Heroes where the chorus of heroes at the beginning says the equivalent of! “he knows when you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness’ sake.”
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Aeschylus Seven 720ff... I shudder in dread of the goddess who destroys dynasties. She is not like other gods. She is the all-truthful [pan-alêthês] seer [mantis] of evils, the Fury [Erinys] of a father’s cursing [eukhomai]. [725] She is poised to bring to fulfillment [telos] the curses [kat- arai], full of passion [thumos], that came from Oedipus, the one whose mind [phrên] was thrown off course. This discord [eris], destroyer of his children, is pressing ahead.
! The vision of the Furies The ‘Fury [Erinys] of a father’s cursing [eukhomai]’: the ‘of’ can be subjective. ! For a parallel theme of positive ancestral dreaming in modern poetry, consider this: !
selections from Walt Whitman, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry (1892): !
I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence, Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt, Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd, Just as you are refresh'd by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refresh'd,
Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood yet was hurried .. . I too and many a time crossed the river of old
.. . Closer yet I approach you, What thought you have of me now, I had as much of you - I laid in my stores in advance, I consider'd long and seriously of you before you were born. .. . Who knows, for all the distance, but I am as good as looking at you now, for all you cannot see me? ! For a parody, consider this: ! F) Allen Ginsberg "A Supermarket in California"
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What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked
down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon
fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at
night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!
--and you, García Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons? I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking
among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys. I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy
tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier. Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour.
Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a
smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of
Lethe? !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Berkeley, 1955 !
Heroes can intervene in the present, either positively or negatively, as here:
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G) Herodotus 7.188-191. The Persian fleet put to sea and reached the beach of the Magnesian land, between the polis of Kasthanaia and the headland of Sepias.[15] The first ships to arrive moored close to land, with the others after them at anchor; since the beach was not large, they lay at anchor in rows eight ships deep out into the sea [pontos]. Thus they spent the night, but at dawn out of a clear and windless sky a storm descended upon them and the sea began to boil. A strong east wind blew, which the people living in those parts call Hellespontiês. Those who felt the wind rising or had proper mooring dragged their ships up on shore ahead of the storm and so survived with their ships. But the wind carried those ships caught out in the open against the rocks called the Ovens at Pelion or onto the beach. Some ships were wrecked on the Sepian headland, others were cast ashore at the polis of Meliboia or at Kasthanaia. ... [191] There was no counting how many grain-ships and other vessels were destroyed. The generals of the fleet were afraid that the Thessalians might attack them now that they were in a bad situation, so they built a high palisade out of the wreckage. The storm lasted three days. Finally the Magi made offerings and cast spells upon the wind, sacrificing also to Thetis and the Nereids. Thus they made the wind stop on the fourth day, or perhaps it died down on its own. They sacrificed to Thetis after hearing from the Ionians the story that it was at this place that Peleus had abducted her, and that all the headland of Sepias belonged to her and to the other Nereids.
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Achilles intervenes from the other world by unleashing his anger in the form of the ‘wind from the Hellespont’.
! So heroes can be models for the elites of the post-heroic age. ! H) Pindar Isthmian 8.56a-62 Even when he [Achilles] died, the songs did not leave him, but the Heliconian Maidens [the
Muses] stood by his pyre and his funeral mound, pouring forth a song of lamentation [thrênos] that is famed far and wide. And so it was that the gods decided to hand over the worthy man, wilted [phthi-menos] in death as he was, to the songs of the goddesses [Muses].[16] And this, even now, wins as a prize the words, as the chariot-team of the Muses starts moving on its way to glorify the memory of Nikokles the boxer.
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In the next passage, Leonides, king of Sparta, is described as one of the Herakleidai, descendants of Herakles. So Herakles is for him and his men a model, even a model for death. We see in this passage the Three Hundred Spartans at Thermopylae, “preening for la belle mort”...
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Herodotus 7.208-209. While they thus debated, Xerxes sent a mounted scout to see how many there were and what they were doing, for while he was still in Thessaly he had heard that a small army was gathered there and that its leaders were Lakedaimonians, including Leonides, a Herakleid in genos. Riding up to the camp, the horseman watched and spied out the place, but he could not see the whole camp, for it was impossible to see those posted inside the wall they had rebuilt and were guarding. He did take note of those outside, whose arms lay in front of the wall, and it chanced that at that time the Lakedaimonians were posted there. He saw some of the men exercising naked and others combing their hair. He marvelled at the sight and perceived their numbers. When he had observed it all carefully, he rode back undisturbed, since no one pursued him or paid him any attention at all. So he returned and told Xerxes all that he had seen. When Xerxes heard that, he could not comprehend the reality that the Lakedaimonians were preparing to kill or be killed to the best of their ability. What they did appeared laughable to him, so he sent for Demaretos the son of Ariston, who was in his camp, and when he came asked him about each of these matters, wanting to understand what it was that the Lakedaimonians were doing. Demaretos said, “You have already heard about these men from me, when we were setting out for Hellas. But when you heard, you mocked me, though I told you how I saw these events turning out. For it is my greatest aim, O King, to exercise truth in your presence. Hear me now. These men have come to fight us for the pass, and for that they are preparing. This is their custom [nomos]: when they are about to risk their psukhai, they carefully arrange! [= make kosmos for] their hair. Know that if you overcome these men and those remaining behind at Sparta, there is no other on earth that will raise its hands to withstand you, my King. You are now attacking the fairest kingdom in Hellas and men who are aristoi.”
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Herodotus gives the genealogy of Leonides, King of Sparta (the Spartan pronunciation is ‘Leonidas’)...
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Herodotus 7.204. Each city had its own general, but the one most admired and the leader of the whole army was a Lakedaimonian, Leonides son of Anaxandrides son of Leon son of Eurykratides son of Anaxandros son of Eurykrates son of Polydoros son of Alkamenes son of Teleklos son of Arkhelaos son of Hegesilaos son of Doryssos son of Leobotes son of Ekhestratos son of Agis son of Eurysthenes son of Aristodemos son of Aristomakhos son of Kleodaios son of Hyllos son of Herakles. Leonides had gained the kingship at Sparta unexpectedly.
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Herodotus 7.224. By this time most of them had had their spears broken and were killing the Persians with swords. Leonides fell in that ordeal [ponos], an aristos man, and with him other
famous Spartans, whose names I have learned, since they were worthy men. Indeed, I have learned the names of all 300.
! Herodotus ponders the motivation of the 300 Spartans: !
Herodotus 7.220. But I tend more to believe that when Leonides perceived that the allies were dispirited and unwilling to run all risks with him, he bid them depart. But it was not good for him to leave: If he remained, he would leave a name of great kleos, and the good fortune [eudaimonia] of Sparta would not be blotted out. When the Spartans asked the oracle about this war as soon as it first arose, the Pythia had prophesied to them that either Lakedaimon would be destroyed by the barbarians or their king would be killed. She gave them this answer in hexameter verse [epea], running as follows:
!
!
For you, inhabitants of wide-wayed Sparta, either your great and glorious city must be wasted by Persian men, or if not that, then the bound of Lakedaimon must mourn a dead king, from Herakles’ line. The menos of bulls or lions will not restrain him with opposing force, for he has the menos of Zeus. I declare that he will not be restrained until he utterly tears apart one of these. Considering this and wishing to lay up kleos for the Spartans alone, he sent away the allies rather than have them leave in disorder after divided counsels.
! !
[1] The word oikos ‘house’ refers to the victor’s ancestral lineage or “clan.” [2] Meidulidai is the name of the victor’s ancestral lineage. [3] Amphiaraos, one of the Seven Against Thebes, was the son of Oikles. The heroes known
as the Seven Against Thebes had failed in their expedition against Thebes. Myth has it that Thebes had Seven Gates, each attacked by one of the Seven Against Thebes and each defended by a corresponding Theban hero.
[4] The verb ainissomai ‘say in a riddling way’ is derived from ainigma ‘riddle, enigma’, which is derived from ainos. Since Amphiaraos died in the failed expedition of the Seven Against Thebes, what he says here is obviously meant to be understood as if spoken from the grave. There is historical evidence for a hero-cult of Amphiaraos, located at the very spot where myth says that the earth had engulfed him, chariot-team and all, as he was riding away from Thebes after the expedition failed. Worshippers would come to consult Amphiaraos, who was believed to have the power of communicating with them from the dead.
[5] The Sons are the Sons of the Seven Against Thebes. Whereas the original Seven Against Thebes had failed in their expedition against Thebes, the Sons of the Seven Against Thebes were successful.
[6] Epigonoi ‘The Descendants’ is another way of referring to the Sons of the Seven Against Thebes.
[7] Amphiaraos.
[8] The “fathers” here are ancestors, that is, a succession of fathers through time, not a collection of fathers at one time. The word patro- ‘ancestor, father’ is found in the first part of the name Patroklos = Patroklês), which means ‘he who has the kleos of the ancestors’.
[9] The hero Alkmaion is the son of Amphiaraos. [10] In traditional Greek poetry, the image represented on a shield, in this case a snake, would
be called a sêma. [11] Kadmos was known as the primordial founder of Thebes.
[12] This fleeting reference serves as a nostalgic reminder of the glory days of Aigina, when its navy was still a major power, as in the Sea Battle of Salamis in the Persian War, described by
Herodotus 8.40-97; note especially the role of the Aiakidai in 8.64 and 8.83-84.
[13] I translate komizô here as ‘bring back to light and life’ in view of the traditional correlation of this verb with the noun nostos.
[14] Compare Herodotus 8.64: “At sunrise ... there was an earthquake on land and sea, and they resolved to pray to the gods and summon the Aiakidai as allies. When they had so resolved, they did as follows: they prayed to all the gods called Ajax and Telamon to come straight from Salamis, and sent a ship to Aigina for Aiakos and the other Aiakidai [besides Ajax and Telamon].”
[15] Meaning “the place of the sepia.” It was here, according to epic tradition, that Peleus and Thetis conceived Achilles.
[16] As I argue in Best of the Achaeans 176-177, the phraseology here implies that Achilles was destined to have a kleos that is a-phthi-ton ‘unwilting’, as explicitly formulated at Iliad IX 413. Notes for Dialogue 23 - “The Living Word” Part II.
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[[I highlight here the splendid minutes of Franklin Zhao for the 2008 version of Dialogue 23, stored in the archives of the Heroes site.]]
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[[I need to say at the beginning that Socrates, even though he is being set up to become a cult hero in Plato’s Apology and Phaedo, resists this role. That is why he is the first true Anti-Hero in this course. As I said at the very beginning of the course, the true ‘hero’ of this course is the word, the logos, as brought to life in dialogue, Socratic dialogue.]]!
!
The key word for this dialogue is s!zein (verb) ‘save; be a s!t"r (for someone)’; s!t"r
‘savior’ (either ‘bringing to safety’ or, mystically, ‘bringing back to life’); s!t"ria ‘safety, salvation’. I am not borrowing this concept of “savior” and “salvation” from Christian discourse. Christian discourse inherited the words s!t"r ‘savior’ and s!zein (verb) ‘save; be a s!t"r (for someone)’ from pre-Christian phases of the Greek language.
! A1. Let us examine this word in the context of the following passage, which is the beginning of Plato’s Phaedo:
!
A) Plato’s Phaedo (57a-58c):
Echecrates. [57a] Were you yourself, Phaedo, in the prison with Socrates on the day when he drank the poison [pharmakon]?
Phaedo. Yes, Echecrates, I was.
Ech. I wish that you would tell me about his death. What did he say in his last hours? We were informed that he died by taking poison [pharmakon], but no one knew anything more; for no Phliasian ever goes to Athens now, [57b] and a long time has elapsed since any Athenian found his way to Phlius, and therefore we had no clear account.
Phaed. [58a] Did you not hear of the proceedings at the trial? Ech. Yes; someone told us about the trial, and we could not understand why, having been
condemned, he was put to death, as appeared, not at the time, but long afterwards. What was the reason of this?
Phaed. An accident [tukh"], Echecrates. The reason was that the stern of the ship which the Athenians send to Delos happened to have been garlanded [stephein] on the day before he was tried.
Ech. What is this ship?
Phaed. This is the ship in which, as the Athenians say, Theseus went to Crete when he took with him the fourteen youths, [58b] and was the savior [s!zein] of them and of himself. And they were said to have vowed to Apollo at the time, that if they were saved [s!zein] they would make an annual pilgrimage [the!ria] to Delos. Now this custom still continues, and the whole period of the pilgrimage [the!ria] to and from Delos, [58c] beginning when the priest of Apollo garlands [stephein] the stern of the ship, is the season of the the!ria, during which the city is not allowed to be polluted by public executions; and often, when the vessel is detained by adverse winds, there may be a very considerable delay. As I was saying, the ship was garlanded [stephein] on the day before the trial, and this was the reason why Socrates lay in prison and was not put to death until long after he was condemned.
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I return to a question I posed the last time. Where was Plato when Socrates died? Plato was “weak” and couldn’t attend. To repeat, the single naming of Plato in the Phaedo is the only place, besides the single naming of Plato in the Apology, where Plato is mentioned at all in Plato’s own works. This authorial self-effacement is relevant to the objectives of Socratic dialogue.
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Earlier, we saw that Socrates composes a Hymn to Apollo, without the medium of writing (the word for ‘compose’ in this context is poieîn ‘make’ - not graphein ‘write’). The word that we translate as ‘hymn’ is prooimion. This word conveys the idea that a perfect beginning of a song is metonymically a perfect song in its entirety, even though that song is only potential in the prooimion.!!
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We now see, in the passage we are considering, that Theseus is the s!t"r of the city of Athens. The hero as s!t"r or ‘savior’ has been a central theme in this course. The occasion of ‘salvation’ here is the archetypal the!ria of Theseus to Delos, where he celebrates his ‘salvation’ in Crete. In Plutarch’s Life of Theseus, we can read the details about the prototypical celebration in Crete. This celebration is re-enacted in the the!ria from Athens to Delos and back. In Delos, the labyrinth of Crete is re-enacted by way of the “crane dance” at the festival of Apollo at Delos. The “crane dance” is the dance of the Cretan labyrinth (the labyrinth retraces the dance-steps of the “crane dance”). Delos is the site of this festival of Apollo, which becomes in the Phaedo the ritual frame for the pathos of Socrates. As we remember from the
Apology, Socrates himself refers to his ordeal as his pathos, which he compares to the pathos of heroes in the heroic world.
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The ship of the the!ria in ritual is a recreation of the prototypical ship of the the!ria in myth. Notionally, it is the same ship, except that each of its parts has been replaced, one by one, in the course of time, so that the ship in the time of Socrates would have no piece in it that goes all the way back to the heroic age of Theseus. And yet, it is materially the exact replica of the “original” ship. The ship of the the!ria in myth is the absolute ship, the ideal ship, comparable to an ideal ship in Plato’s theory of Forms, whereas the ship of the real world is not absolute, not ideal, just as the things of this world are not real in terms of Plato’s theory of Forms. The word in Greek that we translate as ‘Form’ is idea, and it is from this Greek word that such English words as idea, ideal, and idealism are borrowed. Of these borrowings, the adjective and noun ideal come closest to the philosophical concept of Form. (Another word that is used in Plato to express the idea of Form is eidos, which also conveys the idea of ‘genre’.)
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In general, I should stress that Plato’s Phaedo is like an introductory course on Plato’s theory of the Forms. “Forms 101,” as it were.
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The idea of salvation, which is notionally started (“launched”) by the notionally original the!ria of Theseus, is to be continued by the theory that is generated by dialogue.
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What is to be saved in Plato’s Phaedo is not the s!ma of Socrates, not even his psukh" per se, but the word - that is, the word that he gets started by way of dialogue.
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These observations are relevant to the words stephein ‘to garland, to make garlands for’, and the derivative noun stephanos ‘garland’ that we saw in passage A. In Modern Greek, the word is stephan" (stepháni), likewise meaning ‘garland’. In the neuter plural, Modern Greek stéphana means ‘wedding garlands’; note the metonymy embedded in the phrase used to offer best wishes to newlywed couples: kalá stéphana. In one Modern Greek phrasebook for English-speakers, this expression is translated ‘may you have a quick and happy wedding’.
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Pictures of garlands. One picture shows an assortment of garlands on sale in a marketplace. The flowers that make up the garland in this case are sempreviva (in Venetian Italian, it means ‘eternally alive’; the local Greeks think it is a local Greek word). The locale is Cythera.
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The ritual of ‘garlanding’ (stephein) the stern of a ship is attested as far back as the 1600s BCE. In the frescos of Thera, we see the painting of a ship that features a cabin on the stern festooned with garlands. This practice survives to this day in the Greek-speaking world, on such festive occasions as Easter.
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When it comes to the treatment of traditional visions of immortalization involving Hades as a transition, we must beware of the translator’s (Jowett’s) assumptions as embedded in his translations. I offer the reader a general warning about Jowett’s translation “in the world below” (the Greek is simply ekei ‘over there’). In eschatological contexts, as in the Phaedo, the concept of Hades or “underworld” tends to be shaded over in the original Greek of Plato.
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The mystical language of immortalization is foregrounded in the Phaedo, as we see from the following passage:
! B) Plato Phaedo (69c):
And I conceive that the founders of the mysteries [teletai] had a real meaning and were not mere triflers when they intimated in a figure [or ‘riddle’ = verb of ainigma] long ago that he who passes without initiation [amu"tos] and without ritual induction [atelestos, from verb of telos] into the world below [= Hades] will live in a slough, but that he who arrives there after purification [= verb of katharsis] and induction [verb of telos] will dwell [verb of oikos] with the gods. For many, as they say in the mysteries [teletai], are the bearers of the thyrsos [narth"x], but few are the bakkhoi [= devotees of Bacchus].
!
We may compare again the Christian aphorism mentioned before: ‘many are called but few are chosen’ (Matthew 22:14). Examples of the unchosen are such “half-baked” initiates as Kadmos and Teiresias in the Bacchae of Euripides.
! What is at stake for Plato’s Socrates is not the resurrection of the body or the preservation of
the psukh" but the resurrection of the word. !
The de-emphasis of corporeality can be seen even in the way the participants in the dialogue talk about remembering Socrates. It is *not* a matter of total recall. We see two people talking about Socrates, and one of the two, a man called Phaedo, makes extensive “quotations” from what he remembers Socrates said.
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When there is talk in the Phaedo about calling Socrates to mind, ‘to bring him to recollection’, the expression is memn"sthai + genitive. This is not total recall, which is expressed via memn"sthai + accusative.
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Also relevant to the question of corporeality is the word pharmakon in passage A. Let me stress, from the start, that pharmakon means not just ‘poison’; a better translation is ‘potion’. A potion is a ritual drink (notice that Socrates has to drink the pharmakon). The semantics of libation are in effect. Note that Socrates, at the very end, wants to pour part of the potion into the ground as a libation. To whom? Here the idea of daimonion once again comes to mind.!
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The effect of the pharmakon is either death or resurrection. In Plato’s Phaedrus, we learn that Socrates thinks of the technology of writing as a pharmakon. The pharmakon is the letter, that is, literacy, writing. The letter can kill the word or it can resurrect the word. We must keep this theme in mind when we come to the passage, later on, where Socrates says that he is ‘speaking like a book’. Or, more literally, he is speaking like an author who is communicating not by way of living speech but by way of speech embedded in a book. We see here a meditation on the
fact that we as readers are introduced to Plato - or, in Plato’s terms, to Socrates - by way of a book. Initially, Socrates speaks to us as if he were a book, and yet, it is the live speech of dialogue that makes the word come alive. What matters is not his wording per se but the words that he is starting in dialogue, to be continued by his interlocutors and by succeeding interlocutors of generations to come, generation after generation, notionally forever. That is why the dialogues as framed by Plato are not authorial. That is why Socrates is not an author.
!!! C) Plato’s Phaedo (59d-60a):
On the last morning the meeting was earlier than usual; [59e] this was owing to our having heard on the previous evening that the sacred ship had arrived from Delos, and therefore we agreed to meet very early at the accustomed place. On our going to the prison, the jailer who answered the door, instead of admitting us, came out and told us to wait and he would call us. “For the Eleven,” he said, “are now with Socrates; they are taking off his chains, and giving orders that he is to die today.” He soon returned and said that we might come in. [60a] On entering we found Socrates just released from chains, and Xanthippe, whom you know, sitting by him, and holding his child in her arms. When she saw us she uttered a cry and said, as women will: “O Socrates, this is the last time that either you will converse with your friends, or they with you.” Socrates turned to Crito and said: “Crito, let someone take her home.” Some of Crito’s people accordingly led her away, crying out and beating herself.
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We see from this passage the terminus of the sacred time frame of the pathos of Socrates. The defining moment is now at hand. Consider the use of the word h!ra by Socrates in the Apology. Note that the figure of Xanthippe with the child is more like that of Andromache with Astyanax than what is imagined in later philosophical traditions. Xanthippe laments the end of opportunities to have dialogues with Socrates in person. She laments this termination not only for the friends of
Socrates, but also, implicitly, for herself. When Socrates says “take her away!” it is not so much an unfeeling attitude toward his wife. It is more a matter of Plato’s own compartmentalization of family vs. friends. When Socrates chooses to take a bath before his death, his gesture is worded as an act of consideration toward his wife and other women kinfolk. Of course it is also a symbolic gesture. No laments for Socrates. No bathing of Socrates’ corpse by the women of his family after he dies: no, he wants to take his last bath while he is still alive. All the sequences of funerary practice, which is the ideological basis of both the cult of the dead and hero-cult, seem to be challenged by Socrates.
! D) Plato’s Phaedo (60e-61b):
In the course of my life I have often had intimations in dreams “that I should make music [mousik"].” The same dream came to me sometimes in one form, and sometimes in another, but always saying the same or nearly the same words: Make and cultivate music [mousik"], said the dream. [61a] And hitherto I had imagined that this was only intended to exhort and encourage me in the study of philosophy, which has always been the pursuit of my life, and is the noblest and best of music [mousik"]. The dream was bidding me to do what I was already doing, in the same way that the competitor in a race is called on by the spectators to run when he is already running. But I was not certain of this, as the dream might have meant music [mousik"] in the popular sense of the word, and being under sentence of death, and the festival giving me a respite, I thought that I should be safer if I engaged with the holiness, [61b] and, in obedience to the dream, composed a few verses before I departed. And first I made a hymn [humnos] in honor of the god of the festival, and then considering that a poet, if he is really to be a poet or maker, should not only put words together but make stories [muthoi], and as I am not a maker of stories [muthologikos], I took some fables [muthoi] of Aesop, which I had ready at hand and knew, and turned them into verse.
! I repeated this passage here because I need to stress once again the symbolic value of the humnos ‘hymn’ as an inauguration of “music” still to come. ! E) Plato’s Phaedo (88c-89c): [[Here Echecrates interrupts the narrative of Phaedo containing the dialogue of Socrates with Phaedo and others. The interruption of the narrative is like a derailment of the dialogue contained by the narrative.]]
Ech. There I feel with you - I do, Phaedo, and when you were speaking, I was beginning to ask myself the same question: [88d] What argument can I ever trust again? For what could be more convincing than the argument of Socrates, which has now fallen into discredit? That the psukh" is a tuning [harmonia] is a doctrine which has always had a wonderful attraction for me, and, when mentioned, came back to me at once, as my own original conviction. And now I must begin again and find another argument which will assure me that when the man is dead the psukh" dies not with him. Tell me, I beg, [88e] how did Socrates proceed? Did he appear to share the unpleasant feeling which you mention? or did he receive the interruption calmly and give a sufficient answer? Tell us, as exactly as you can, what passed.
[[Here the narrative of Phaedo containing the dialogue of Socrates with Phaedo and others is resumed after the interruption, after the derailment.]]
Phaed. Often, Echecrates, as I have admired Socrates, I never admired him more than at that moment. [89a] That he should be able to answer was nothing, but what astonished me was, first, the gentle and pleasant and approving manner in which he regarded the words of the young men, and then his quick sense of the wound which had been inflicted by the argument, and his ready application of the healing art. He might be compared to a general rallying his defeated and broken army, urging them to follow him and return to the field of argument.
Ech. How was that?
Phaed. You shall hear, for I was close to him on his right hand, seated on a sort of stool, [89b] and he on a couch which was a good deal higher. Now he had a way of playing with my hair, and then he smoothed my head, and pressed the hair upon my neck, and said: Tomorrow, Phaedo, I suppose that these fair locks of yours will be severed. Yes, Socrates, I suppose that they will, I replied. Not so if you will take my advice. What shall I do with them? I said. Today, he replied, and not tomorrow, if this argument dies and cannot be brought to life again [anabi!sasthai] by us, you and I will both shave our locks; [89c] and if I were you, and could not maintain my ground against Simmias and Cebes, I would myself take an oath, like the Argives, not to wear hair any more until I had renewed the conflict and defeated them. Yes, I said, but Herakles himself is said not to be a match for two. Summon me then, he said, and I will be your Iolaos until the sun goes down. I summon you rather, I said, not as Herakles summoning Iolaos, but as Iolaos might summon Herakles.
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As David Elmer pointed out (2004), we see here the first moment in the inset narrative of Phaedo where “the frame narrative breaks into the inset narrative” (this moment happens when Echecrates interrupts the inset narrative of Phaedo). Elmer continues: “This moment is just exactly after Socrates has asked someone else to respond to the objections of Simmias. In the inset narrative, Socrates then turns to Phaedo himself, who is the frame narrator to Echecrates.” After the objections of Simmias and Cebes, the dialogic partners of Socrates are at a loss, clearly. So the interruption by Echecrates happens at the moment when the flow of argumentation has in any case been interrupted by the inability of the dialogic partners to come up with a good response to the objections of Simmias and Cebes. The dialogic partners’ model of immortality, which is pictured for them as the perfect tuning (harmonia) of the seven-string lyre, has been shattered. It is also being shattered for Echecrates, who expresses his feelings of despair to Phaedo as he interrupts Phaedo’s inset narrative. (On the concept of the shattered tuning . . . GN compares the tragedy Thamyras by Sophocles, where the lyre of Thamyras the singer disintegrates while he is playing it.)
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To compare Socrates to Herakles as someone that needs to be ‘summoned’ in an hour of need has one meaning in the world of heroes (the young nephew Iolaos ‘summons’ Herakles to help him in his hour of need - and vice versa) and another meaning in the world of the present, when worshippers are worshipping heroes (the worshippers ‘summon’ Herakles to help them in their hour of need). When Herakles is fighting solo against two, even he needs the help of his nephew Iolaos. After Socrates is dead, Phaedo will not be able to fight against the likes of Simmias and Cebes. That would be a one-against-two fight. The dialogic partner of Socrates, Phaedo, wants to summon Socrates from the dead as if Socrates were Herakles. Phaedo can be Iolaos to the Socrates as Herakles, although Socrates thinks that he can be Iolaos and let Phaedo be Herakles in a debate with Simmias and Cebes. Either way, Socrates would be dead, and the living dialogic partner would have to team up with the dead words of Socrates who is shown engaging in dialogue inside a book. These dead words can be made to come alive only
in a “live dialogue.” !
F) Plato Phaedo (102d): He [= Socrates] added, laughing, I am speaking like a book [sungraphik!s erein], but I believe that what I am now saying is true.
! G) Plato Phaedo (117a-118a):
Crito, when he heard this, made a sign to the servant, and the servant went in, and remained for
some time, and then returned with the jailer carrying a cup of poison [pharmakon]. Socrates said: You, my good friend, who are experienced in these matters, shall give me directions how I am to proceed. The man answered: You have only to walk about [117b] until your legs are heavy, and then to lie down, and the poison will act. At the same time he handed the cup to Socrates, who in the easiest and gentlest manner, without the least fear or change of color or feature, looking at the man with all his eyes, Echecrates, as his manner was, took the cup and said: What do you say about making a libation out of this cup to any god? May I, or not? The man answered: We only prepare, Socrates, just so much as we deem enough. I understand, he said: [117c] yet I may and must pray to the gods to prosper my journey from this to that other world—may this, then, which is my prayer, be granted to me. Then holding the cup to his lips, quite readily and cheerfully he drank off the poison. And hitherto most of us had been able to control our sorrow; but now when we saw him drinking, and saw too that he had finished the draught, we could no longer forbear, and in spite of myself my own tears were flowing fast; so that I covered my face and wept over myself, for certainly I was not weeping over him, [117d] but at the thought of my own calamity in having lost such a companion. Nor was I the first, for Crito, when he found himself unable to restrain his tears, had got up and moved away, and I followed; and at that moment. Apollodorus, who had been weeping all the time, broke out in a loud cry which made cowards of us all. Socrates alone retained his calmness: What is this strange outcry? he said. I sent away the women mainly in order that they might not offend in this way, [117e] for I have heard that a man should die in peace. Be quiet, then, and have patience. When we heard that, we were ashamed, and refrained our tears; and he walked about until, as he said, his legs began to fail, and then he lay on his back, according to the directions, and the man who gave him the poison now and then looked at his feet and legs; and after a while he pressed his foot hard and asked him if he could feel; and he said, no; and then his leg, [118a] and so upwards and upwards, and showed us that he was cold and stiff. And he felt them himself, and said: When the poison reaches the heart, that will be the end. He was beginning to grow cold about the groin, when he uncovered his face, for he had covered himself up, and said (they were his last words)—he said: Crito, I owe the sacrifice of a rooster to Asklepios; will you remember to pay the debt? The debt shall be paid, said Crito; is there anything else? There was no answer to this question; but in a minute or two a movement was heard, and the attendants uncovered him; his eyes were set, and Crito closed his eyes and mouth. Such was the end, Echecrates, of our friend, whom I may truly call the wisest, and most just, and best of all the men whom I have ever known.
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In the figure of the hero Asklepios, we see the theme of resurrection. For Socrates, what matters is the resurrection of the word.
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Death is the necessary pharmakon for leaving the everyday life and for entering the everlasting cycle of resurrecting the word.
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Dialogue 24. The Hero as savior. !
The key word here is the noun s!t"r ‘savior’; its derivative is s!t"ria ‘safety, salvation’. Earlier we saw the verb s!zein ‘save; be a s!t"r for someone’ (either by ‘bringing to safety’ or, mystically, by ‘bringing back to life’).
!
A1. As I already said before, I am not borrowing this concept of “savior” and “salvation” from Christian discourse. Christian discourse inherited the words s!t"r ‘savior’ (noun) and s!zein
(verb) ‘save; be a s!t"r (for someone)’ from pre-Christian phases of the Greek language.
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A2. Two levels of meaning: saving of life (on the surface), saving of afterlife (underneath the surface).
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[[I insert here a remark on the second of two “anti-heroes” as featured in this course. The first of these anti-heroes, as I argued in sessions 21 and 23, is Socrates. The second, as we will now see, is the figure of Jesus as presented for example in the Gospel according to Mark.
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I offer two focus passages, one taken from Mark 4:35-41, focusing on “heroic deeds,” and the other taken from Mark 16:1-8, focusing on the themes of the empty tomb and the resurrection.
! The first of these two focus passages shows the integration of the figure of Jesus with the superhuman forces of the cosmos. !
The second of these two focus passages challenges directly the idea of the hero’s body as a talisman of fertility and prosperity for the local community that venerates it.
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The “empty tomb” theme of the New Testament, which is considered the oldest element in the development of the Passion Narrative, can be analyzed as an alternative to ancient Greek practices of venerating tombs of cult heroes - and to ancient Jewish and Muslim practices of venerating tombs of prophets and other figures of the Hebrew Bible, including the tomb of Abraham and Sarah in Hebron. This theme of the “empty” tomb is replaced in the era of the emperor Constantine (fourth century CE) by the rival theme of the “Holy Sepulcher,” which is a reversion to the older heroic model of the cult-hero’s tomb. As for the theme of Jesus’ resurrection and subsequent epiphanies in the New Testament, it can be compared with the rival “pagan” theme of the “double resurrection” and subsequent epiphanies of the epic and cult hero Protesilaos in the dialogue crafted by Philostratus.]]!
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A3. Now I return to the topic of non-Christian models of heroes. In the historical context of ancient Greek song culture, it is better to avoid the word “religion” and to speak instead in terms of myth/ritual symbiosis (that is, in terms of what you say [myth] and what you do [ritual] in sacred space; remember: “sacred space” does not have to be a physical space, and it can even be a state of mind).
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A4. The history of Greek “religion” is the story of the eventual destabilization of this symbiosis.
! A5. Plato has an important role in this destabilization, and yet he has Socrates saying at the end of the Republic ... !
A) Plato Republic (10.621b8-c1): Socrates is quoted as saying, with reference to the “Myth of Er”: kai ho muthos es!th" ‘and the myth was saved’.
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A6. Aristotle muses about becoming ever more solitary in old age and becoming ever more fond of muthos (fr. 668 ed. Rose, via “Demetrius” 144: hos!i gar autit"s kai mon!t"s eimi, philomuthoteros gegona). !
A7. Patterns of myth/ritual symbiosis can be seen most clearly in small-scale societies, e.g. the Yukuna: we will return to this topic towards the end of this dialogue.
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B1. In this course, we have seen some important images of the hero as savior. The most important
of these is Achilles and the solitary lighthouse of his tomb on the Hellespont, shining a light of salvation for sailors who are lost at sea. There is a concise write-up of this image in {LINK} Best of the Achaeans Ch.20@20-28. We will see this image when we consider Passage C. To introduce Passage C, I start with Passage B:
! B) Iliad XVIII 202-214:
But Achilles dear to Zeus arose, and Athena flung her tasseled aegis round his strong shoulders; she crowned his head with a halo of golden cloud from which she kindled a glow of gleaming fire. As the smoke that goes up into heaven from some city that is being beleaguered on an island far out at sea - all day long do men sally from the city and fight their hardest, and at the going down of the sun the line of beacon fires blazes forth, flaring high for those that dwell near them to behold, if so be that they may come with their ships and save them - even so did the light flare from the head of Achilles.
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B2. Here we see a preview, featuring ‘beacon fires’ in a besieged city. The population is calling for help, and the flames of their beacon fires are compared to the light that comes out of the head of the yet-unarmed Achilles.
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C1. Now, we come to the picture of the light coming from beacon fires in a lighthouse, and the light from these beacon fires is the image that is being compared to the light from the bronze shield of the armed Achilles.
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C) Iliad XIX 372-379:
He [Achilles] slung the silver-studded sword of bronze about his shoulders, and then took up the shield so great and strong that shone afar with a splendor as of the moon. As the light seen by sailors from out at sea [pontos], when men have lit a fire in their homestead high up among the mountains, but the sailors are carried out to sea [pontos] by wind and storm far from the haven where they would be - even so did the gleam of Achilles’ wondrous shield strike up into
the heavens.
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D1. Notice that the reflection of light from the surface of the bronze Shield projects an image of salvation: it is the s"ma ‘tomb’ of the hero Achilles, which is like a lighthouse. This s"ma is situated on the Hellespont.
! D) Odyssey xxiv 71-94:
But when the flames of Hephaistos had consumed you, we gathered your [= Achilles’] white bones at daybreak and laid them in ointments and in pure wine. Your mother brought us a golden vase to hold them - gift of Dionysos, and work of Hephaistos himself; in this we mingled your bleached bones with those of Patroklos who had gone before you, and separate we enclosed also those of Antilokhos, who had been closer to you than any other of your comrades now that Patroklos was no more. Over these the host of the Argives built a noble tomb, on a point jutting out over the open Hellespont [Hell"spontos], that it might be seen from far out upon the sea by those now living and by them that shall be born hereafter. ... Thus even in death your kleos, Achilles, has not been lost, and your name lives evermore among all humankind.
! D2. The word Hell"spontos means ‘the crossing of Hell#’. !
D3. For the effect of light reflected by bronze, compare the bronze relief sculpture (the sculptor was St. Gaudens) showing the faces of soldiers of an all-black regiment marching to their death in 1863; their officer, Col. Robert Gould Shaw (a Harvard graduate) died with them; their story is
told in the film Glory. You can find the relief sculpture in front of the statehouse on Beacon Hill in Boston. Try to see it at the last light of the sunset of the summer solstice.
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Herodotus 7.189:
The Persian fleet put to sea and reached the beach of the Magnesian land, between the polis of Kasthanaia and the headland of Sepias. The first ships to arrive moored close to land, with the others after them at anchor; since the beach was not large, they lay at anchor in rows eight ships deep out into the sea [pontos]. Thus they spent the night, but at dawn out of a clear and windless sky a storm descended upon them and the sea began to boil. A strong east wind blew, which the people living in those parts call Hellesponti"s. Those who felt the wind rising or had proper mooring dragged their ships up on shore ahead of the storm and so survived with their ships. But the wind carried those ships caught out in the open against the rocks called the Ovens at Pelion or onto the beach. Some ships were wrecked on the Sepian headland, others
were cast ashore at the polis of Meliboia or at Kasthanaia. The storm was indeed unbearable. ... There was no counting how many grain-ships and other vessels were destroyed. ... The storm lasted three days. Finally the Magi made offerings and cast spells upon the wind, sacrificing also to Thetis and the Nereids. Thus they made the wind stop on the fourth day, or perhaps it died down on its own. They sacrificed to Thetis after hearing from the Ionians the story that it was at this place that Peleus had abducted her, and that all the headland of Sepias belonged to her and to the other Nereids.
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E1. Sepias means “the place of the sepia.” It was here, says the tradition, that Peleus and Thetis conceived Achilles.
! E2. Another important image is... Odysseus as the reintegrated king and the reintegrated body politic in the second half of the Odyssey. !
E3. Yet another... Hesiod, bearer of the scepter of truth, whose authoritative word replaces kings. In the Works and Days, he speaks of the Islands of the Blessed, the place where heroes are immortalized and olbioi.
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F1. Yet another... Ino as the White Goddess. Her corpse will “one day” come alive as the White Goddess: remember how Odysseus is saved from drowning at the end of Odyssey v. See Passage F.
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from Odyssey v 332-353: When he [Odysseus] was in this plight, Ino daughter of Kadmos, also called Leukothea, saw him. She had formerly been a mere mortal, but had been since raised to the rank of a marine goddess. Seeing in what great distress Odysseus now was, she had compassion upon him, and, rising like a sea-gull from the waves, took her seat upon the raft. “My poor good man,” said she, “... swim to the Phaeacian coast where better luck awaits you. And here, take my veil and put it round your chest; it is enchanted, and you can come to no harm so long as you wear it. As soon as you touch land take it off, throw it back as far as you can into the sea, and then go away again.” With these words she took off her veil and gave it him. Then she dived down again like a sea-gull and vanished beneath the seething dark waters.
! F2. Yet another... Oedipus the king turned scapegoat.
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F3. Yet another... Pentheus, dismembered and “remembered” in Euripides Bacchae 881 and 901:
ho ti kalon philon aei ‘whatever is beautiful is always philon’; cf. Romulus in Roman myth.
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G1. Yet another... Socrates in the Phaedo: he saves humans from the fear of death. Consider the image of a fish poking its head above the water (109e-110a), like a drowning man coming up for air. At the end of the Phaedo, Socrates says: sacrifice a rooster to Asklepios. This hero was the son of Apollo, and he had special powers of healing. Asklepios also had the power of bringing the dead back to life. Some interpret Socrates’ final instruction to mean simply that death is a cure for life. But think of this: you sacrifice the rooster on the night before, and then you will still be hearing other roosters crowing in the morning after the sacrifice. As Socrates says, do not cut off the locks of your hair, do not fail to bring the arguments back to life again. Dialectic comes back to life every time you engage in “the Socratic method.” See Passages G and H.
! G) again, from Plato Phaedo (89b):
Now he had a way of playing with my hair, and then he smoothed my head, and pressed the hair upon my neck, and said: Tomorrow, Phaedo, I suppose that these fair locks of yours will be severed. Yes, Socrates, I suppose that they will, I replied. Not so if you will take my advice. What shall I do with them? I said. Today, he replied, and not tomorrow, if this argument dies and cannot be brought to life again by us, you and I will both shave our locks.
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again, from Plato Phaedo (117e and following):
... then he lay on his back, according to the directions, and the man who gave him the poison now and then looked at his feet and legs; and after a while he pressed his foot hard and asked him if he could feel; and he said, no; and then his leg, and so upwards and upwards, and showed us that he was cold and stiff. And he felt them himself, and said: When the poison reaches the heart, that will be the end. He was beginning to grow cold about the groin, when he uncovered his face, for he had covered himself up, and said (they were his last words) - he said: Crito, I owe the sacrifice of a rooster to Asklepios; will you remember to pay the debt? The debt shall be paid, said Crito; is there anything else? There was no answer to this question; but in a minute or two a movement was heard, and the attendants uncovered him; his eyes were set, and Crito closed his eyes and mouth. Such was the end, Echecrates, of our friend, whom I may truly call the wisest, and most just, and best of all the men whom I have ever known.
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H1. Yet another... Protesilaos (in Herodotus). Concise write-up in {LINK} Pindar’s Homer Ch. 9@28 till the end of the chapter.
It is all a matter of telos.
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I1. Yet another... A “hero” not yet mentioned: Alexander the Great.
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I2. Hegel said: Achilles, the ideal youth of poetry, commences the Greek achievement; Alexander, the ideal youth of reality, concludes it.
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I3. Alexander kept a master copy of the Iliad and a dagger under his “pillow” [= headrest]; the dagger marks him as the chief priest of the Macedonians. What is the symbolism of the Iliad under his headrest?
! I4. Alexander claims descent from Achilles, on his mother’s side; he sacrifices at the s"ma of Achilles at Troy; Alexander’s own tomb is called the s!ma. !
I4. Alexander Romance, 3rd century of our era; a key figure is Nektanebo II, the last Egyptian pharaoh, who in real life fled Egypt in 343. In the narrative of the Alexander Romance,
Nektanebo and not Philip of Macedon is the real father of Alexander. Since the pharaoh is the reincarnation of the god Ammon, who is the “Zeus” of the Egyptians, Alexander is the son of the Egyptian Zeus in terms of the Alexander Romance.
! I5. Menander the Rhetorician reports: Alexander is to be addressed as son of Zeus. !
I6. In the Alexander Romance, birds at the edge of the earth say to him: “Alexander, stop standing up to the gods and go back to your palace at home and stop striving to ascend the road to the heavens.” See Passage I and J.
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One is no longer at home anywhere, so in the end one longs to be back where one can somehow be at home because it is the only place where one would wish to be at home: and that is the world of Greece.—Friedrich Nietzsche.
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In the Alexander Romance, birds at the edge of the earth say to him: “Alexander, stop standing up to the gods and go back to your palace at home and stop striving to ascend the road to the heavens.” When he reaches the Island of the Blessed, Alexander sees his own obelisk in a dream (the obelisk marks his starting point, at “home” in Alexandria) and a figure with gleaming eyes at the Island of the Blessed (this figure marks the extremity of his quest): Alexander will reach the status of a god, will have an oikos in Alexandria, as a nekros.
% J1. Alexander claimed descent from Achilles, on his mother’s side; he sacrificed at the s"ma of Achilles at Troy; to repeat, Alexander’s own tomb in Alexandria was called the s!ma. ! J2. Water of life myth in Alexander Romance. !
J3. When he reaches the Island of the Blessed, Alexander sees his own obelisk in a dream (the obelisk marks his starting point, at “home” in Alexandria) and a figure with gleaming eyes at the Island of the Blessed (this figure marks the extremity of his quest): Alexander will reach the status of a god, will have an oikos in Alexandria, as a nekros. There is no place like home. See again Passage I and J.
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J4. Let us return to the concept of the Yukuna, = myth. For this society, myth *is* their identity. Without this identity, there is no point in being a Yukuna. An anthropologist actually recorded a Yukuna in the act of saying this.
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In Modern Greek folklore, the Daughter of Alexander, the surviving Nereid of modern times, has the habit of surfacing for air on the occasion of sea-storms. When asked, she will always tell the pilot of a ship beset by the storm: z"i kai basileuei kai ton kosmon kurieuei. ‘He lives and reigns and rules the cosmos.’
! So long as the concept of the hero is alive, the word is alive, and vice versa. !
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